Mari Zipes Wallace

Someone once said: “Gardening is cheaper than therapy…and you get tomatoes.”   I think that pretty much sums up why I do it – all those hours spent digging, weeding, seeding, composting, pruning  – so many gardening words that I have grown (pun intended) to love.   It’s the feel-good factor that counteracts the exhaustion, and yes – the rewards: sweet, juicy tomatoes…among other things.  If the definition of JOY is “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness” – then working in my garden gives me that, and more.    

I came to gardening rather late in life.  My mother, back in New York State, relied on perennials.  They came up reliably every year – as perennials are designed to do — which was good enough for her.  She never ventured further than garden maintenance.   I smile when I think of her – and wonder what she’d make of me tending my half acre of bliss in southern England.  

I moved to London in the late 1970s.  I’d been lucky enough to get a work permit thanks to my relatively unusual occupation as a picture researcher in publishing, and had ‘indefinite leave’ to remain in the United Kingdom.  My first assignment was to source the images for a book called Principles of Gardening by Hugh Johnson.  He is a renowned wine expert who’d decided to branch out (sorry – another intentional pun) and write a book about gardens.  I enjoyed doing the historical research at the library of the Royal Horticultural Society – such a thrill to hold antique watercolour prints of Redoute roses and other exquisite artwork — but the research for plant and flower images of living specimens was particularly challenging for someone as ignorant of horticulture as I was.   In May our book team was offered free tickets to the Chelsea Flower Show but I never bothered as gardening was of little interest to me.  A missed opportunity later to be remedied.

At that time I lived in an apartment where I had a couple of house plants that survived only by dint of sheer obstinacy.  If they’d been children, I’d have been brought up on charges of wilfull neglect.  Fast forward to the late 1980s and I tell a different tale.  By then I’d married and moved to the Sussex countryside where I was immediately enchanted by Nature on a grand scale.   The gardening bug bit me and I became infected for the rest of my life.  Town life with its greys and browns was superseded by colors everywhere, in every season.   I had to be a part of it, create my own banquet of colors.   The joy I get from being in the great outdoors in my garden is infinite – and that is why I’ve felt compelled to tell you about it.  English garden writer and designer, Mirabel Osler, must have been describing me when she said, “There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling.”  Yes, even in soggy soil, pestered by a light drizzle, surrounded by recalcitrant weeds, with trowel in hand and plastic kneeler beneath me, I am still smiling. 

Although I started out knowing very little, I’ve become more and more competent over the years – so much so that nowadays friends actually ask me for advice.  It’s been a huge learning curve with numerous disasters but, luckily, far more successes – and a few things I simply could not handle.   There was the time we had manure delivered from a local farm.  I was keen to help my husband move this rich plant food to the various parts of our garden where they were needed.   The manure was surprisingly odor-free but nothing prepared me for the abundance of wriggling red worms that ‘ran riot’.  In disgust – and fear — I threw down my pitchfork and ran to the safety of the greenhouse, leaving my poor husband to shift the manure all by himself.   Then there was the time when I pulled up a cluster of innocuous-looking green weeds.  Almost immediately, I felt as if my hand was on fire.  I charged into the house in search of my husband, tearfully showing him my now splodgy red and hugely painful hand.  “Looks like you’ve had your first encounter with stinging nettles,” he said as he applied a soothing cream.  Outside, I sulkily pointed to the culprits that had ‘attacked’ me.  Back home in New York State, I knew to avoid poison ivy but stinging nettles were something totally new to me. You never forget a plant that ‘bites’.  Thereafter, I wore thick gloves when having to deal with these ‘nasties’. 

A Chinese proverb says that “Life begins the day you start a garden.”  I’ve been fortunate to inherit established gardens each time we’ve moved.  But one of the joys is putting your own imprint on it, making it reflect you as a person.  Sydney Eddison, author of “Gardening for a Lifetime”, contends that “gardens are a form of autobiography.”   Being American born, I felt the need to ‘Americanize’ my garden by introducing plants that reminded me of my roots (yes, another pun- no apologies) which was Pleasantville, New York.   Lily of the valley was one of those.  Little white bells on slender green stalks, plus an intoxicating perfume – how could you resist them?   With my birthday being in mid-May, I always felt lily of the valley bloomed just for me.  I also planted a feathery red maple or acer, to remind me of the one in our Pleasantville front lawn.  My next must-have was a pink dogwood.  Local garden centres did not stock them but I happily found an online source.  I planted this ‘cornus florida rubra’ in my Anglo-American garden where it has flourished ever since.  The joy I feel each spring when those pink blossoms appear is indescribable, as I time-travel back to the rosy haze of my childhood.  Another ‘home sweet home’ memento is the American pillar rose I positioned on a south-facing trellis.  It goes mad every June, surely its way of shouting out to me, “I love it here!” 

