_Never was trifling chronicle begun so light-heartedly as this chatty,
idly reminiscent book of ours—and now it is under the great shadow of
war, of death and suffering, that we see it pass into its final shape!_
_The “little paradise on the hill,” with all its innocent pleasures, its
everyday joys and cares; with the antics of the “little furry things at
play,” the sayings and doings of the “famiglia”; the roses, the bulbs
and seedlings; our alluring garden plans, our small despairs and
unexpected blisses—our earthly paradise, as we have said, seems like an
unreal place. We wander through it with spirit ill at ease; oppressed,
as by a curse, through no fault of ours. The sight of an Autumn
Catalogue (hitherto so tempting, so full of promised joys) evokes only a
sigh. The offer, from the familiar Dutchman, of bulbs which “it will
help Belgium if we buy,” turns the heart sick. We know we must not buy
bulbs, this year, because we shall have to buy bread—bread for those who
will surely lack it—and yet, if we do not buy, others in their turn must
needs go wanting. And here is but the merest drop in the monstrous tide
of evils wantonly let loose upon humanity by the self-styled Attila!
There are times when, looking out upon our place of peace, we feel as
though, surely, we must all be lost in some fantastic nightmare. It is a
September full of golden sunshine; as this night falls, a benign, placid
moon rises over the silent moors into a sky the colour of spun-glass.
The breeze choirs softly through the boughs of scented Larch and Birch.
All is beauty, harmony—while in those fields yonder, south of the sea,
the Huns.... Pray God, by the time the Spring begins to stir shyly once
more in our copses; what time the Crocus pushes forth its little tender
flame, and the Snowdrop (with us fugitive and reluctant) bends its
timorous head under our hill-top winds, we may indeed look back upon
these days as upon some dreadful dream!_
_Meanwhile—even as the Villino itself is now to become a home of
convalescence for some of our wounded, still unknown, but to be welcomed
soon; even as the Cottage is to be a refuge for women and babes fled
from burning Belgian hamlets—the following pages, breathing content and
all the harmless ways of life, may perchance help to beguile thoughts
surfeited with tales and pictures of mortal strife. We hope that, as a
sprig of Lavender, or a Cowslip, by his pillow might for a moment
relieve the blood-tinted vision of a stricken soldier, so, perhaps, some
unquiet heart labouring under the strain of long-drawn suspense, will
find a passing relaxation, a forgotten smile, in the company of Loki and
his companions._
_Sept. 1914_
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[Illustration: landscape with trees]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
IN COLOUR
THE HEMICYCLE _Frontispiece_
THE DUTCH GARDEN _To face page_ 16
THE BEECH ” ” 142
SUMMER ” ” 150
THE MOOR ” ” 208
AUTUMN ” ” 234
THE HOLLY TREE ” ” 272
WINTER ” ” 292
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[Illustration: small landscape]
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OUR SENTIMENTAL
GARDEN
I
It is easier to begin with our beasts.—First, they are much the most
important, and secondly, there are only six of them. Our bulbs lie in
their thousands with just a green nose showing here and there now in
January and are nameless things: only collectively dear, if
extraordinarily so.
It will instantly be perceived what kind of gardeners we are, and what
kind of garden we keep. We have scarcely a single plant of
“individuality.” We do not spend ten guineas on a jonquil bulb, nor
fifteen on a peony. To our mind no flower can be common: therefore we
lavish our resources on quantity. I was going to say: not quality, but
that is where, in our opinion, the modern kind of garden-maker goes
wrong. What is in a name? Where flowers are concerned, nothing! But how
much, what treasures of joy and colour, of shade and exquisite texture,
of general blessedness in fact, lurk in the beloved crowd of the
nameless things, that come to us designated only thus: “Best mixed
Darwin Tulips”; “Blue bedding Hyacinths”; “Single Jonquils, best mixed,”
and so on! We once descended so far as to order “a hundred mixed
Delphiniums at 10s.,” and when, last June, we looked down on a certain
bed in the Reserve Garden from the seat under The Beech Tree ‹which
commands that enthralling spot› and saw the blue battalion glowing with
enamel colours draw up against the moor beyond, we felt not at all
ashamed of ourselves—yea, we felt conceitedly pleased.
