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Updated: September 11, 2025
Cynthia took her through the hot-houses and gave her all the flowers she liked to pick, to still that longing cry of hers. Cynthia Lennox had fine hot-houses kept by an old colored man, the husband of her black cook. Her establishment was very small; her one other maid she had sent away early that morning to make a visit with a sick sister in another town.
But this, perhaps, made them still dearer; no sooner were the tears dried up and the expenses covered, than Josephine again abandoned herself with renewed zeal to her passion for collecting plants and costly studies in botany, especially since she had succeeded in winning to her person the renowned botanist and learned Bonpland, and in having him appointed superintendent of her gardens and hot-houses.
The beautiful gardens received almost a daily visit from us, and were a most agreeable as well as a convenient resort for our aged aunt, as she could either walk in the open grounds when it was mild enough, or else visit the numerous hot-houses if she found the outside air too keen for her.
Next, Mademoiselle d'Andervilliers collected some pieces of roll in a small basket to take them to the swans on the ornamental waters, and they went to walk in the hot-houses, where strange plants, bristling with hairs, rose in pyramids under hanging vases, whence, as from overfilled nests of serpents, fell long green cords interlacing.
The cacao-tree has sometimes been grown from seed in hot-houses in this country, but always with difficulty, for not only must a mean temperature of at least 80° F. be maintained, but the tree must be shielded from all draught. Among the most successful are the trees grown by Mr. James Epps, Jun., of Norwood, by whose kind permission the accompanying sketches from life were made.
At Mousseaux, the seals were put on the hot-houses, and all the plants nearly destroyed. Valuable remains of sculpture were condemned for a crest, a fleur de lys, or a coronet attached to them; and the deities of the Heathen mythology were made war upon by the ignorance of the republican executioners, who could not distinguish them from emblems of feodality.*
If it is a necessity of war to throw shells into a densely populated town like this; it is to say the least a barbarous necessity; but it seems to me that it is but waste of time and paper to register protests against it; and if it be thought desirable to do so, it would be far more reasonable to protest against human beings women and children being exposed to its effects, than to indite plaintive elegies about the possibility of the Venus de Milo being damaged, or the orchids in the hot-houses being killed.
The old trees, of course, remained intact; but the gardens of the first house, being rambling and old-fashioned, had been done away with, to make room for others on a larger and more imposing scale; and vineries and pineries, orchid-houses, and hot-houses of every description arose rapidly all over the site of the old bowling-green and the wilderness, half kitchen garden, half rosary, that had served to content the former owners of Shadonake, now all lying dead and buried in the chancel of the village church.
The Baron's park, which was close to the village of Petit-Brie, was very large, and richly wooded; there were gardens, hot-houses, and all the luxuries of an English nobleman's residence. The house was handsome, with a magnificent library; I remarked on the table the last numbers of the "Edinburgh" and "Quarterly" Reviews. Both the Baron and his niece were simple and kind.
In the galleries of the Museum, they viewed the stuffed quadrupeds with amazement, the butterflies with delight, and the metals with indifference; the fossils made them dream; the conchological specimens bored them. They examined the hot-houses through the glass, and groaned at the thought that all these leaves distilled poisons.
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