Hanna Rion was a garden writer of the 19^th century, living in New York State’s Catskill Mountains.   She observed that: “The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.”   In every season of the year, my garden in southern England is the source of never-ending sensory stimulus.   Even in the dead of winter, there are sights – a stubborn rose clinging to its stem, snowdrops poking through barren soil, creamy hellebores lifting their heads in defiance of the cold – and smells – winter honeysuckle with a scent like freshly-sliced lemon.

The other seasons vie with each other for my sensory attention but I’d like to share with you my personal favorites.  For the sense of smell, first and foremost are obviously roses…but there are others almost as high-up in the pecking order:  sweet peas…chocolate cosmos (yes, they really do smell like chocolate!)…hyacinths…not forgetting, lily of the valley.  And herbs.  Rub the leaves of any of these and you’ll get a real olfactory kick: sage, peppermint, thyme, rosemary.   For sound: the rustling whoosh of tall, ornamental grasses, slender stalks of bamboo, even something as mundane as oak leaves being whipped in a storm.  For touch: the furriness of the plant aptly named ‘lamb’s ears’, the slippery feel of glistening camellia leaves, the prickles of stunning blue sea hollies.  (Those devilish stinging nettles are also memorable for touch but the less said about them, the better.)  For taste:  the surprising spiciness of nasturtium leaves,  the tangy sweetness of wild strawberries, freshly picked mint for tea, or chives – both the green stems as a garnish and the pink blossoms for salad.   Sight is, of course, the easiest of all and I’m spoiled for choice.  Please feel free to add your own to my edited list:  big-headed, smiling sunflowers, variegated heuchera (sometimes called coral bells), multi-colored ‘parrot’ tulips, delicate passion flowers, large-petalled clematis, the dazzling range of ‘show-off’ dahlias.  

My children tease me about what a gardening bore I’ve become but I’ve made it easy for them when it comes to birthdays, Christmas, Mother’s Day.  They simply go to their nearest garden center and buy me National Garden Gift Vouchers which can be used at over 2000 garden centers around the UK.   There is great joy in simply wandering around the tempting displays, vouchers in my handbag,  knowing I’ve got ‘purchasing power’ – like the child surveying the goodies in a candy shop, his fist securely clutching the week’s pocket money.   

The discovery of new plants is also a joy and is one of the many fringe benefits of visiting celebrated gardens.   The Royal Horticultural Society’s garden nearest to me is Wisley in Surrey; it is 240 acres of wonder – rose gardens, herbaceous borders, giant glass houses, ponds, rockeries, sculpture.  Their plant shop is like a cornucopia of all that is lush and desirable.  I try to leave my credit card at home when I visit but it somehow finds its way into my handbag.  I’ve indulged myself in a gorgeous rose with burnt orange tones called ‘hot chocolate’, a spiraea that produces both pink and white flowers on the same shrub, an evergreen climber with feathery green leaves and yellow bell-like flowers called Sophora Mycrophylla ‘Sun King’, and a little charmer called the balloon flower (platycodon grandifloras) whose blue blossoms actually look like mini-balloons.   It was at the annual Hampton Court Flower Show that I encountered a plant called Achillea (commonly called yarrow).  It has stately stalks with a cluster of flowers at the top, and blooms continuously for several months in the summer.   The colours range from orange to yellow to pinky-red to mauve.  A prize purchase was the white one I found at the plant stall of Downton Abbey (Highclere Castle in Berkshire)  – where I also bought a white Echinacea or cone flower.  It’s a real giggle to show people around my garden and point out my Downton Abbey acquisitions!

