IN A COLLEGE GARDEN
In spring, when it rained, says Aubrey, Lord Bacon used to go into the
fields in an open coach, “to receive the benefit of irrigation, which he
was wont to say was very wholesome because of the nitre in the aire, and
the universal spirit of the world.” Nor is it difficult in a college
garden to associate the diverse ceremonial of Nature with the moods and
great days of men. What, for example, can lay such fostering hands upon
the spirit that has grown callous in the undecipherable sound of cities,
as the grey February clouds that emerge from the sky hardly more than
the lines in mother-of-pearl or the grain of a chestnut? I have
thought,--in that garden,--that we are neglectful of the powers of herb
and flower to educate the soul, and that the magical herbalists were
nobly guessing at difficult truths when they strove to find a “virtue”
in every product of lawn and sedge. There is a polarity between the
genius of certain places and certain temperaments; our “genial air” or
natal atmosphere is, we may think, enriched by the soul of innumerable
plants, beyond the neighbourhood of which some people are never quite
_themselves_. And this college garden of smooth, shining lawn, and trees
that seem more than trees in their close old friendship with grey
masonry, has a singular aptness to--I had almost said a singular
knowledge of--those who have first been aware of beauty in its shade.
“If there be aught in heredity, I must perforce love gardens; and until
the topographer of Eden shall arise, I have set my heart on this.” So
says a theologian, one of its adornments in academic black and white.
Old and storied as it is, the garden has a whole volume of subtleties by
which it avails itself of the tricks of the elements. Nothing could be
more romantic than its grouping and contrasted lights when a great,
tawny September moon leans--as if pensively at watch--upon the garden
wall. No garden is so fortunate in retaining its splendour when summer
brusquely departs, or so rich in the idiom of green leaves when the dewy
charities of the south wind are at last accepted. None so happily
assists the music and laughter and lamps of some festivity. And when in
February the heavy rain bubbles at the foot of the trees, and spins a
shifting veil about their height and over the grass, it seems to reveal
more than it conceals. The loneliness of the place becomes intense, as
if one were hidden far back in time, and one’s self an anachronism. It
is a return to Nature. The whole becomes primeval; and it is hard to
throw off the illusion of being deep in woods and in some potent
presence--
[Illustration: THE FELLOWS’ GARDEN, MERTON COLLEGE
The portion of this garden shown is bounded by the south-east portion of
the old City Wall, with one or two bastions still remaining, and the
terrace walk formed on a mound level with the top of the steps, shown in
the picture, commands a fine view of Christ Church Meadows and the Broad
Walk. A grand avenue of lime trees is on the left, where at a lower
level is placed an armillary sphere.
The time is near sunset.]
Hoc nemus ...
Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus.
At such times the folded gloom gives up the tale of the past most
willingly.
The casual stranger sees little in the garden but neatness and repose.
He may notice how luckily the few trees occur, and what warmth the
shrubbery bestows, when they are black with rain and the crocus petals
are spilt in silence. In a little while he may be privileged to learn
what a great space for the eye, and especially for the imagination, the
unknown gardener has contrived out of a few roods of high-walled grass.
He will perhaps end by remarking that an acre is more than so many
square yards, and by supposing that it is unique because it is academic.
But it is no merely academic charm that keeps him there, whether the sun
in October is so bright on the frosty grass that the dead leaves
disappear when they fall,--or on a spring evening the great chestnut
expands; its beauty and magnitude are as things newly and triumphantly
acquired; and it fills the whole space of sky, and in a few minutes the
constellations hang in its branches.
It is rather perfect than academic; a garden of which the most would say
that, after their own, it is the best. Its shape and size are accidents,
for it embraces the sites of an old hall, a graveyard, and an orchard of
Elizabeth’s time; and the expert mole might here and there discover
traces of a dozen successive fashions since it was clipped and carved by
a dialist and peppered with tulips. But a thoughtful conservatism and a
partnership between many generations have given it an indubitable style.
