grounds of an English country house, of one of the missing capitals of
Theodocius, with its carved acanthus leaves blown by the wind and the
monogram of Theodocius himself. A more astounding discovery than this
can hardly be imagined. No one connected with it was able to say how
it found its way to the place where it caught the eye of a trustworthy
antiquarian; and this fact suggested to me the advisability of attaching
an engraved label to such treasure trove, giving their history as far
as is known to the possessors. The interest attaching to them would be
thereby immensely increased, and it would save much useless conjecture
on the part of members of Antiquarian Societies. Some people seem to
think that paying a subscription to an Antiquarian Society makes one
a fully qualified antiquarian, just as some people fancy that being a
Royal Academician makes one a good painter.
The great revival in this country in the taste for the Formal Garden and
the Dutch Garden has brought about the introduction of an immense number
of sculptured pieces of decoration; and one feels that in the course
of lime our gardens will be as well furnished in this way as those of
Italy. The well-heads of various marbles, with all the old ironwork that
one sees nowadays in the yards of the importers, are as amazing as
the number of exquisite columns for pergolas, garden seats of the most
imposing character, vases of bronze as well as stone or marble, and
wall fountains. And I have no doubt that the importers would make any
purchaser acquainted with the place of origin of most of these. Of
course we knew pretty well by now where so many of the treasures of the
Villa Borghese are to be found; but there are hundreds of other pieces
of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian work that arrive in
England, and quite as many that go to the United States, without any
historical record attached to them. I do hope that the buyers of
these lovely things will see how greatly their value and the interest
attaching to them would be increased by such memoranda of their origin.
The best symbol of Peace is a ploughshare that was once a sword; and
surely a garden that has been made in the Tiltyard of a Norman Castle
may be looked on as an emblem of the same Beatitude. That is how it
comes that every one who enters our garden cries,--
“How wonderfully peaceful!”
I have analysed their impression that forces them to say that. The mild
bustle of the High Street of a country town somehow imposes itself upon
one, for the simple reason that you can hear it and observe it. The
hustle of London is something quite different. One is not aware of it.
You cannot see the wood for the trees. It is all a wild roar. But when
our High Street is at its loudest you can easily distinguish one sound
from another.
Then the constant menace of motor-cars rushing through the High Street
leaves an impression that does not vanish the moment one turns into the
passage of the barbican; and upon it comes the sight of the defensive
masonry, which is quite terrific for the moment; then comes the looming
threat of the Norman gateway which gives promise of no compromise! It is
not necessary that one should have a particularly vivid imagination to
hear the clash and clang of armoured men riding forth with lances and
battleaxes; and when one steps aside out of their way, the rest is
silence and the silence is rest.
“How wonderfully peaceful!” every one cries.
And so't is.
You can hear the humming of a bee--the flick of a swallow's wing, the
tinkle of the fountain--a delightful sound like the counting out of the
threepenny pieces in the Church Vestry after a Special Collection--and
the splash of a blackbird in its own particular bath. These are the
sounds that cause the silence to startle you. “Darkness visible,”
is Milton's phrase. But to make an adaptation of it is not enough to
express what one feels on entering a walled garden from a street even of
a country town. There is an outbreak of silence the moment the door is
closed, and it is in a hushed tone that one says, when one is able to
speak,--
“How wonderfully peaceful!”
I think that a garden is not a garden unless it is walled. Perhaps a
high hedge of yew or box conveys the same impression as a built-up wall;
but I am not quite certain on this point. The impression has remained
with us since the days when an Englishman's home was his castle and an
Englishman's castle his home. What every one sought was security, and a
consciousness of security only came when one was within walls. In going
through a country of wild animals one has a kindred feeling when the
fire is lighted at nightfall. Another transmitted instinct is that which
forces one to look backward on a road when the sound of steps tells one
that one is being followed. The earliest English gardens of which any
record remains were walled. In the illustrations to the _Romaunt of the
Rose_, we see this; and possibly the maze became a feature of the garden
in order to increase the sense of security from the knife of an enemy
whose slaughter had been overlooked by the mediaeval horticultural
enthusiast, who sought for peace and quiet on Prussian principles.