I’m always on the look-out for new plants and am happy when friends give me cuttings.   One friend, whose oleanders I admired, cut stalks for me.  She has a walled garden in London, offering much protection and milder temperatures than mine.   Consequently, her oleanders thrive outdoors but I knew mine wouldn’t.  Nonetheless, to my great delight several stalks developed roots and I potted them up as indoor plants and they have lived happily ever after in our sun room.     Another addition to my garden was particularly quirky.  While out walking with my husband, I spotted a climbing plant that caused me to rub my eyes in disbelief.  How could one small leaf contain all of these colors:  green, white and hot pink?  And here was a fence covered with a mass of these leaves, looking as if someone had splattered paint on them.  I had to know what this plant was, and I had to have one – but what was it?   My husband is used to my eccentricities and stood patiently as I took out the little notepad I carry in my handbag.  I jotted down my name and telephone number on it, asking the occupant of the house if he/she could provide me with the name of this beguiling plant.  I pushed the note through the mail slot.  A few days later I received a phone call.  “I’m not into gardening,” she admitted.  “My ex-husband was – and he planted that climber.  So I phoned him and this is what he said it was.”  Imagine – phoning your ex-husband to get the name of a plant for a total stranger!  When she told me it was called — Actinidea Kolomikta – I had to have her spell it for me.  I’ve since learned it’s also called the kiwi vine which is far easier to remember and say.  And yes, it’s in my garden now and doing well, thank you very much.

Another undeniable pleasure I get from my garden is when a plant suddenly appears that I have not cultivated myself.   This happens when seeds have been carried and dropped by the wind or birds.  Although some of these ‘surprise’ plants could be categorized as weeds, my philosophy is that what one person may call a weed, another calls a wildflower.  I welcome most of these self-seeded arrivals and re-position them where I think they’ll do best.   Euphorbias (also known as spurge) have come to me that way, as have poppies, bee-friendly purple toadflax, and butterfly-friendly verbena bonariensis (which garden centers cultivate and sell for a fairly hefty price).  There is a big push in England to grow plants to encourage bees and butterflies, both of which are in decline.  I get such a buzz (I know, another pun) when I see honey bees banqueting on our lavender and ceanothus, or watch butterflies settling on our buddleias (commonly called the butterfly bush!).  

Jeff Cox, who has hosted TV gardening shows, rightly says: “The garden is a love song, a duet between a human being and Mother Nature.”  My love song has gone on for many years now, and my garden and I are very much in tune with each other.  Besides the flower beds and the fruit trees, there’s the greenhouse, affording me the opportunity to grow things that would not flourish outdoors.  My cucumbers go on for months.  Besides ending up traditionally in salads, I also pickle them.   My Luciebell tomatoes are tasty triumphs.  I’d never seen them in a garden centre but one spring picked up a young plant in the English equivalent of Walmart.  The resulting tomatoes were so delicious that I dried some seeds, saved them over the winter, sowed them and – hey presto! – a new crop of Luciebells.  I now do that every year and have given friends seedlings to start their own Luciebell crops.   I also grow peppers in the greenhouse – from the previous summer’s dried seeds.    

My husband and I love fresh vegetables.  A spring ritual is to peruse seed catalogues, making decisions – often requiring compromises — on what to plant.  A favorite is a purple French climbing bean (starts out purple, with mauve flowers; the beans turn green when cooked), parsnips, carrots, zucchini (UK: courgettes), onions and leeks.  I have also grown pumpkins, corn on the cob and sugar snap peas (similar to snow peas).  Author Robert Brault, who seems to be able to come up with an apt quote for everything that happens in life, says that “In every gardener there is a child who believes in the Seed Fairy.”   I’m definitely one of those children – because of the joy I feel with a brand-new, unopened packet of seeds in my hand.  Again, the greenhouse is a boon because I can get a head start on my planting of such summer goodies as asters, cosmos, marigolds and sweet peas.   For me, it is a magical experience to scatter seeds in a tray of compost, water it and wait for little green bits appear, grow larger and larger until their adult shape evolves and I can eventually plant them out to reach their full potential in a flower bed.  I also scatter seeds directly into the soil and hope to be pleasantly surprised.   I’ve heard it said that “One of the healthiest ways to gamble is with a spade and a package of seeds.”  Casinos have no appeal for me; packets of seeds do.  ‘Real’ gardeners have what are called ‘nursery beds’ – and, as the name implies, it’s where you nurture your little seedlings until they are big enough to be moved into the main part of the garden, big enough to fend for themselves and fight off the would-be bullies (weeds).   My nursery beds are wherever there’s a convenient space to scatter seeds.  I mark the area with broken bamboo sticks so that I remember both to water regularly and also not to step on where I hope they will appear.  I remember with fondness a song from the long- running musical, The Fantasticks, that goes:  “Plant a radish, get a radish.  Never any doubt.  That’s why I love vegetables.  You know what they’re about.”  The song finishes with “A man who plants a garden is a very happy man.”  Or, in my case, woman.

