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Irish Booklore: Hellen Rawdon: My BookeAuthor(s): Charles NelsonSource: The Linen Hall Review, Vol. 4, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 12-13Published by: Linen Hall LibraryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20533875 .

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IRISH BOOKLORE

HELLEN RAWDON ?

MY BOOKE

CHARLES NELSON of the National Botanic Gardens in Dublin reports on some botanical texts once in the possession of Arthur and Helen Rawdon

In the Public Library, Armagh, there are four books

bearing on their title-pages the name of a lady, Helen Rawdon. All of the volumes were published before 1700, and all of them are botanical texts. There is on record at least one other book bearing Helen Rawdon's name, and like the Armagh quar tet it is a botanical one.

Who was Helen Rawdon? The answer is not too difficult to give, for several of the books which she autographed were also signed by Arthur Rawdon and by Sir John Rawdon.

When Helen Graham married Arthur Rawdon of Moira, County Down, she became his

partner in one of the greatest gardening adventures of the seventeenth century: the Rawdons were to blaze a trail that few garden owners succeeded in

following until almost one and a half centuries had

elapsed. When their project was completed, the small village of Moira became ?

briefly at least ?

one of the world's great botanical and horticultural centres. This would perhaps not be of much signif icance in the normal course of events on this island,

but suffice it to report that all this happened as the

people of Ireland, including Sir Arthur Rawdon, were engaged in that epochal litany of battles, Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.

Arthur Rawdon was the one of the younger sons of Sir George Rawdon who had settled on estates in the north of Ireland after the restoration of

King Charles II. Arthur was born on 17 October 1662. A somewhat sickly child, he was sent to France for the benefit of his health and for his education. Two of Arthur's elder brothers were

killed in France, so that Arthur inherited the baron

etcy when Sir George Rawdon died in August 1684. Sometime before 1684, Arthur Rawdon and

Helen Graham were married. Mistress Graham's

family came from Congleton in Cheshire. Sir Arthur and Lady Rawdon had four children but only two, their son and heir John and a daughter Isabella, survived into adulthood. Their home was Moira

House, a barrack-like, three-storey pile which is no

longer standing, and in its demesne they estab lished their remarkable garden.

Arthur Rawdon supported King William III

during the campaign against King James II; he raised his own troop and was among the men

excluded from the pardon offered by Tyrconnell to the Protestants of Ulster in 1688/9, ultimately earning for himself the nickname 'Cock-of-the

North' because of his 'boldness and great forward ness' in supporting the Williamite cause.

But he had other preoccupations and, it seems, an overwhelming passion for botany. He was a

friend of Dr Hans Sloane who was, of course, a

native of Killyleagh. Sloane and Rawdon corres

ponded, and probably exchanged natural history specimens and plants. When Hans Sloane was about to deoart for Jamaica. Arthur Rawdon wrote

asking him to collect plants and seeds for his Moira

garden, most especially those from the high moun

tains because they might be able to tolerate the frosts of the Ulster winter. Rawdon was being optim-istic

? naively optimistic

? for no Jamaican plant, even

from the summits of the highest hills, could possibly tolerate the Irish climate unless cosseted in a heated

greenhouse. But Jamaica had a special fascination for Rawdon and he was to keep its flora firmly at the

top of his list of most desirable plants. Helen Rawdon certainly shared with her .

young husband an interest in plants. I can imagine her discussing his plans for a plant-collecting expedition to Jamaica and, when news of the fabulous cargo reached them in 1692, preparing excitedly to receive the tropical plants. Sir Arthur

Rawdon had despatched a gardener, one James

Harlow, to the West Indies late in 1689 with instruct ions to obtain plants for him. Already Rawdon was

building a heated greenhouse; the first of its kind in

Ireland, it was completed before July 1690. For several years nothing was heard from Harlow but at

last, in April 1692, news came that a ship had docked at Carrickfergus with twenty crates, each one con- !

taining fifty different tropical plants. About 1000 j different Jamaican species flourished at Moira ? during the three years to 1695 when Sir Arthur !

Rawdon died ? this was a most extraordinary I

page twelve

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achievement, for the transport of living plants was

very difficult and no other gardener equalled Raw don's cargo until the middle of the nineteenth

century.

Lady Rawdon's interests in botany and gar dening are vividly displayed by the few books which now are preserved in the Public Library, Armagh.

While only four bear her name, she must surely have browsed among the many other botanical and horticultural books which were in the Moira House

library.

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In 1673, the Revd John Ray FRS published 06 servations Topographical, Moral, & Physiological;

made in a Journey through part of the Low-Countries, Germany, Italy, and France: with a catalogue of Plants not native of England... For the princely sum of three shillings and sixpence, in 1685, Arthur and

Helen Rawdon bought a second-hand copy. The book's title-page was inscribed by both ? Hellen

Rawdon, Ar. Rawdon Both Arthur and Helen also signed their

copies of two works by the Bauhins of Basle. In 1651 was issued Historia plantarum universalis by Jean Bauhin (1541-1613); two of the three volumes are in the Armagh Library and the copy of volume three is

signed by the couple. Caspar Bauhin's (1560-1624) Pinax theatri botanici is one of the most significant botanical books of the seventeenth century for in it the younger Bauhin attempted to catalogue all the

plants of the world, and to rationalise their nomen clature. Its presence in the Rawdon library shows that the interest which Arthur and Helen Rawdon had in plants was not merely that of amateur garden ers. Again they both autographed the title-page.

None of these volumes is especially accessible to modern readers, but the last of the quartet is, the Revd William Turner's A new herball, wherin are j conteyned the names of Herbes in Greke, Latin, \

Englysh... with the properties degrees and naturall j places of the same... Its marvellous ornamental title- I

page (Fig. 1) with the Royal coat-of-arms is a superb example of Elizabethan printing. On it is clearly seen the signature Hellen Rawdon My booke.

Inside, the elaborate typefaces proliferate; there are wood-cuts of plants, and superb, engraved capitals. On nasre 10 (Fkr.2) is the auto^ranh of the Rawdons'

son, Sr John Rawdon and his initials, J.R.! He inherited the title and also the library, and twenty one books in Armagh have his name inside, almost

invariably on page 9 ? why he chose that page to

autograph is not known. One other signature of note in the Rawdon

volumes is that of the eminent botanist William

Sherard, who lived at Moira, most probably as com

panion and botanical advisor to Sir Arthur Rawdon, for four years between 1690 and 1694. His name is on the endpapers of Connaissance et culture parfaite des tulipes which was published in Paris in 1688 and it would be nice to think that this small catalogue of the then-popular tulip was a parting gift from Sherard to the young John Rawdon whose name is on page 9.

The one Rawdon book that I know about which is not in Armagh and which bears Helen Rawdon's name is a copy of Pietro Castelli's Exactissima

descriptio rariorum quarundam plantarum... in Horto Farnesiano published in Rome during 1625. It was listed among the books in Arpad Plesch's I magnificent botanical library (item 125: Stiftung

\ f?r Botanik, vol. 1. Sotheby: London) which was sold in 1976 ? the present whereabouts of this book is not

known.

For a detailed biography of Arthur Rawdon, see E.C. Nelson (1981), Sir Arthur Rawdon (1662-1695) of Moira: his life and letters, family and friends, and his Jamaican plants: Proc. Reports Belfast Nat. Hist. Phil.

Soc, 10; 30-52, I am very grateful to Mrs R.I. Lillie

for her assistance when I examined the Rawdon books in the Public Library, Armagh, almost ten years ago.

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oaae thirteen

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