The place has, as it were, a nationality, and the inevitable boundaries
are apparently the finishing-strokes of the picture and not its
aboriginal frame. Yet it is no natural garden into which any one may
stroll and scatter the ends of cigarettes. A strong customary law is
expressed by the very aspect of the place. Hence, part of it is still
sacred to the statelier leisure of the dons. Hence, where any one can
go, whether by right, or from a lack of beadles, it is the good fortune
of every one to find himself alone when he reaches the spot. Even so,
the trees have never quite their just tribute of dignity and ceremonial.
They would be pleased to welcome back the days when Shenstone could only
visit Jago secretly, because he wore a servitor’s gown; when even Gibbon
remembered with satisfaction “the velvet cap and silk gown which
distinguish a gentleman commoner from a plebeian student”; and when,
within living memory, the “correct thing for the quiet, gentlemanly
undergraduate was a black frock-coat and tall hat, with the neatest of
gloves and boots,” on his country walk. The garden, when its borders
were in scrolls, knots, and volutes, was certainly not among
The less ambitious Pleasures found
Beneath the _Liceat_ of an humble Bob,
but was chiefly honoured by those who had graduated into a grizzled wig
“with feathery pride,”--Mr. Rakewell of Queen’s or Beau Trifle of
Christ Church, or the ornate gentleman who are depicted in
Ackerman,--and by dons who had never lost their self-respect by the
scandal of keeping the company of undergraduates. When Latin was the
language of conversation at dinner and supper, the trees looked their
best. The change came, perhaps, in the days of the President who went
about the world muttering _Mors omnibus communis_, or when our
grandfathers made the gravel shriek with their armchair races across the
quadrangles; for in those days, according to an authority on roses,
undergraduates either read, or hunted, or drove, or rowed, or walked
(_i.e._ up and down the High). The pile of the lawn continued to deepen,
and the trees to write new legends upon the sky.
The limes are in number equal to the fellows of the college, and, with
the great warden horse-chestnut and the lesser trees, make up a solemn
and wise society. They waste no time. Now and then they talk a little,
and when one talks, the others follow; but as a rule the wryneck or the
jackdaw talks instead; and with them it seems to be near the end of the
day, nothing remaining save _benedictus benedicat_. In the angriest gale
and in the scarcely grass-moving air of twilight the cypresses nod
almost without sound. They are sentinels, unarmed, powerful in their
unknown watchword, solemn and important as negroes born in the days of
Haroun Alraschid. They say the last word on calm. And so old---- goes
there often, to remember the great days of the college fifty years ago,
and, looking priest-like with his natural tonsure and black long gown,
seems to worship some unpermitted graven image among the shadows. When
_he_ is in the garden, the intruder may see a complete piece of mediæval
Oxford; for the louvre, and the line of roofs, and the mullioned windows
are, from that point of view, as they were in the founder’s time.
At the feet of the trees are the flowers of the seasons in their order.
Here and there the precious dark earth is visible, adding a charm to the
pale green stems and leaves and the splendid or thoughtful hues of
blossom. The flower borders and plots carve the turf into such a shape
that it seems a great quiet monster at rest. One step ahead the grass is
undivided, enamelled turf: underfoot, the innumerable blades have each a
colour, a movement, a fragrance of their own,--as when one enters a
crowd, that had seemed merely a crowd, and finds in it no two alike.
On one side is the shrubbery, of all the hues of the kingdom of green.
Underneath the shrubs the gloom is a presence. The interlacing branches
are as the bars of its cage. You watch and watch--like children who have
found the lion’s cage, but the lion invisible--until gradually, pleased
and still awed, you see that the caged thing is--nothingness, in all its
shadowy pomp and immeasurable power. Seated there, you could swear that
the darkness was moving about, treading the boundaries. When I first saw
it, it was a thing as new and strange as if I had seen the world before
the sun, and withdrawing my eyes and looking at the fresh limes
[Illustration: IN TRINITY COLLEGE GARDENS
The wrought-iron gates, supported by noble piers, to the left of the
picture, open immediately opposite Wadham College. The road between the
College and the gates leads to the New Museum, the Parks, and Keble
College. There is no entrance for the public through these gates.