I can’t say I’m a great believer in astrology but my May birthday qualifies me as an Earth sign.  And so it is quite natural for me to both dig my garden, as the Beat generation would say, as well as dig in my garden.  In the U.S., you’d say I have green thumbs.  Over here in the U.K., you’d say I have green fingers.  As far as I’m concerned, I happily use both of my hands to make things grow.   Garden produce is never wasted.  I make lots of soups in the summer which I freeze for my family to enjoy in the dark winter months: roast vegetable, tomato and basil, and pumpkin.  Those unripened tomatoes become green tomato chutney.  I make ratatouille.  Raspberry sorbet.  Blueberry tarts.  Plum jam.  Apple crumble.  Am I making you hungry yet?  My husband doesn’t always understand why I fuss about growing flowers but he certainly understands my growing things that end up on his plate.  It is a real joy to be able to go out and pick fresh produce to put on the table.  Even having to pollinate corn on the cob by hand in the early hours of the morning, which I did last summer, brings satisfaction when those ears start to swell and the corn silk turns from golden to a sepia brown.  

My husband is my sous-chef in the kitchen, and my sous-gardener outdoors.  Bless him, he does all the heavy digging and makes our lawn a show piece of alluring green contours.    He has instructed me, in vain, not to come home with a new plant unless I know in advance where I intend to put it.  If I go off for the day with a ‘fellow traveller’ (another gardening addict), he knows from past experience that I’ll come back with something green and leafy, with flower power potential.  His solution?  Widen the flower beds by relinquishing parts of his precious lawn.  Now that’s love, surely?  Despite my obsession, I know he is with me 100% when, on a summer’s evening,  we stand out on our patio, arms around each other as the sun is setting, and survey the panorama before us – our garden.  My joy.

When Americans think of England, they immediately think of rain.  Although rain means I can’t go out and ‘play’ in my garden, I console myself with the knowledge of the good it’s doing for all those thirsty plants.  My husband is pleased to see rain for a different reason:  “God made rainy days so gardeners could get the housework done.”Sadly, today is one of those days when I have to swap my garden fork for the vacuum cleaner.  I am sorry to report that there’s absolutely no joy in that.

I was born in the merry month of May, the month when Lily of the Valley blooms and permeates the air with its heady fragrance.  Is it any wonder that I adore that flower?

Back in Pleasantville in New York State, where I grew up, we had a lush bed of these lilies, growing happily in the shade of an elm tree in the front garden of our family home. Every May I would gather little bouquets for my Grannie whose birthday was only two days before mine. Not surprisingly, her favourite perfume was called ‘Muguet des Bois’ – Lily of the Valley.

One fateful day, when my sister Jacki was learning to drive, she accidentally drove the car right over the bed.  Grannie and I were in despair. How could she have been so reckless?  Poor Jacki was mortified.  And the lilies? Those tough little beauties came back in even greater profusion the following spring.  I learned something very important about them – that despite their delicate appearance, once they’re established in a garden, they’re as tough as old boots.

Although I’ve lived in England for many years now, it wasn’t until I retired and moved to my present house that I had the time to devote to serious gardening.  Lily of the Valley was certainly on my shopping list but St. Dorothy, the patron saint of gardeners, must have been smiling down on me.  Why?  Because when early spring came, I noticed, to my great delight, about 20 little Lily of the Valley runaways had cunningly crept under the boundary fence from next door’s garden.  I’ve since got to know my neighbour well and she’s very kindly let me transplant clumps into my flower bed.  They have rooted well and grow in such abundance that I don’t feel guilty if I cut a bunch to enjoy indoors.  

The scientific name for Lily of the Valley, Convallaria majalis, is derived from the Latin convallis, meaning deep valley, and maius, meaning May.   It is native to the northern hemisphere and its British history it can be traced as far back as the 16^th century – in Gerard’s Herbal — as growing in ‘great abundance’ on Hampstead Heath.  This plant forms extensive colonies by spreading underground stems or rhizomes just beneath the surface of the soil.  Tight green scrolls of leaves shoot up from the soil, and gently unfurl, soon revealing bell-shaped white flowers hanging on arching racemes above the dark green leaves.  The stems grow to 15-30cm tall, with one or two lance-shaped leaves 10-25cm long.  The tiny flowers which cover the stems are usually white, occasionally pink.  In the autumn, reddish berries, which are poisonous, can appear.  The fragrance is legendary.   

