intelligent builder and men who were ready to do all that was asked of
them, and, above all, through having abundance of material collected
wherever it was going at shillings instead of pounds, I effected the
transformation at less than a sixth of the lowest assessment of the cost
made by professional friends. To relieve myself from any vain charge
of extravagance, I may perhaps be permitted to mention that when the
property was offered for sale in London a week before I bought it, not
a single bid was made for it, owing to an apparent flaw in one of the
title-deeds frightening every one off. Thus, without knowing it. I
arrived on the scene at the exact psychological moment--for a purchaser;
and when I got the place I found myself with a considerable sum in hand
to spend upon it, and that sum has not yet been all spent. The bogey
fault in the title was made good by the exchange of a few letters, and
it is now absolutely unassailable.
It must also be remembered by such people as may be inclined to talk of
extravagance, that it is very good business to spend a hundred pounds
on one's property if the property is thereby increased in value by three
hundred. I have the best of all reasons for resting in the assurance
that for every pound I have spent I am three to the good. There is no
economy like legitimate expenditure.
I wonder if real authorities in garden design would think I was right in
treating after the Dutch fashion the little enclosed piece of ground on
which I tried my prentice hand.
In order to arrive at a conclusion on this point I should like to be
more fully informed as to what is congruous and what incongruous. What
are the important elements to consider in the construction of a Dutch
garden, and are these elements in sympathy with the foreground of such a
picture as I had before me when I made up my mind on the subject?
Now I have seen many Dutch gardens in Holland, and in Cape
Colony--relics of the old Dutch Colonial days--and every one knows how
conservative is this splendid if somewhat over-hospitable race. Some
of the gardens lying between Cape Town and Simon's Bay, and also on the
higher ground above Mossel Bay are what old-furniture dealers term “in
mint condition”--I disclaim any suggestion of a pun upon the herb, which
in Dutch houses at the Cape is not used in sauce for lamb. They are as
they were laid out by the Solomons, the Cloetes, the Van der Byls, and
the other old Dutch Colonial families; so far from adapting, themselves
to the tropical and subtropical conditions existing in the Colony, they
brought their home traditions into their new surroundings with results
that were both happy and profitable. There are certainly no finer or
more various bulbs than those of Dutch growth at the Cape, and I have
never seen anything more beautiful than the heaths on the Flats between
Mowbray and Rondesbosch at the foot of the Devil's Peak of Table
Mountain.
[Illustration: 0096]
A Dutch gentleman once said to me in Rotterdam, “If you want to see
a real Dutch garden you must go to the Cape, or, better still, to
England--for it.”
He meant that in both places greater pains are taken to maintain the
original type than, generally speaking, in Holland.
I know that he spoke of what he knew, and with what chances of
observation I have had, I long ago came to the conclusion that the
elements of what is commonly called a Dutch garden do not differ so
greatly from, those that went to the making of the oldest English herb
and flower garden. This being so, when I asked myself how I should lay
out a foreground that should be congenial with the picture seen through
the window of the marble-panelled room, I knew that the garden should
be as like as possible that which would be planted by the porter's wife
when the Castle was at its best. The porter's lodge would join on to
the gate, and one side of the gateway touches my ground, where the lodge
would be; so that, with suggestions from the Chatelaine, who had seen
the world, and the Chaplain, who may have been familiar with the
earliest gardens in England--the monastery gardens--she would lay out
the little bit of ground pretty much, I think, as I have done. In those
days people had not get into the way of differentiating between gardens
and gardens--there was no talk about “false notes” in design, men did
not sleep uneasily o' nights lest they had made an irremediable mistake
in giving hospitality to a crimson peony in a formal bed or in failing
to dig up an annual that had somehow found a place in a herbaceous
border. But a garden bounded by walls must be neat or nothing, and so
the porter's wife made a Dutch garden without being aware of what she
was doing, and I followed her example, after the lapse of a few hundred
years, knowing quite well what I was doing in acting on the principle
that the surroundings should suggest the garden. I know now, however,
that because William the Conqueror had a fine growth of what we
call _Dianthus Caryophylla_ at his Castle of Falaise, we should have
scrupulously followed his example. However, the elements of a Dutch
garden are geometrical, and within four walls and with four right
angles one cannot but be geometrical. One cannot have the charming
disorderliness of a meadow bounded by two meandering streams. That
is why I know I was right in refusing to allow any irregularity in my
treatment of the ground. I put my sundial exactly in the middle and made
it the centre for four small beds crossed by a narrow grass path; and
except for the simple central design there is no attempt at colour
effect. But every one of the little beds is brilliant with tulips or
pansies or antirrhinum or wallflowers, as the season suggests. There
is the scent of lavender from four clumps--one at each angle of the
walls--and over the western coping a pink rose climbs. To be consistent
I should confine the growth of this rose to an espalier against the
wall. I mean to be consistent some day in this matter and others nearly
as important, and I have been so meaning for the past ten years.