I think it was the appearance of the walls that forced me to buy my
estate of a superficial acre. Certainly until I saw them I had no
idea of such a purchase. If any one had told me on that morning when I
strolled up the High Street of Yardley Parra while the battery of my car
was being re-charged after the manner of those pre-magneto times, that I
should take such a step I would have laughed. But it was a day of August
sunshine and there was an auction of furniture going on in the house.
This fact gave me entree to the “old-world garden” of the agent's
advertisement, and when I saw the range of walls ablaze with
many-coloured snapdragons above the double row of hollyhocks in the
border at their foot, I “found peace,” as the old Revivalists used to
phrase the sentiment, only their assurance was of a title to a mansion
in the skies, while I was less ambitious. I sought peace and ensued it,
purchasing the freehold, and I have been ensuing it ever since.
[Illustration: 0077]
The mighty walls of the old Castle compass us about as they did the
various dwellers within their shelter eight hundred years ago. On one
side they vary from twelve feet to thirty in height, but on the outer
side they rise from the moat and loom from forty to fifty feet above
the lowest of the terraces. At one part, where a Saxon earthwork makes a
long curved hillock at the farther end of the grounds, the wall is only
ten feet above the grassy walk, but forty feet down on the other side.
The Norman Conqueror simply built his wall resting against the mound
of the original and more elementary fortification. Here the line of
the screen breaks off abruptly; but we can see that at one time it was
carried on to an artificial hill on the summit of which the curious
feature of a second keep was built--the well-preserved main keep forms
an imposing incident of the landscape in the opposite direction.
The small plateau which was once enclosed by the screen-wall is not more
than three acres in extent; from its elevation of a couple of hundred
feet it overlooks the level country and the shallow river-way for
many miles--a tranquil landscape of sylvan beauty dominated by the
everlasting Downs. Almost to the very brink of the lofty banks of the
plateau on one side we have an irregular bowling-green, bordered by a
row of pollard ashes. From a clause in one of my title deeds I find that
three hundred years ago the bowling-green was in active existence and
played a useful part as a landmark in the delimitation of the frontier.
It is brightly green at all seasons; and the kindly neighbouring
antiquarian confided in me how its beauty was attained and is
maintained.
“Some time ago an American tourist asked the man who was mowing it how
it came to be such a fine green, and says the man, 'Why, it's as easy
as snuffling: all you've got to do is to lay it down with good turf at
first and keep on cutting it for three or four hundred years and the
thing is done.' Smart of the fellow, wasn't it?”
“It was very smart,” I admitted.
Our neighbour showed his antiquarian research in another story as well
as in this one. It related to the curate of a local parish who, in the
unavoidable absence of his vicar, who was a Rural Dean, found himself
taking a timid breakfast with the Bishop of the Diocese. He was
naturally a shy man and he was shying very highly over an egg that he
had taken and that was making a very hearty appeal to him. Observing
him, the Bishop, with a thorough knowledge of his Diocese, and being
well aware that the electoral contest which had been expected a
few months earlier had not taken place, turned to the curate and
remarked----
But if you've heard the story before what he remarked will not appeal
to you so strongly as the egg did to the clergyman; so there is nothing
gained by repeating the remark or the response intoned by the curate.
But when our antiquarian told us both we heartily agreed with him that
that curate deserved to be a bishop.
We are awaiting without impatience. I trust, the third of this Troika
team of anecdotes--the one that refers to the Scotsman and Irishman who
came to the signpost that told all who couldn't read to inquire at the
blacksmith's. That story is certain to be revealed to us in time. The
antiquarian from the stable of whose memory the other two of the team
were let loose cannot possibly restrain the third.
Such things are pleasantly congenial with the scent of lavender in an
old-world garden that knows nothing of how busy people are in the new
world outside its boundary. But what are we to say when we find in a
volume of serious biography published last year only as a previously
unheard-of instance of the wit of the “subject,” the story of the
gentleman who, standing at the entrance to his club, was taken for the
porter by a member coming out?
“Call me a cab,” said the latter.
“You're a cab,” was the prompt reply.
The story in the biography stops there; but the original one shows the
wit making a second score on punning points.
“What do you mean?” cried the other. “I told you to call me a cab.”