[Illustration: woman looking out at garden]
* * * * *
But our beasts are individual indeed; and, as it was said, there are
only six of them.
[Sidenote: CONCERNING THE PEKINESE]
The first in order of importance is the Pekinese, who, purchased at a
moment when we were much under the enchantment of the “Ring,” we
ineptly—yet, from the ethnological standpoint, not altogether
inappropriately—called Loki: his coat is fiery red, and he is an adept
at deceit. When we want to impress strangers we hastily explain that he
is Mo-Loki, son of the great Mo-Choki, the celebrated champion. Loki
‹who frequently assures us that he was a Lion, in Pekin› was born on the
roof of the Imperial Palace in High Street, Kensington. His appearance
and behaviour are such as bear testimony to his princely lineage. We let
him run a great deal when he was a puppy, with the result that his legs
are a little longer than is usual with members of the Imperial Dynasty,
but “Grandpa”—Stop! It is as well to explain from the outset that, since
the advent of Loki in the family, Grandpa is the name that has devolved,
automatically, upon the Master of the House: the infant Loki’s mistress
having assumed, from the very necessity of things, the post and
responsibility of mother ‹in Pekinese ma-ma›, it must follow as the
night the day that her father “illico” became Grandpa.—To resume: though
his legs are a trifle longer than is usual, the Master of the House says
he is much more beautiful by reason of this distinction. And we all
agree with him.
[Illustration: dog resting]
Loki will not believe that the Manchu masters have fallen in China ‹of
course it is not from us that he has heard these distressing rumours›,
so he still demands as his right the best silk eiderdowns to lie upon,
satin for his cushions, grilled kidney for his breakfast, freshly poured
water in his bowl every time he wants to drink; and expects immediate
attention at lunch and dinner-time, play-time, “bye-bye” time, and all
the other times when he thinks he would like his chest rubbed. He sits
up and waves his paws with imperious gesture; or else rolls over on his
back and puts them together in an attitude of prayer. He had not at
first much oriental calm about him. Indeed, when he first came to us his
one desire was to play with every living thing he saw, from a cow to a
chicken; but the cow misunderstood and ran at him, and the chicken
misunderstood and ran away. The poor puppy was perplexed and wounded. He
always believed every new Teddy bear toy to be alive at first, and would
receive it in a rapture of tail-wagging and nuzzling kisses, until what
time, it dawning upon him that Teddy was a senseless fraud, he set
himself to shake and worry it like a little fury. Now he is older and
wiser. He pretends not to see cows, and condemns chickens; he will growl
at a strange dog, and bite and shake a new toy the very first day. Thus,
alas, do years make a cynic of the young idealist!
[Sidenote: LOKI’S OWN ANIMALS]
He only plays with his own animals. These are: Susan, the Butler’s dog,
and Arabella, the Lavroch setter, a long, lovely, lithe, foolish
creature, whose surname is Stewart, having come to Villino Loki out of
far Scotland from a distinguished member of that Royal clan. Arabella,
who is ten times the size of Loki, turns him over and over, tramples on
him, nibbles and licks him till he is unspeakable. He will leap at her
nose, hang on to one of her long flapping ears, race up and down the
slopes and round and round the green terraces, till they both collapse,
and their tongues hang out of their laughing mouths, seeming to flicker
with their panting breath, and become as long as the tongues of dragons
on old manuscripts.
[Illustration: dogs playing outdoors]
A matter to be noticed is that they never play in their walks with us
across the moors—apparently that is against dog etiquette—but they will
lie in wait for each other at the garden gate on the way home, and the
fun and the pouncing and growling jocosities begin the instant they are
inside.
Susan doesn’t play with the other animals, though she exercises an
irresistible fascination upon every dog that comes within a mile of her.
She has a kind of Jane Eyre charm, we suppose, for it is not at first
visible to the naked eye. She always does remind us of a small elderly
German governess, for she is squat, undemonstrative, and eminently—oh,
eminently!—respectable. She is a fox-terrier. She has, however, one
terrible weakness. Her only joy is to have stones thrown for her. She is
not, therefore, an agreeable person to take out for a walk, for she will
get right under your feet, dig up a stone, point at it, and bark,
“Throw, throw!” with a shrill persistence that goes through your head.