I picked up some time ago four tubs of box and placed one in each corner
of the grass groundwork of the design; but I soon took them away; they
were far too conspicuous. They suggested that I was dragging in Holland
by the hair of the head, so to speak.
It is the easiest thing in the world to spoil a good effect by
over-emphasis; and any one who fancies that the chief note in a Dutch
garden is an overgrowth of box makes a great mistake. It is like putting
up a board with “This way to the Dutch garden,” planted on its face.
I remember years ago a play produced at the Hay-market, when Tree had
the theatre and Mr. J. Comyns Carr was his adviser. It was a successor
to an adaptation of _Called Back_, the first of the “shilling shockers,”
as they were styled. In one scene the curtain rose upon several of the
characters sucking oranges, and they kept at it through the whole scene.
That is what it is termed “local colour”; and it was hoped that every
one who saw them so employed was convinced that the scene was laid in
Seville. It might as well have been laid in the gallery of a theatre,
where refreshment is taken in the same form.
M. Bizet achieved his “local colour” in Carmen in rather a more subtle
way. He did not bother about oranges. The first five bars of the
overture prepared us for Spain and we lived in it until the fall of the
curtain, and we return to it when one of the children strums a few notes
of “_L'amour est un oiseau rebelle_,” or the Toreador's braggadocio.
But although I have eaten oranges in many parts of the world since I
witnessed that play at the Haymarket, I have never been reminded of it,
and to-day I forget what it was all about, and I cannot for the life of
me recollect what was its name.
So much for the ineffectiveness of obvious effects.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
It is a dreadful thing to live in the same town as an Atheist! I had
no idea that a house in Yardley Parva would ever be occupied by such an
one. I fancied that I was leaving them all behind me in London, where I
could not avoid getting into touch with several; no one can unless one
refuses to have anything to say to the intellectual or artistic classes.
People in London are so callous that they do not seem to mind having
atheists to dinner or talking with them without hostility at a club.
That is all very well for London, but it doesn't do in Yardley Parva,
thank God! Atheism is very properly regarded as a distinct social
disqualification--almost as bad as being a Nonconformist.
Friswell is the name of our atheist. What brought him here I cannot
guess. But he bought a house that had once been the rectory of a
clergyman (when I mention the Clergy in this book it must be taken
for granted that I mean a priest of the Church of England) and the
predecessor of that clergyman had been a Rural Dean. How on earth
the agent could sell him the house is a mystery that has not yet been
solved, though many honest attempts in this direction have been made.
The agent was blamed for not making such inquiries as would have led
to the detection of the fellow. He was held responsible for Friswell's
incorporation as a burgess, just as Graham the greengrocer was held
responsible for the epidemic of mumps which it is known he brought into
the town in a basket of apples from Baston.
But the agent's friends make excuses for him. While admitting that he
may have been culpably careless in order to secure a purchaser for a
house that nobody seemed to want in spite of its hallowed associations,
they are ready to affirm that these atheists have all the guile of their
Master so that even if the agent had been alert in making the essential
inquiries, the man would not hesitate to give the most plausible answers
in order to accomplish his object--the object of the wolf that has his
eye on a sheepfold.