Lily of the Valley will grow in most soils but is happiest in shade or partial shade.  They can be planted out – ready-potted ones work very well – in the spring.  Propagating by division, as I did from the plants in my neighbour’s bed, is almost fool-proof.  The method is to dig up clumps with a trowel or fork in autumn.  Then tease away a few roots which have pips (small swellings on the roots from which the new plants will grow) and plant them in their new location, watering them in well.  A helpful feed of well-rotted compost can give them a boost but after that they require little or no feeding.  In fact, nitrogen-rich fertilisers will only produce more leaves at the expense of the flowers.  

There are a several varieties of Lily of the Valley sold in the U.K.  These include Rosea which is similar to the original but has pale pink flowers and less scent.  Prolificans has slightly fewer flowers versus Flore Pleno which has double-flowers.  Call me a Luddite, but for me it’s the original Convallaria majalis every time.

There’s more to this little flower than its beauty.  Besides being considered a sign of spring, it has been the subject of folklore for centuries.  It is sometimes referred to as ‘Our Lady’s Tears’ or ‘Mary’s Tears’ because according to Christian legend, Lily of the Valley sprang from the weeping of the Virgin Mary during Jesus’s crucifixion.   In religious paintings, it can be a symbol of humility or a sign of Christ’s second coming.   Another story is that Lily of the Valley came from Eve’s tears after she and Adam were driven from Eden.  Closer to home, there is an old Sussex tale that describes St. Leonard’s brave battle with a fierce dragon.  Wherever the warrior’s blood fell, a Lily of the Valley grew, to commemorate this noble battle.  Not surprisingly, St Leonard’s Forest in May time is thickly carpeted with these plants. There is also a charming story that tells of the affection of a Lily of the Valley for a nightingale; the bird would fly away, only returning to the woods when the flower bloomed in May.

Lily of the Valley has had other names in its long history.  It has been called the May Lily or May Bells.  One that I particularly like is ‘Ladder-to-Heaven’.  How glorious for a plant to have such lyrical names – when you remember that it belongs to the botanical family Asparagaceae, making it a relative of the asparagus!

The Lily of the Valley is also an important symbol to several countries.  The Norwegian municipality of Lunner has a Lily of the Valley on its coat of arms.  It was also the floral emblem of Yugoslavia, and became the national flower of Finland in 1982.  In the U.S., the Lily of the Valley is the official flower of several college fraternities and sororities.

But it is the French that truly celebrate its existence.  The first of May is their Fete du 

Muguet – Lily of the Valley Day.  This is when you are meant to offer a sprig to a loved one.  Bunches of Lily of the Valley fill the florists’ shops and supermarkets in the week leading up the Fete, and are sold as porte-bonheur, good-luck charms.  The origin of this tradition dates back to King Charles IX.  The story goes that on the first of May in 1561, King Charles was presented with a bouquet of Lily of the Valley.  The flowers enchanted him so much that he presented them to the ladies of his court every year on that date.  

In the ‘The Language of Flowers’, Lily of the Valley has several meanings including sweetness, humility, trustworthiness and the return of happiness.  With these qualities in mind, one can understand why this flower is such a popular choice for weddings.  The Duchess of Cambridge, nee Kate Middleton, selected it as the major flower in her all-white bridal bouquet – along with myrtle from Queen Victoria’s garden on the Isle of Wight, sweet William (now, who could that refer to?) and hyacinths.  And Megan Markle, now the Duchess of Sussex, also included Lily of the Valley in her bouquet.

They were both lucky that this flower was available when they got married.  Sadly, when I married in darkest January, there was no Lily of the Valley in bloom, even in ‘hot houses’.  I had to be satisfied with freesias and gypsophila.  I am now a divorcee but if I ever get married again,  you can bet your bottom dollar (as we say in the U.S.A.) that my bouquet will be overflowing with Lily of the Valley.

Okay, guilty as charged.  I’m an unrepentant Shakespeare groupie, dating from when I was age17 and saw my first professional production in New York City – Richard Burton in ‘Hamlet’.   In the years that followed, I’ve managed to see and/or read 36 of the 38 plays attributed to him.  He is my hero, and also the hero of many others, which is why much has been made of the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, which was on April 23rd.  There is no actual record of his birth but there is one of his baptism in Holy Trinity Church, Stratford, on 26^th April 1564.  Back then baptisms generally took place three days after a baby’s birth so it is assumed that William Shakespeare was born on this same date, April 23^rd.