And if you are weak-minded enough to yield, then indeed you are undone.
You will be kept throwing till you wish her in the Dog Star. She will
scratch up stones till her paws are raw. This we think a great defect,
but Loki sees no flaw in her.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: CELLARERS YOUNG, CELLARERS OLD]
When Susan’s Butler first came to us, we had suffered acutely from
butlers young and butlers old, butlers bashful and butlers bold—all of
whom drank steadily. One nearly murdered his Buttons. Another, engaged
by correspondence, vouched for by the agency, announcing his years as
forty-five, arrived huge, decrepit, asthmatic; almost, if not quite,
qualified for an old-age pension. The eight o’clock dinner he found it
impossible to serve before nine; and then that ceremony became a perfect
torture of dazed crawling, enlivened by stertorous breathing, for which
asthma and chronic alcoholism disputed responsibility. When the Master
of the House, who is very tender-hearted, intimated that he thought
that, for the good of the newcomer’s health, they had better part with
the utmost celerity, the veteran assented resignedly with the husky gasp
peculiar to him.
[Illustration: man with serving tray]
“You know,” said the Master of the House, mildly, “you are not quite
what you represented yourself to be. You said you were forty-five!”
“I think,” wheezed the Ancient Cellarer; “I think I said forty-seven,
sir.”
“Oh, forty-seven!” The Master of the House was a little satiric. “Even
if you had said forty-seven, you are a great, great deal more than
that!”
“Sir,” said the delinquent, with a beery twinkle, “no butler can ever be
more than forty-seven.”
This, we understand, is a maxim of life in the profession.
A third—he was young and beautiful—had a fondness for a brew called
gin-and-ginger, which had so cheering and immediate effect upon him
that, having left the drawing-room after tea the very pink and
perfection of propriety, he would announce dinner in an advanced
condition of jocular elevation, and when the plates slid out of his
hands he would survey them with a waggish smile, as one who would say:
“Bless their little hearts, see how playful they are!” We became anxious
to secure a servant who would have more than a few streaks of sobriety,
and when Susan’s owner came, we felt we had secured that pearl. He came
in a great hurry ‹without Susan› because of the equally hurried
departure of the beautiful hilarious one. After a week or so, we asked
him if he would consider us as a permanency. He said he would have to
consider us a little longer. After another ten days he informed us of
Susan’s existence, and announced his intention of going to fetch her. We
breathed again.
[Sidenote: IN THE MATTER OF O’REILLY]
[Illustration: dog looking away]
[Illustration: dog sitting in front of plant]
Juvenal—that is his name—is very fond of animals. A little too fond, we
thought, when he invited a military friend’s dog to stay, during the
owner’s absence at manœuvres. This animal, by name O’Reilly, arrived in
dilapidated, devil-may-care, barrack-yard condition, which was a great
shock to our Manchu prince. He also had pink bald elbows and knees. His
hind legs were longer than his front ones, which gave him an
ourang-outang gait. As became his Milesian name, he fought every one he
met on his walks. Why he did not fight Loki, we do not know, for Loki
loathed him and, we believe, suffered acutely in his poor little Chinese
soul all during his stay. Yet unwelcome as he was, scald, ungainly,
tiresome, there was something pathetic about the creature. He had a way
of looking at one, deprecating and pleading at once; and he would
display such rapture at the smallest token of toleration, that, despite
our satisfaction at his departure, we had an ache in our hearts too. We
have a shrewd suspicion that the corporal-major who owned him was a
rough customer, and that poor O’Reilly’s life was not that happy one
which every “owned” dog’s ought to be. A dog should not be treated as a
dog.
* * * * *
As for cats, once they have passed the giddy days of youth, in which
they are imps, sprites, goblins, pucks, furry, fairy, freakish
things—anything but mere animals—one cannot help feeling a certain awe
with regard to them. Despite the many cycles of years that have elapsed
since their ancestors took habitation with us, they have remained true
Easterns. From father to son, from mother to daughter they have handed
down secret stores of occult knowledge which they keep jealously to
themselves, a sacred inheritance of race. Those eyes that fix you with
pupil contracted to a slit, and look through and beyond you into
mysteries undreamt of by you: that lofty detachment, that ineradicable
independence, that relentless indifference: have we not all felt by
these signs and tokens how completely the cat puts us outside the sphere
of his real thoughts and feelings? Priests or priestesses they seem to
be, of some alien creed, soul satisfying, contemplative, with sudden
savage rites. Have you ever watched a cat with regard turned inwards,
meditating? Its body sways, but the spirit bubbles softly as if it were
seething in content over a mystic fire. It does not want you to join it
in its rapture, like your dog. It has no desire to admit you into its
comradeship. It is as self-contained and self-absorbed as the highest
grade Mahatma.