This may be so--I decline to express an opinion one way or another. All
I know is that Friswell has written some books that are known in every
part of the civilised world and in Germany as well, and that we find him
when he comes here quite interesting and amusing. But needless to say
we do not permit him to go too far. We do not allow ourselves to be
interested in him to the jeopardising of our principles or our position
in Yardley Parva. We do not allow ourselves to be amused at the
reflection that he is going in the wrong direction; on the contrary, we
shudder when it strikes us. But so insidious are his ways that--Heaven
forgive me--I feel that he tells me much that I do not know about
what is true and what is false, and that if he were to leave the
neighbourhood I should miss him.
It is strange that he should be married to a charming woman, who is a
daughter of probably the most orthodox vicarage in the Midlands--a home
where every Sunday is given over to such accessories of orthodoxy as an
Early Service, Morning Church, Sirloin of Beef with Yorkshire Pudding,
Fruit Tart and Real Egg Custard, Sunday School, the Solution of
Acrostics, Evening-song, and Cold Chicken with Salad.
And yet she could ally herself with a man who does not hesitate to
express the opinion that if a child dies before it is baptized it should
not be assumed that anything particular happens to it, and that it was
a great pity that the Church was upheld by three murderers, the first
being Moses, who promulgated the Ten Commandments, the second Paul,
who promulgated the Christianity accepted by the Church, and the third
Constantine, who promulgated the Nicene Creed. I have heard him say
this, and much more, and yet beyond a doubt his wife still adores him.
laughs at him, says he is the most religious man she ever knew, and goes
to church regularly!
One cannot understand such a thing as this. In her own vicarage home
every breath that Mrs. Fris-well breathed was an inspiration of the
Orthodox--and yet she told me that her father, who was for twenty-seven
years Vicar of the parish and the Bishop's Surrogate, thought very
highly of Mr. Friswell and his scholarship!
That is another thing to puzzle over. Of course we know that scholarship
has got nothing to do with Orthodoxy--it is the weak things of the world
that have been chosen to confound the wise---but for a vicar of the
Church of England to remain on friendly terms with an atheist, and to
approve of his daughter's marriage with such an one, is surely not to be
understood by ordinary people.
I do not know whether or not I neglected my duty in refraining from
forbidding Friswell my garden when I heard him say that the God
worshipped by the Hebrews with bushels of incense must have been
regarded by them as occupying a position something like that of the
chairman of the smoking concert; and that the High Church parson here
was like a revue artist, whose ambition is to have as many changes of
costume as was possible in every performance; but though I was at the
point of telling him that even my toleration had its limits, yet somehow
I did not like to go to such a length without Dorothy's permission; and
I know that Dorothy likes him.
She says the children are fond of him, and she herself is fond of Mrs.
Friswell.
“Yes,” I told her, “you would not have me kill a viper because Rosamund
had taken a fancy to its markings and its graceful action before darting
on its prey.”
“Don't be a goose,” said she. “Do you suggest that Mr. Friswell is a
viper?'
“Well, if a viper may be looked on as a type of all----”
“Well, if he is a viper, didn't St. Paul shake one off his hand into
the fire before any harm was done? I think we would do well to leave Mr.
Friswell to be dealt with by St. Paul.”
“Meaning that----”
“That if the exponent of the Christianity of the Churches cannot be
so interpreted in the pulpits that Mr. Friswell's sayings are rendered
harmless, well, so much the worse for che Churches.”
“There's such a thing as being too liberal-minded, Dorothy,” said I
solemnly.
“I suppose there is,” said she; “but you will never suffer from it, my
beloved, except in regard to the clematis which you will spare every
autumn until we shall shortly have no blooms on it at all.”
That was all very well; but I was uncertain about Rosamund. She is quite
old enough to understand the difference between what Mr. Friswell says
in the garden and what the Reverend Thomas Brown-Browne says in the
pulpit. I asked her what she had been talking about to Mr. Friswell when
he was here last week.
“I believe it was about Elisha,” she replied. “Oh, yes; I remember I
asked him if he did not think Elisha a horrid vain old man.”
“You asked him that?”