“And I've called you a cab. You didn't expect me to call you handsome,”
said the ready respondent.
Now that story was a familiar Strand story forty years ago when H. J.
Byron was at the height of his fame, and he was made the hero of the pun
(assuming that it is possible for a hero to make a pun).
But, of course, no one can vouch for the mint from which such small coin
issues. If a well-known man is in the habit of making puns all the puns
of his generation are told in the next with his name attached to them.
H. J. Byron was certainly as good a punster as ever wrote a burlesque
for the old Gaiety; though a good deal of the effect of his puns was due
to their delivery by Edward Terry. But nothing that Byron wrote was so
good as Burnand's title to his Burlesque on _Rob Roy_, the play which
Mrs Bateman had just revived at Sadler's Wells. Burnand called it
_Robbing Roy, or Scotch'd, not Kilt_. The parody on “Roy's Wife,” sung
by Terry, was exquisite, and very topical,--
Roy's wife of Alldivalloch!
Oh, while she
Is wife to me,
Is life worth living, Mr. Mallock?”
Mr. Mallock's book was being widely discussed in those days, and _Punch_
had his pun on it with the rest.
“Is Life worth living?”
“It depends on the liver.”
The Garrick Club stories of Byron, Gilbert, and Burnand were
innumerable. To the first-named was attributed the dictum that a play
was like a cigar. “If it was a good one all your friends wanted a box;
but if it was a bad one no amount of puffing would make it draw.”
The budding _littérateurs_ of those days--and nights--used to go from
hearing stories of Byron's latest, to the Junior Garrick to hear Byron
make up fresh ones about old Mrs. Swanborough of the Strand Theatre.
Some of them were very funny. Mrs. Swan-borough was a clever old
lady with whom I was acquainted when I was very young. She never gave
utterance to the things Byron tacked on to her. I recollect how amused
I was to hear Byron's stories about her told to me by Arthur Swanborough
about an old lady who had just retired from the stage, and then, passing
on to Orme Square on a Sunday evening, to hear “Johnny Toole,” as he was
to the very youngest of us, tell the same stories about a dear old girl
who was still in his company at the Folly Theatre.
So much for the circulation of everyday anecdotes. Dean Swift absorbed
most of the creations of the early eighteenth century; then Dr. Johnson
became the father of as many as would till a volume. Theodore Hook, Tom
Hood, Shirley Brooks, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon, and several others whose
names convey little to the present generation, were the reputed parents
of the puns which enlivened the great Victorian age. But if a scrupulous
historian made up his mind to apply for a paternity order against any
one of these gay dogs, that historian would have difficulty in bringing
forward sufficient evidence to have it granted.
The late Mr. M. A. Robertson, of the Treaty Department of the Foreign
Office, told me that his father--the celebrated preacher known to fame
as “Robertson of Brighton”--had described to him the important part
played by the pun in the early sixties. At a dinner-party at which the
Reverend Mr. Robertson was a guest, a humorist who was present picked up
the menu card and set the table on a roar with his punning criticism
of every _plat_. Robertson thought that such a spontaneous effort was
a very creditable _tour de force_--doubtless the humorist would have
called it a _tour de farce_--but a few nights later he was at another
party which was attended by the same fellow-guest, and once again the
menu, which happened to be exactly the same also, was casually picked up
and dealt with _seriatim_ as before, with an equally hilarious effect.
He mentioned to the hostess as a curious coincidence that he should find
her excellent dinner identical with the one of which he had partaken at
the other house: and then she confided in him that the great punster
had given her the bill of fare that afforded him his opportunity of
displaying his enlivening trick! Robertson gave me the name of this
Victorian artist, but there is no need for me to reveal it in this
place. The story, however, allows us a glimpse into the studio of one of
the word-jugglers of other days; and when one has been made aware of the
machinery of his mysteries, one ceases to marvel.
Two brothers, Willie and Oscar Wilde, earned many dinners in their time
by their conversational abilities; and I happen to know that before
going out together they rehearsed very carefully the exchange of their
impromptus at the dinner table. Both of these brothers were brilliant
conversationalists, and possessed excellent memories. They were equally
unscrupulous and unprincipled. The only psychological distinction
between the two was that the elder, Willie, possessed an impudence of a
quality which was not among Oscar's gifts. Oscar was impudent enough to
take his call on the first night of _Lady Windermere's Fan_ smoking
a cigarette, and to assure the audience that he had enjoyed the play
immensely; but he was never equal to his brother in this special line.
