“We talk also of a Laburnum”
Jane Austen died 207 years ago today, on July 18, 1817. To mark the anniversary of her death, I want to share these beautiful laburnum photos with you.
The photos were taken by Brenda Barry at the Historic Gardens in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia last month and sent to me by her sister Sandra. Sandra writes of the laburnum that “we couldn’t have timed our visit there better—it was at its height. Walking in the archway: raining sunshine. Transporting.”
Jane Austen mentions laburnum in a letter to her sister Cassandra on February 8, 1807, sent from Southampton:
Our Garden is putting in order, by a Man who bears a remarkably good Character, has a very fine complexion & asks something less than the first. The Shrubs which border the gravel walk he says are only sweetbriar & roses, & the latter of an indifferent sort—we mean to get a few of a better kind therefore, & at my own particular desire he procures us some Syringas. I could not do without a Syringa, for the sake of Cowper’s Line. —We talk also of a Laburnum. The Border under the Terrace Wall is clearing away to receive Currants and Gooseberry Bushes, & a spot is found very proper for raspberries.
In his poem The Task, William Cowper speaks of “Laburnum rich / in streaming gold; Syringa Iv’ry pure” (“A Winter Walk at Noon,” Book VI).
I spotted volumes by both Cowper and Austen at the Morgan Library in New York City yesterday:
I’ll be back tomorrow with the next guest post in my current blog series, “A Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility”: “Isabelle de Montolieu’s Sense and Sensibility,” by Peter Sabor.
If you enjoyed this post, I hope you’ll consider recommending it to a friend. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, please sign up to receive future guest posts in “A Summer Party for Sense and Sensibility.”
Here are the links to the last two posts, in case you missed them:
Landscapes of the Mind and Map in Sense and Sensibility, by Hazel Jones
Read more about my books, including Jane Austen’s Philosophy of the Virtues and Jane Austen and the North Atlantic, here.