“Yes; it was in the first lesson last Sunday--that about the bears he
brought out of the wood to eat the poor children who had made fun of
him--horrid old man!”
“Rosamund, he was a great prophet--one of the greatest,” said I.
“All the same he was horrid! He must have been the vainest as well as
the most spiteful old man that ever lived. What a shame to curse the
poor children because they acted like children! You know that if that
story were told in any other book than the Bible you would be the first
to be down on Elisha. If I were to say to you, Daddy, 'Go up, thou bald
head!'--you know there's a little bald place on the top there that you
try to brush your hair over--if I were to say that to you, what would
you do?”
“I suppose I should go at you bald-headed, my dear,” said I
incautiously.
“I don't like the Bible made fun of,” said Dorothy, who overheard what I
did not mean for any but the sympathetic ears of her eldest daughter.
“I'm not making fun of it, Mammy,” said the daughter. “Just the
opposite. Just think of it--forty-two children--only it sounds much more
when put the other way, and that makes it all the worse--forty and two
poor children cruelly killed because a nasty old prophet was vain and
ill-tempered!”
“It doesn't say that he had any hand in it, does it?” I suggested in
defence of the Man of God.
“Well, not--directly,” replied Rosamund. “But it was meant to make out
that he had a hand in it. It says that he cursed them in the name of the
Lord.”
“And what did Mr. Friswell say about the story?” inquired Dorothy.
“Oh, he said that, being a prophet, Elisha wasn't thinking about the
present, but the future--the time we're living in--the Russian Bear or
the Bolsheviks or some of the--the--what's the thing that they kill Jews
with in Russia, Mammy?”
“I don't know--anything that's handy, I fancy, and not too expensive,”
replied the mother.
“He gave it a name--was it programme?” asked the child.
“Oh, a pogrom--a pogrom; though I fancy a programme of Russian music
would have been equally effective,” I put in. “Well, Mr. Friswell may
be right about the bears. I suppose it's the business of a prophet to
prophesy. But I should rather fancy, looking at the transaction from the
standpoint of a flutter in futures, and also that the prophet had the
instincts of Israel, that his bears had something to do with the Stock
Exchange.”
“Mr. Friswell said nothing about that,” said Rosamund. “But he explained
about Naaman and his leprosy and how he was cured.”
“It tells us that in the Bible, my dear,” said Dorothy, “so of course it
is true. He washed seven times in the Jordan.”
“Yes, Mr. Friswell says that it is now known that half a dozen of the
complaints translated leprosy in the Bible were not the real leprosy,
and it was from one of these that Naaman was suffering, and what Elisha
did was simply to prescribe for him a course of seven baths in the
Jordan which he knew contained sulphur or something that is good for
people with that complaint. He believes in all the miracles. He says
that what was looked on as a miracle a few years ago is an everyday
thing now.”
“He's quite right, darling,” said Dorothy approvingly. Then turning to
me, “You see, Mr. Friswell has really been doing his best to keep the
children right, though you were afraid that he would have a bad effect
upon them.”
“I see,” said I. “I was too hasty in my judgment. He is a man
of uncompromising orthodoxy. We shall see him holding a class in
Sunday-school next, or solving acrostics instead of sleeping after the
Sunday Sirloin. Did he explain the Gehazi business, Rosamund?”
“He said that he was at first staggered when he heard that Elisha had
refused the suits of clothes; but if Elisha did so, he is sure that his
descendants have been making up for his self-denial ever since.”
“But about Gehazi catching the leprosy or whatever it was?”
“I said I thought it was too awful a punishment for so small a thing,
though, of course, it was dreadfully mean of Gehazi. But Mr. Friswell
laughed and said that I had forgotten that all Gehazi had to do to make
himself all right again was to fellow the prescription given to Naamun;
so he wasn't so hard on the man after all.”
“There, you see!” cried Dorothy triumphantly. “You talk to me about the
bad influence Mr. Friswell may have upon the children, and now you find
that he has been doing his best to make the difficult parts of the Bible
credible! For my own part, I feel that a flood of new light has been
shed by him over some incidents with which I was not in sympathy
before.”
