The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome

by Gordon Campbell

Tracing its distant origins to the villa of the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century AD, the eccentric phenomenon of the ornamental hermit enjoyed its heyday in the England of the eighteenth century It was at this time that it became highly fashionable for owners of country estates to commission architectural follies for their landscape gardens. These follies often included hermitages, many of which still survive, often in a ruined state.Landowners peopled their hermitages either with imaginary hermits or with real hermits - in some cases the landowner even became his own hermit. Those who took employment as garden hermits were typically required to refrain from cutting their hair or washing, and some were dressed as druids. Unlike the hermits of the Middle Ages, these were wholly secular hermits, products of the eighteenth century fondness for 'pleasing melancholy'.Although the fashion for them had fizzled out by the end of the eighteenth century, they had left their indelible mark on both the literature as well as the gardens of the period. And, as Gordon Campbell shows, they live on in the art, literature, and drama of our own day - as well as in the figure of the modern-day garden gnome.This engaging and generously illustrated book takes the reader on a journey that is at once illuminating and whimsical, both through the history of the ornamental hermit and also around the sites of many of the surviving hermitages themselves, which remain scattered throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. And for the real enthusiast, there is even a comprehensive checklist, enabling avid hermitage-hunters to locate their prey.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Art, Microhistory

282 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Gordon Campbell is a professor, a Renaissance and seventeenth-century specialist with a particular interest in John Milton, and well known for his expertise regarding the King James Bible. His broader interests in cultural history include art, architecture, Biblical studies, classical antiquity, garden history, legal history, historical theology and the Islamic world.

Reviews

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun, whimsical, literary, scholarly, and well researched, The Hermit in the Garden was delightful! As soon as I heard about ornamental hermits, I wanted to learn all about them. Hermitages existed far back in antiquity but the height of their popularity was during the 18th century, at least in England, the focus of this book. I would love to learn more about the history of hermits and hermitages throughout Spain and Italy as well. There was something so refreshing in learning that the hermit was a figure of “pleasing melancholy” in his sensibility, and that validated my love of solitude, gloom, and the pensive. Today, it seems this kind of fascination either gets you dismissed or gets you an anti-depressant prescription. I was clearly born too late, which I have always suspected. What also fascinates me about the ornamental hermit is that even after he has been replaced by a stuffed model, then later, a garden gnome, and eventually he becomes only the hermit who lives in our imaginations, his existence will forever change the way I read English pastoral poetry of the past. Now I will always feel his presence in my imagination as that invisible ghost or force of wisdom, madness, spirituality, and mortality because, in Gordon Campbell's words, "the forces that created the ornamental hermit are still at work" (210).

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5. Not as compelling as I'd hoped, just kinda dry, but like dry-interesting, lol. Still, superbly researched, and who knew such a lifestyle existed. Worth a read for anyone who likes odd history. Very pretty book, plates and illustrations. Odd facts about real hermits, imaginary hermits, and hermit automatons, of all things. "The ornamental hermit" in your fancy garden to scare guests, or to have a sage conversation with when you tire of aristocratic life for the evening, my my. Or when you tire of your royal palace life and wish to escape
to your on-site hermitage, sigh. I liked the extensive list of documented hermitages throughout Europe, fun.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the book, yet I must say it wasn't quite what I was expecting from the summary as well as from the title.

The first and last chapters did justice to the subtitle (from imperial Rome to ornamental gnome), in that they summed up that history. They could have been longer.

The historical evolution of the hermit in the garden was focused on examples. Thus the majority of the book consisted of - no doubt certainly painstakenly researched - enumerations of the few facts that the author had been able to unearth about particular hermitages (there was not that much information on hermits, but I understand that is due to the fact that there are no sources).

Given how little source material the author had to work with, the book is still a good read and the writing style is very engaging. The author's interest in and long work on the topic comes through very clearly and compelled me to read it through to the end.

[Steven Kaminski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book and kind of a diversion. You know those garden gnomes that people keep on their lawns? Well as far back as in Roman times many people who had wealth would build gardens and hire a monk or hermit to maintain them. These guys were almost sight unseen...they would tend to the grounds..make the gardens great and then retreat to their little hovels. The pictures in this book are spectacular and worth a view even if you don't read the book. But I found it interesting...

[Jamila Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m not sure my review is a five stars for the writing but I fully had a great time reading this book and personally became so taken by the history or hermits and hermitages that I read it in two sittings. It was really enjoyable and for that, I have to give it 5 stars. Arcadia is my favorite play and how, as a kid, I learned of hermits.

[Mike Kanner · Rating 3 out of 5]

For several years, I have planned to write a story about garden hermits and came across this book while conducting research.

This was more interesting than the title and subject matter would imply. Although a distinguished academic, Campbell does not resort to jargon when recounting the history of gardens and hermitages.

[Penny Cipolone · Rating 2 out of 5]

A scholarly book on English gardens. Some great sections but way too technical and repetitive for the average reader who is not all that interested in English gardens. But I learned something so it was worth the effort.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

downloaded from NetGalley (May 2015) but didn't get more than a quarter of the way through. This was a great book. I was really interested in it. It's just unfortunate that, during the window when I could have read it, I also had books that were even more interesting.

[Amanda Witt · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting history on the origins of hermitages and how later on, they came to be a decorative feature of large gardens.

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit dry in parts, but I appreciated the effort.