There is a fair amount of controversy regarding the authorship of the plays, and a lively group of naysayers, which includes actors Mark Rylance and Derek Jacobi.  They contend that Shakespeare’s education at the local grammar school did not provide a good enough grounding for him to write the plays.  Despite this, I’m definitely in the camp that gives Shakespeare full credit for 38 plays and 154 sonnets.   In my mind, their enduring popularity is attributable to their portrayal of timeless, universal truths:  jealousy, love, loyalty, political intrigue, ambition, revenge, betrayal, redemption, lust, regret – all so very human.  

At age 18, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway, eight years his senior and pregnant with their first child, Susannah.  Their twins, Hamnet and Judith, were born a few years later.  Sadly, Hamnet died at age 11.  Shakespeare’s whereabouts from 1585 until he appeared in London in 1592 are a mystery.  But from then on he acted, wrote plays and became a shareholder in a company of players, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, which on the accession of James I to the throne after the death of Elizabeth I, became the King’s Men.   He spent his last years in Stratford and it always amused me that in his will he left his ‘second best bed’ to his wife – until I discovered that the best bed was for guests, and the second-best was the marriage bed. 

For many of us, Shakespeare brings back negative memories of being forced to read him in school.   The key is to remember that he was first and foremost a playwright, and plays are meant to be seen on the stage, to be performed – and professional actors know just how to make the plays come alive. The Royal Shakespeare Company has a London season where you can see productions that originated in one of their theatres in Stratford-on-Avon.   In fact, I saw an RSC production in London in the 1970s with none other than Ruby Wax in a minor role.  Well, you’ve got to start somewhere!  Of course, the Globe Theatre is THE place in London to see Shakespeare.   In this replica of the theatre where his plays were performed from 1599, until destroyed by fire in 1613, you can sit on a cushion on bleacher-like seats or you can brave it as a ‘groundling’ and stand in the central area where you might find yourself interacting with the players.  But be prepared with a raincoat as here you are open to the elements.  I am proud to say that the prime mover in getting the Globe built was an American, the actor Sam Wanamaker (father of Zoe), who sadly died before its completion.   

But, of course, Stratford is the place where you feel Shakespeare’s presence on every street corner.  I first went there as a student, when I was spending a year at Nottingham University.    When I moved to London in 1974, I frequently went there with friends.  We’d drive up on a Saturday, having booked tickets for both the matinee and evening performances.  On one insane weekend, when the RSC was performing ‘Henry VI’, Parts I, II and III in the same day, we sat through them all – mid-morning, then matinee, then evening.   You really have to be a Shakespeare groupie to do that!

Besides the theatres operated by the RSC (the main 1040-seat theatre in Waterside, plus the 450-seat Swan), you can also visit various sites in and around Stratford that are associated with the Bard.  Not to be missed are the house in Henley Street where he was born, his wife Anne Hathaway’s cottage and garden, Hall’s Croft (where his daughter Susannah and husband lived) and New Place (which Shakespeare owned during the last years of his life).  Also well worth a visit is Mary Arden’s farmhouse, a short drive out of town.

Near the main theatre, in Bancroft Gardens, is a large statue of the Bard.  He is perched on a pedestal surrounded by smaller statues of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Prince Hal and Falstaff.  These characters have been chosen to represent Shakespeare’s range and versatility – philosophy, tragedy, history and comedy.  Another famous statue of Shakespeare is to be found, quite naturally, in Poet’s Corner of Westminster Abbey.  In Holy Trinity Church, where he is buried, the bust of him on the funerary monument is said to be a genuine likeness.

In ‘Kiss Me Kate, the musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, Cole Porter’s clever lyrics urge: “Brush up your Shakespeare, start quoting him now.”   The fact is that without actually realising it, we quote him all the time.  Here’s just a small sample:  “Eaten out of house and home” (Henry IV, Act 2), “A wild goose chase” (Romeo and Juliet), “The world is my oyster” and “What the dickens” (Merry Wives of Windsor), a “forgone conclusion” (Othello), “Love is blind” (The Merchant of Venice.  

Would the Bard be pleased with all the fuss that’s gone on because of the 400^th anniversary of his death?  Or would he simply dismiss it as ‘much ado about nothing’?One thing’s for certain:  All’s well that ends well.