Willie was a little over twenty and living with his parents in Dublin,
where he had a friendly little understanding with a burlesque actress
who was the principal boy in the pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre. She
wrote to him one day making an appointment with him for the night, and
asking him to call for her at the stage door. The girl addressed the
letter to “Wm. Wilde, Esq.,” at his home, and as his father's name was
William he opened it mechanically and read it. He called Willie into his
study after breakfast and put the letter before him, crying, “Read that,
sir!”
The son obeyed, folded it up and handed it back, saying quietly,--
“Well, dad, do you intend to go?”
To obtain ready cash and good dinners, Willie Wilde, when on the staff
of a great London newspaper was ready to descend to any scheming and
any meanness. But the descriptive column that he wrote of the sittings
of the Parnell Commission day after day could not be surpassed for
cleverness and insight. He would lounge into the Court at any time he
pleased and remain for an hour or so, rarely longer, and he spent the
rest of the day amusing himself and flushing himself with brandies
and soda at the expense of his friends. He usually began to write his
article between eleven and twelve at night.
Such were these meteoric brothers before the centrifugal force due to
their revolutionary instinct sent them flying into space.
But one handful of the meteoric dust of the conversation of either was
worth all the humour of the great Victorian punsters.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH
From the foregoing half-dozen pages it is becoming pretty clear that a
Garden of Peace may also be a Garden of Memories. But I am sure that one
of the greatest attractions of garden life to a man who has stepped out
of a busy world--its _strepitumque virumque_, is that it _compels_ him
to look forward, while _permitting_ him to look back. The very act of
dropping a seed into the soil is prospective. To see things growing is
stimulating, whether they are children or other flowers. One has no time
to think how one would order one's career, avoiding the mistakes of the
past, if one got a renewal of one's lease of life, for in a garden we
are ever planning for the future; but these rustling leaves of memory
are useful as a sort of mulch for the mind.
And the garden has certainly grown since I first entered it ten years
ago. It was originally to be referred to in the singular, but now it
must be thought of in the plural. It was a garden, now it is gardens;
and whether I have succeeded or not my experience compels me to believe
that to aim at the plural makes for success. Two gardens, each of thirty
feet square, are infinitely better than one garden of sixty. I am sure
of that to-day, but it took me some time to find it out. A garden to be
distinctive must have distinct features, like every other thing of life.
I notice that most writers on garden-making begin by describing what
a wilderness their place was when they first took it in hand. I cannot
maintain that tradition. Mine had nothing of the wilderness about it.
On the contrary, it was just too neat for my taste. The large lawn on
to which some of the lower rooms of the house opened, had broad paths on
each side and a broad flower border beyond. There was not a shrub on the
lawn and only one tree--a majestic deodar spreading itself abroad at an
angle of the nearest wing of the house; but on a knoll at the farther
end of the lawn there were, we discovered next summer, pink and white
mays, a wild cherry, and a couple of laburnums, backed by a towering
group made up of sycamores and chestnuts. Such a plan of planting could
not be improved upon, I felt certain, though I did not discuss it at
the time; for I was not out to make an alteration, and my attention was
wholly occupied with the appearance of the ancient walls, glorious with
snapdragon up to the lilacs that made a coping of colour for the whole
high range, while the lower brick boundary opposite was covered with
pears and plums clasping hands in espalier form from end to end.
But I was not sure about the flower borders which contained alternate
clumps of pink geraniums and white daisies. Perhaps they were too
strongly reminiscent of the window-boxes of the Cromwell Road through
which I had walked every day for nearly twenty years, and in time one
grows weary even of the Cromwell Road!
But so well did the accident of one elbow of the wall of the
bowling-green pushing itself out lend itself to the construction of the
garden, that the first and most important element in garden-design was
attained. This, I need hardly say, is illusion and surprise. One
fancied that here the limits of the ground had been reached, for a fine
deciduous oak seemed to block the way; but with investigation one found
oneself at the entrance to a new range of grounds which, though only
about three times as large as the first, seemed almost illimitable.