Some of the fine trees which adorn this eastern part of the gardens are
shown.]
was like beholding the light of the first dawn arriving at Eden. And in
the evening that accumulated gloom raised the whole question between
silence and speech, and did not answer it. The song of the blackbird is
heard, cushioned among the sleepy cooings of doves. And when they cease,
how fine is the silence! When they revive, how fine is the song! For the
silence seems to appropriate and not to destroy the song. The blackbird,
too, seems to appropriate and make much of the silence when he sings.
The long meditations of the gowned and ungowned therein are not of less
account because the only tangible result is the perfect beheading of
dandelions as they walk to and fro.
How shall I name you, immortal, mild, proud shadows?
I only know that all we know comes from you,
And that you come from Eden on flying feet.
Is Eden far away, or do you hide
From human thought, as hares and mice and coneys
That run before the reaping-hook and lie
In the last ridge of the barley? Do our woods
And winds and ponds cover more quiet woods,
More shining winds, more star-glimmering ponds?
Is Eden out of time and out of space?
And do you gather about us when pale light
Shining on water and fallen among leaves,
And winds blowing from flowers, and whirr of feathers,
And the green quiet, have uplifted the heart?
Not often can the most academic dreamer see Faunus among those trees or
Daphne in the laurel again.
On the grass the shadows of the roof, and later, of a tree, make time an
alluring toy. The shadow is cut in finer and sharper angles than the
roofs make, in the rich, hazy, Oxford light.
To walk round about the garden twice could not occupy an hour of the
most tranquil or gouty human life, even if you stayed to see the
toadflaxes and ferns in the wall, to note the shape of the trees, and
admire how the changing sun patronises space after space of the college
buildings. Yet no maze or boundless moor could give a greater pleasure
of seclusion and security. Not in vain has it served many academic
generations as a sweet and melodious ante-chamber of the unseen. For, as
an old book grows the richer to the wise reader, for the porings of its
dead owners in past years, so these trees and this lawn have been
enriched. Their roots are deep in more than earth. Their crests traffic
with more than the doves and the blue air. There is surely no other
garden so fit to accompany the reading of _Comus_ or the _Æneid_. They
become domesticated in the heart amidst these propitious shades. But not
many bring books under the trees; nor are they unwise who are contented
to translate what silence says. The many-coloured undergraduate lounges
there with another of his kind, and may perhaps encounter the shade of
some “buck” or “smart” of old, who will set a stamp of antiquity on his
glories. Choleric old---- walks there sometimes; but either a caterpillar
falls, or the leaves turn over and unburden themselves of their rain;
and he comes back, loudly thinking that, if a covered cloister had been
in the place of the trees, he would not have lost a very ingenious
thread of reflection about the greatest good of the greatest number.
And---- goes there after a college meeting, and
[Illustration: FELLOWS’ GARDEN, EXETER COLLEGE
On the extreme left of the picture is part of the two-storeyed Library
of the College, built in 1856. Farther on is the south end of the lobby
to the Divinity School (“Pig Market,” see other picture), at the base of
which are some steps, leading to an earthen embankment overlooking
Radcliffe Square.
Bishop Heber’s tree is planted at the south-east corner of this
embankment (see other picture), and shows between the aged acacia tree
and the dome of the Radcliffe Library, which appears to the extreme
right of the painting.
A group of Fellows are seated under the acacia, probably resting after
playing bowls.]
changes his mind. The merry breakfaster finds that a turn among the
trees will add the button-hole to his complacency. The grave young
scholar, with his gown almost to his heels, and the older one whose gown
and cap resemble nothing that is worn by any save a tramp, meet there on
summer evenings. The freshman gives the highest colour and purest
atmosphere to his prophetic imaginings when he walks there first. One
says that the garden is partly a confessor and partly an aunt. Above
all, it is the resort of those who are about to leave Oxford for ever;
and under its influence those who have forgotten all their ambitions,
and those who are beginning to remember them, meet on some June or
October afternoon, to decide that it has been worth while; and between
the trees the college has a half-domestic, half-monastic air; all else
is quite shut out, except where, like a curve of smoke, a dome rises,
and the wraith of a spire among the clouds.
OLD OXFORD DAYS