[Stella · Rating 3 out of 5]

More information on one topic you probably didn't know you knew nothing about. Interesting, and occasionally humorous, but would probably bore most people I know.

[Ana Sofia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Expected more on hermits and less on landscape architecture but came away pleasantly surprised with a look into the celebration of melancholy and the complete absurdity of wealth

[Linda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it really is true that fact is stranger than fiction. You know those little men in the pointy hats that we generally refer to as garden gnomes? They now have a history. You know those classical little “folly” buildings that dot the stately English garden landscape? Well, it turns out that some of these were not strictly decorative. Gordon Campbell, a Professor of Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, has published The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome , the first book to describe the phenomenon of the ornamental hermit in Georgian England.

Professor Campbell believes that during the Reformation, the ancient custom of religious persons, sometimes called hermits, choosing to shut themselves away from the world for constant prayer and meditation came to an end with the dissolution of the great religious houses. During the 18th century, it became fashionable among the educated and the elite to be “melancholy”, devoting time to the admiration of nature and the study of philosophy. Gradually, some began constructing small rustic cottages, to use as retreats for deep thinking, or, in many cases, to impress visitors with their erudition. It wasn’t long before the wealthy began to hire men to live in their garden “hermitage”, pretending to be a reclusive but romantic part of the landscape. Although this book is a serious and impressive work of research, Professor Campbell injects threads of humor where appropriate, as when he describes the difficulties inherent in finding men willing to don rough robes, go barefooted, allow their hair, beards, and nails to grow, and, perhaps hardest of all, remain silent, for a period of seven years.

Much of the book is a survey of historic and modern “hermitages” in England, Scotland, France, and parts of Europe, many of which are illustrated. There are numerous extant sites that can still be visited, though they’re no longer inhabited; health regulations prohibit! It ends with some speculation about how the ornamental garden hermit morphed slowly into the ornamental garden gnome, helped along by Disney’s Grumpy, Sleepy, et al. What they were actually contemplating was their own business.

It’s probably safe to say that there is no more extensive compilation of information on this topic than The Hermit in the Garden. It’s a valuable addition to the field of garden history, and has much to say, or imply, about Western Civ.

Now I must search out the perfect gnome for my own garden.

[Jana Goldman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this fascinating book so much that my husband and are are considering building a small hermitage in our own tiny garden. Campbell gives a detailed history of these buildings that were staples in most English manor house gardens - some complete with hermits. While the idea of a hermit as someone who cut him (or her) self from society is common, it also is a way for individuals who seek a contemplative life, something that rings true in our hectic, connected, privacy-free life.
Campbell also restores the image of the garden gnome -- once seen as a helpful being especially those who led miners to rich veins of ore - but was reduced to caricature by - you guessed it, Walt Disney in "Snow White."
While this is a fascinating, scholarly and well-researched study of the topic, I found Campbell's excessive use of parentheses distracting. But the subject is enthralling -- who knew (well, I guess many people did) that George Harrison's gnomes on a record album cover were the original inhabitants of the gnomery created by the original owner of Harrison's historic home Friar Park?
I was especially delighted that Campbell referred the hermit in "Stop Press," an Appelby mystery by one of my favorite authors, Michael Innes. I often long to have a grand manor like Long Dream - the home of Appelby's wife Judith Raven -- I bet it has a hermitage!

[Damaskcat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully produced book, with plenty of black and white illustrations and some colour plates as well. It is clear that the author knows his subject inside and out and has done a great deal of research. He traces the idea of having a decorative hermit in the garden from its origins, through its heyday in the eighteenth century and its subsequent gradual decline. Owners of large estates had hermits installed in appropriately designed hermitages as a talking point for their visitors. In many instances the hermits were actually statues or models and not real people.

The author quotes some advertisements placed in various publications for hermits which stipulated that they must agree to not cut their nails or their hair for the time of their residence. Sometimes it was the landowner who took up residence in the hermitage. Some hermits were there for religious reasons but many were installed for decorative and fashionable reasons.

The book contains two appendices – one contains a catalogue of hermitages and the other is an essay on the hermit, the hermitage and the continent. There is a list of works consulted for anyone who wants to read more about the subject and an index.

[Stephen Shapiro · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the strangest fads in Georgian Britain has to be the building of ornamental hermitages in the gardens of stately homes, especially those that came complete with an actual hermits as a sort of living memento mori. Gordon Campbell offers a good account of the hermitages, their inspirations, and the (few) hermits who lived in them. Unfortunately, a lot of the book is descriptions of every hermitage, grotto, and hermitage-like folly in Great Britain and Ireland (and some from continental Europe), making it a pretty dense read.

[Adam Stevenson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping for a book on ornamental hermits but this is more a book on ornamental hermitages.

Over half the book describes in repetitive detail the layout of various (consistently unoccupied) hermitages in the gardens of various poshness.

I’m not sure how many times I needed to read that ‘the floor was decorated in lamb knucklebones,’ but it takes some overkill to make such a sentence dull. I suppose there just wasn’t enough to make a book about ornamental hermits themselves but this did feel padded.

[Martin Rundkvist · Rating 3 out of 5]

A more apt title for this book would be "The Hermitage in the Garden". The garden hermits themselves seem to have been rather rare and are in any case poorly documented. Most of the book is instead taken up by an unsystematic, heavily descriptive and rather repetitive study of a certain type of Georgian garden folly.