[Illustration: cat in garden]
[Sidenote: KITTY-WEE THE LOVELY]
Kitty-Wee, the Lovely, is chief of our three cats. She is a Persian lady
with a wonderful robe of silver grey, faintly blue, and orange eyes
inherited from that most beautiful, most evil monster, Tittums the
Bold-and-Bad, her father, who spent his adorable kittenhood and his
stormy youth under our London roof, until his habit of lying in wait for
the servants at odd corners and jumping at their elbows, made it
imperative for us to part with him. He was then adopted by a gentle
parson’s daughter, in the freedom of whose country dwelling it was hoped
that he might sow his wild oats and settle down into respectability. But
alas! the day dawned, when lying on the rector’s cassock in the
dining-room, he was so incensed at the reverend gentleman’s polite
request to move, that he chased him round and round the room, ran him
down in the hall and bit him. The churchman was not an unreasonable
being and had made many allowances for the frailty of degenerate
creation; but he drew the line at the violation of his reverend elbows.
Tittums was once again, with many tears and heart-rendings, passed on.
This time to a lady who keeps a cattery. We hear that he has become a
model of every virtue, and that she only wears a fencing mask and boxing
gloves when she combs him, because on the day when she left them off,
Tittums, in a fit of absence of mind, bit her through the thumb. Anyone
who takes a cat paper can hear more of this most distinguished beast,
under the name of “Saracinesca.”
Kitty-Wee is supposed to have inherited her father’s superlative
looks—only he was “smoke”—and her mother’s angelic disposition. If
occasionally a spark of the paternal temper flashes out, the gardener’s
wife ‹with whom she prefers to dwell› says “Kitty is a bit nervous
to-day.”
[Sidenote: KITTY-WEE’S MESALLIANCES]
It was after Kitty-Wee’s first _mésalliance_ that she took up her abode
with the worthy pair in the “little cot,” as Mrs. Adam calls it, at the
bottom of the garden. Persian princesses, from the time of “A Thousand
and One Nights” onwards, are proverbially capricious. But what perverse
freak of youthful fancy induced our delicate silver-pawed highborn
damsel to fix her young affections upon Mr. Hopkinson was and is, a
painful mystery.
Mr. Hopkinson, a very hooligan among cats, so degenerate indeed as to
have lost all his eastern characteristics, and to have assumed a
positively “Arry-like, bank-’oliday, disreputable, Hampstead-Heath kind
of vulgarity,” was a lean, mangy creature with a denuded tail. He had a
black spot over one eye; the other eye was conspicuous by its absence.
We could hear his raucous voice uplifted in serenade, suggestive of
accordeons, night after night, and his guttural whisper of “Me
’Oighness” behind the bushes when we went on our walks. Every effort was
made to discourage the preposterous suitor. But, alas! Kitty smiled. The
infatuated Princess escaped the vigilance of her distracted family.
Perhaps it is best to draw a veil over the consequences of this rash
alliance. Kitty indeed did her best to obliterate them, refusing to do
anything but sit heavily on three black and white kittens with ropy
tails. She only purred again the day the last one died; “Oh! she was
pleased, Mam,” said the gardener’s wife; “quite took up again, she did.”
[Illustration: animals watching each other]
Kitty-Wee’s next matrimonial venture, though likewise, we grieve to say,
morganatic, was very much more successful. In fact it is to it that we
owe—Bunny! The name, the lineage, the very personality of Bunny’s father
is wrapt in mystery; but judging by the splendour of Bunny’s black fur,
it is to be conjectured that Kitty-Wee’s choice was of a dark
complexion, and if not royal, at any rate of noble blood.