The greater part had at one time been an orchard, we could see; but the
trees had been planted too close to one another, and after thirty or
forty years of jostling, had ceased to be of any pictorial or commercial
value, and I saw that these would have to go. Beyond there was a kitchen
garden and a large glass-house, and on one side there was a long curve
of grass terrace made out of the Saxon or Roman earthwork, against
which, as I have already said, the Norman walls were built, showing only
about twelve or fifteen feet above the terrace, while being forty or
fifty down to the dry moat outside. This low mural line was a mass of
antirrhinums, wallflowers, and such ferns as thrive in rock crevices.
There was obviously not much to improve in all this. We were quite
satisfied with everything as it stood. There was nothing whatsoever of
the wilderness that we could cause to blossom as the rose, only--not a
rose was to be seen in any part of the garden!
We were conscious of the want, for our Kensington garden had been a mass
of roses, and we were ready to join on to Victor Hugo's “_Une maison
sans enfants,” “un jardin sans roses?_” But we were not troubled; roses
are as easily to be obtained as brambles--in fact rather more easily--
and we had only to make up our minds where to plant them and they would
blush all over the place the next summer.
We had nothing to complain of but much to be thankful for, when, after
being in the house for a month, I found the old gardener, whom we had
taken over with the place, wheeling his barrow through a doorway which I
knew led to a dilapidated potting-shed, and as I saw that the barrow
was laden with rubbish I had the curiosity to follow him to see where he
should dispose of it.
He went through a small iron gate in the wall alongside the concealed
potting-house, and, following him, I found myself to my amazement in a
small walled space, forty feet by thirty, containing rubbish, but giving
every one with eyes to see such a picture of the Barbican, the Castle
Gate with the Keep crowning the mound beyond, as made me shout--such a
picture as was not to be found in the county!
If it had a fault at all it was to be found in its perfection. Every
one has, I hope, seen the Sham Castle, the castellated gateway, built on
Hampton Down, near Bath, to add picturesqueness to the prospect as seen
from the other side. This is as perfectly made a ruin as ever was built
up by stage carpenters. There was no reason why it should not be so,
for it was easy to put a stone in here and there if an improvement were
needed, or to dilapidate a bit of a tower until the whole would meet
with the approval even of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, who are, I
am given to understand, the best informed authorities in England on the
assessment of dilapidations. I must confess that the first glimpse I
had of the picture that stood before my eyes above my newly-acquired
rubbish-heaps suggested the perfection of a sham. The _mise-en-scène_
seemed too elaborate--too highly finished--no detail that could add to
the effect being absent. But there it was, and I remained looking at it
for the rest of the day.
The over-conscientious agents had said not a word in the inventory
of the most valuable asset in connection with the property. They
had scrupulously advertised the “unique and valuable old-fashioned
residence,” and the fact that it was partially “covered by creepers”--a
partiality to which I was not very partial--and that the “billiard
saloon” had the same advantages--they had not failed to allude to the
gardens as “old-world and quaint,” but not one word had they said about
this view from the well-matured rubbish-heaps!
It was at this point that I began to think about improvements, and the
first essay in this direction was obvious. I had the rubbish removed,
the ground made straight, a stone sundial placed in the centre, and a
Dutch pattern of flower-beds cut around it.
On the coping of the walls--they were only six feet high on our side,
but forty on the culside--I placed lead and stone vases and a balustrade
of wrought iron-work. I made an immense window in the wall of the
potting-shed--a single sheet of plate-glass with four small casements
of heraldic stained glass; and then the old potting-shed I panelled in
coloured marbles, designed a sort of domed roof for it and laid down a
floor in mosaics. I had in my mind a room in the Little Trianon in all
this; and I meant to treat the view outside as a picture set in
one wall. Of course I did not altogether succeed; but I have gone
sufficiently far to deceive more than one visitor. Entering the room
through a mahogany door set with a round panel of beautifully-clouded
onyx--once a table-top in the gay George's pavilion' at Brighton--a
visitor sees the brass frame of the large window enclosing the picture
of the Barbican, the Gateway, and the Keep, and it takes some moments to
understand it.