I can’t remember who introduced me to Estee Lauder’s ‘Youth Dew’ but the first time I took one whiff of it, I fell in love with it – and wore it for many years.  The fragrance Youth Dew was launched in 1953 as a bath oil…and because of its success, the manufacture of the perfume followed.  I started wearing it in my mid teens, delighted to find a scent that didn’t wear off in five minutes.  Yes, one of the selling points for me was that it stayed with you, reacting to your skin, your body’s temperature, and went on perfuming the air around you for hours.  People knew I was approaching because ‘Youth Dew’ would announce my arrival, long before I even said hello.  To my teenage self, trying to budget my pocket money, ‘Youth Dew’ was definitely value for money.

I also loved the presentation: a slender ribbed bottle which, in an understated way, resembled a woman’s body. The gold bow around the middle and matching gold top was a real touch of class – unlike perfumier Jean-Paul Gautier whose more modern and less subtle bottles leave nothing to the imagination.

Estee Lauder’s assessment for this ever-popular fragrance was that “women still like to feel beautiful, pampered and loved.  And that is what Youth-Dew is all about.”

Although I can appreciate her words, those were not my reasons.  I loved its heavy opulence – spicy, rich, exotic.  It didn’t actually go with the dumpy figure I cut in my teens, but it was more a statement of how I wanted to feel about myself rather than the actual facts. Sophisticated, stylish, cosmopolitan – just plain cool.

‘Experts’ say that Youth Dew is one of the “sexiest fragrances ever created, and more than 50 years after it was launched, it continues to entice with its sensual, yet timeless, appeal.”  

Michael, my boyfriend when I was 16, was less enamoured of it than I was.  Although he never said anything when we were dating, he admitted to me when we met again some thirty years later that he’d hated it.  The very characteristic that I loved about Youth Dew, the fact that it stayed with me and on me for hours, was just what turned poor Michael off.  He’d come home from one of our dates, run into his house stripping off his shirt and tossing it into the laundry hamper, yelling to his mother, “Please wash this!  It reeks!”  In hindsight, perhaps Youth Dew’s claim to being “the sexiest fragrance ever” was lost on him because some years after Michael and I had gone our separate ways, he came out of the closet and declared himself to be gay.  I have no idea what fragrance his husband, Walter, might prefer but I doubt it’s ‘Youth Dew’.

I continued to wear Youth Dew into my late 20s.  By this time I’d moved to England and was working for a publisher in central London.  One evening when I stayed late at the office because of an urgent deadline, my concentration was broken as a familiar scent drifted my way.  We all know that fragrances on others don’t smell the same as we think they do on ourselves…just as our voices, when we hear a recording, are not as we think we sound.  Nonetheless, I instantly recognised the smell.  It was without a doubt my beloved Youth Dew.  Who was wearing it?  Who was sufficiently cultured to have such good taste, just like mine?   I got up, walked out of the door into the corridor to find out.  There, wielding her vacuum like a weapon, was the company’s cleaner, Ethel.  She smiled at me, turned off the machine, and said, “How ya doin’, Luv?  Workin’ late, are ya?”

Over the years, I have gone through phases of wearing other perfumes as the fads dictate – Ambush, CK One, Miss Dior, Mitsouko, Opium and in recent times, Thierry Mugler’s Angel (offering great economy for a woman on a pension because the bottle can be refilled at House of Fraser), and Chanel’s Allure (which I use sparingly because the eau de parfum is so expensive). 

But I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never used Youth Dew since my fateful encounter with Ethel, the cleaner.  I wonder if she still wears it…

While listening to Radio 4 the other day, I swear I heard the announcer say that Austria had banned fish sales.  I thought to myself, why fish sales? Isn’t Austria land-locked?  Had their rivers become polluted?  Then, as I listened to the rest of the report, the penny dropped.  Not fish sales but face veils…the kind that some Muslim women wear.  My ears were playing tricks on me…again.  Yes, this sort of thing has happened before…and it’s got a name:  Mondegreen.  

The actual definition of a mondegreen is a ‘mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near-homophony so that it gives it a new meaning.’ The word was coined by an American writer, Sylvia Wright, in 1954, when she misheard a lyric from the Scottish ballad, ‘The Bonny Earl o’ Moray’.  Instead of ‘laid him on the green’, Miss Wright heard ‘Lady Mondegreen’.     And so the mondegreen was born.