Two brave brothers Bunny had, but he is the sole survivor; all the more
cherished. And really, even if he lacks his mother’s supreme
distinction, we cannot but feel proud of him. Waggish, gentle, humorous
creature that he is, he will hang round the neck of Adam, the gardener,
like a boa, for a whole morning together; or stalk the dogs from tree to
tree, pounce on them at unexpected moments to deliver a swinging
friendly slap on Susan’s fat back, or to waltz with Arabella, or to
inveigle Loki, with odd freakish sidelong gambols, into a mysterious
game of his own, which, as our little Chinaman has something of the cat
in him, he seems to understand.
[Illustration: cat in garden]
We are very glad that Adam had Bunny to console him, for Kitty-Wee’s
offspring has an odd resemblance in size and appearance to Cæsar, the
late Garden Cat, much beloved, who alas! went the way of all fur ‹with a
melancholy little assistance from the chemist› shortly before Bunny’s
appearance in this plane.
“Oh, Miss,” said Mrs. Adam, on the Sunday that followed that Socratic
tragedy, “last night was the most dreadful night we ever spent! It was
the first time for thirteen years we hadn’t had a cat in the house! Oh!
Miss, I thought Daddy would have broken his heart. He just sat with his
head on his hand, and sighed. Really Miss Marie, I don’t know when we’ve
felt so bad.”
[Illustration: cat and dog]
It will be seen that Mr. and Mrs. Adam have the right feeling towards
“little sister cat and little brother dog,” as St. Francis of Assisi
would have called them. This suits us very well, and oddly enough,
Villino Loki is a kind of paradise for things of fur and feather. Cat
and dog live in a strange harmony. To see Loki kiss Bunny, or Bunny
clasp Arabella round the neck, is as pleasing a sight as you could
imagine. And if Kitty-Wee occasionally boxes Loki with a kind of
delicate compactness, it is with her claws in. As for Juvenal, the
butler, whose pantry is full of singing birds, no sense of etiquette
will restrain him from public blandishments when Loki is on the scene.
George, the footman, can be heard addressing him—Loki—in back passages,
as “My loved one!” And Tom, the old long-haired English cat, rules the
kitchen.
[Sidenote: THE VICISSITUDES OF TOM]
Tom has reached the patriarchal age of eighteen years, and is cherished
by the master of the Villino. He has had many vicissitudes. He was stung
by an adder during our very first summer, years ago, on these moors, and
lay for a day in a coma with one paw swollen the size of a child’s arm,
to be saved by doses of brandy and milk. A few years later he was caught
in a trap. How he got free no one knows, but we found him crawling,
piteously complaining, with a shattered leg. With the help of the cook,
who followed the tradition of the establishment and was Tom’s slave, the
leg was set with strips of firewood, the bone being very successfully
mended. It so happened that the Master of the House had, about the same
time, snapped his _tendo-plantaris_ at tennis; and it was a sight to see
them both when they stumped down the wooden passages—the master
dot-and-go-one on his crutches, Thomas following in his splints,
dot-and-go-three.
[Illustration: _Tom_]
The amateur surgery, however, was not completely successful. Though
Thomas’ bone knit, the poor mangled flesh remained unhealed, and at last
the cook conveyed her darling in a basket to the most celebrated London
animal doctor. Thereafter ensued a time of horrible suspense. Telegrams
went briskly backwards and forwards. Dr. Jewell “doubted if he could
save the limb.” Tom’s adoring family could not contemplate the tragedy
therein implied. “Better euthanasia!” we wired. “Will do my best for
little cat,” the sympathetic Æsculapius of God’s humble creatures
replied. Hope and devotion triumphed. Tommy returned to us with three
legs in large fur trousers, the fourth as close as a mouse. The fur
thereon has never grown to full length again. We fear it will never grow
now.
Dear old Tom is toothless, and he is getting a little bald on the top of
his head; but he is a beautiful creature still, and a dandy. His four
spats are always of an almost startling snowiness; his shirt-front
ditto. He is not very fond of any of the other animals, and was so
revolted by Kitty-Wee’s _mésalliance_ that she could not show her face
in the kitchen without his instantly using as severe language as ever
John Knox to Queen Mary. “Hussy!” was the mildest of his terms.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THE DUTCH GARDEN]
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[Illustration: house on hill]