“All right, have it your own way,” said I.
“You old goose!” said she. “Don't I know that why you have your knife in
poor Friswell is simply because he thought your scheme of treillage was
too elaborate.”
“Anyhow I'm going to carry it out 'according to plan,' to make use of a
classic phrase,” said I.
And then I hurried off to the tool-house; and it was only when I had
been there for some time that I remembered that the phrase which I had
fancied I was quoting very aptly, was the explanation of a retreat.
I hoped that it would not strike Dorothy in that way, and induce her to
remind me that it was much apter than I had desired it to be.
But there is no doubt that Friswell was right about Gehazi carrying out
the prescription given to Naaman, for he remained in the service of the
prophet, and he would not have been allowed to do that if he had been a
leper.
CHAPTER THE EIGHTH
I have devoted the foregoing chapter to Friswell without, I trust, any
unnecessary acrimony, but simply to show the sort of man he was who took
exception to the scheme of Formal Garden that I disclosed to him long
ago. He actually objected to the Formal Garden which I had in my mind.
But an atheist, like the prophet Habakkuk of the witty Frenchman, is
“_capable de tout_”
I have long ago forgiven Friswell for his vexatious objection, but I
admit that I am only human, and that now and again I awake in the still
hours of darkness from a nightmare in which I am tramping over formal
beds of three sorts of echiverias, pursued by Friswell, flinging at me
every now and again Mr. W. Robinson's volume on _Garden Design_,
which, as every one knows, is an unbridled denunciation of Sir Reginald
Blomfield's and Mr. Inigo Triggs's plea for _The Formal Garden_. But I
soon fall asleep again with, I trust, a smile struggling to the surface
of the perspiration on my brow, as I reflect upon my success in spite of
Friswell and the antiformalists.
More than twenty-five years have passed since the battle of the books
on the Formal Garden took place, adding another instance to the many
brought forward by Dorothy of a garden being a battlefield instead of
a place of peace. I shall refer to the fight in another chapter;
for surely a stimulating spectacle was that of the distinguished
horticulturalist attacking the distinguished architect with mighty
billets of yews which, like Samson before his fall, had never known
shears or secateur, while the distinguished architect responded with
bricks pulled hastily out from his builders' wall. In the meantime I
shall try to account for my treatment of my predecessor's lawn, which,
as I have already mentioned, occupied all the flat space between the
house and the mound with the cherries and mays and laburnums towered
over by the sycamores and chestnuts.
It was all suggested to me by the offer which 1 had at breaking-up price
of what I might call a “garden suite,” consisting of a fountain, with
a wide basin, and the carved stone edging for eight beds--sufficient
to transform the whole area of the lawn “into something rich and
strange,”--as I thought.
I had to make up my mind in a hurry, and I did so, though not without
misgiving. I had never had a chance of high gardening before, and I had
not so much confidence in myself as I have acquired since, misplaced
though it may be, in spite of my experience, I see now what a bold step
it was for me to take, and I think it is quite likely that I would have
rejected it if I had had any time to consider all that it meant. I had,
however, no more than twenty-four hours, and before a fourth of
that time had passed I received some encouragement in the form of my
publisher's half-yearly statement.
Now, Dorothy and I had simply been garden-lovers--I mean lovers of
gardens, though I don't take back the original phrase. We had never been
garden enthusiasts. We had gone through the Borghese, the Villa d'Este,
the Vatican, the bowers behind the Pitti and the Uffizi, and all the
rest of the show-places of Italy and the French Riviera--we had spent
delightful days at every garden-island of the Caribbean, and had gone on
to the plateaus of South America, where every prospect pleases and there
is a blaze of flowers beneath the giant yuccas--we had even explored Kew
together, and we had lived within a stone's throw of Holland House and
the painters' pleasaunces of Melbury Road, but with all we had remained
content to think of gardens without making them any important part of
our life. And this being so, I now see how arrogant was that act of
mine in binding myself down to a transaction with as far-reaching
consequences to me as that of Dr. Faustus entailed to him.