In researching the intriguing mondegreen , I found that they seem to crop up everywhere.  Song lyrics provide a treasure trove of them.  Evidently, Chaka Khan’s ‘I’m Every Woman’ was misheard by a number of Radio 2 listeners as ‘I’m Terry Wogan’.  What I heard was ‘Climb every woman’.  I mentally put an invisible comma after the word ‘climb’, so that the lyric was a rallying cry to women to break through the glass ceiling.  

Remember the words to the Johnny Nash song, ‘I can see clearly now the rain has gone’?  It was misheard by some as ‘I can see clearly now Lorraine has gone’. Then there’s the Credence Clearwater Revival lyric: ‘There’s a bad moon on the rise’ vs the mondegreen version: ‘There’s a bathroom on the right’.  A particular goodie is the mondegreen for the song ‘Venus’.  Instead of ‘I’m your Venus’…well, use your imagination.

Bob Dylan’s lyrics don’t escape mishearing, either.  For ‘the answer, my friend (is blowin’ in the wind’), many people heard ‘the ants are my friends’.  The Beatles’ lyrics qualify, too, with ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ where she is described as ‘the girl with kaleidoscope eyes’.  This has been transformed into ‘the girl with colitis goes by’.  Speaking of people going by…’The Girl from Ipanema goes walking’ ends up being ‘the girl with emphysema goes walking…’

I want to share with you a mondegreen that I actually created – even though I did not then know the term. During my summer holidays from uni, I had an admin job in a care home called Hawthorne Cedar Knolls.  In addition to typing and filing, I had to give switchboard relief to the main operator.  Back in those days, the switchboard was the kind with plug-ins – tricky but fun once you got the hang of it. On answering incoming calls, I was required to say ‘Hawthorne Cedar Knolls’.  It was quite a mouthful which got rather boring to repeat constantly.  So, occasionally, for my own amusement, I’d say, quite quickly, ‘Hawthorne seeded rolls’…I don’t think anyone was any the wiser.

There is no age discrimination with the mondegreen.  A neighbour told me that when her son was in primary school, he came home complaining about something he’d found very difficult.  He whinged, ‘It was like trying to get out of four knots.’  Bless! At such a tender age, he certainly wouldn’t have heard of Ft. Knox.

Children, with their limited vocabulary and experience, can misconstrue with the best of us. Christmas carols are a gold-mine of mondegreens. One child misheard the lyric to ‘Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer’.  His alternative version to ‘all of the other reindeer’ was ‘Olive, the other reindeer’.  The rather archaic language in ‘Silent Night’ – ‘round yon Virgin, mother and child’ –became the more contemporary ‘Round John Virgin, Margarine child’.  I’m not entirely sure if the following mondegreen was accidental or deliberate when ‘O come let us adore him’ became ‘O come let us ignore him’.

Nowadays online shopping is a very big thing but remember when we used to do our mail ordering (not email ordering!) from very heavy catalogues that littered the sitting room, e.g. Littlewoods? A friend recollected listening to his daughter’s soulful rendition of ‘Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina’. Instead of ‘But I chose freedom’, she sang, ‘But I chose Freeman’s!’

There is, of course, the classic military mondegreen.  During World War I orders had to be sent via radio relays so each radio operator would listen to a command and then repeat it to the next operator.  What resulted very much resembles the game, Chinese whispers.  The original message was ‘Send reinforcements.  We are going to advance.’  Passed down the line and repeatedly misheard, this became ‘Send three and four pence.  We are going to a dance.’

I’ve been thinking of having my ears tested. Maybe my mishearing  would be cured if I had hearing aids.  But the thought of saying goodbye to those mondegreens which have enriched my life with their surreal messages makes me opt for the status quo.     

So I say, here! here! for the mondegreen!  

Or even better still… Hear! Hear!   

‘You follow,’ instructs the wiry, modestly clad porter at Mysore train station. He and his ‘assistant’ lug our very heavy cases, depositing them and us in the air conditioned second class carriage that has been booked for us. Alan and I are the only non-Indian passengers.

The carriage is painted a dingy mid-green; even the window glass is painted, most likely to keep out the intense sun. Enjoying the decent leg room, we settle down comfortably for this non-stop four-hour trip to Bangalore.

After about an hour, a young Indian comes through, cheerfully handing out refreshments – bottled water, biscuits and juice – all included in our ticket price. South West Trains – are you reading this?