People have mixed feelings about ivy (Hedera helix). It is believed to do unhurried damage to buildings while artfully concealing its depredations. ‘Creeping ivy …hides the ruin that it feeds upon,’ as Cowper says. Not long ago, Jerome, who looks after our London garden, had to cut back the ivy covering the high wall abutting the veranda of my library, thus exposing the brick. This grievously disturbed my post-breakfast period of contemplation, when I look out on the garden and work out what I will write during the day. However, with its characteristic tenacity and fecundity, the ivy has grown back again, the bricks have vanished and the incident is closed. I cannot actually like this plant, with its umbels of greenish-yellow flowers and the dank, sinister berries which succeed them. Why the ancients had such a high opinion of it baffles me; it was dedicated to Bacchus and believed to prevent drunkenness. Ivy wreaths were awarded in the public games and, as John of Trevisa put it at the turn of the 14th century, ‘Oftyn Poetes were crowned with Iuye, in token of noble witte & scharpe, for the Iuye is alwei grene.’
To judge by contemporary prints in late mediaeval, Tudor and Stuart times, property owners had a short way with ivy. Then, from the mid-18th century, with the first glimmerings of Gothick, the Picturesque and the Romantic, ivy came back into fashion and was allowed to swarm all over the outside walls of any building with claims to antiquity. The early Victorians loved ivy and positively encouraged it. But then they had swarms of gardeners to cut it back from the casements of the bedroom floors and, generally, to keep it in order.
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