with men who had neither imagination nor brains, and people would have
us believe that it must be maintained--that frogs and toads should be
slain and that gardener is a proper noun of the masculine gender--that
manure must be filthy and that a garden should never look otherwise than
unfinished at any time of the year--that radiation is the same as frost,
and that watering should be done regularly and without reference to the
needs of the individual plants.
Lady Wolseley has done a great deal toward giving girls the freedom of
the garden. She has a small training ground on the motor road between
Lewes and Eastbourne. Of course it is not large enough to pay its way,
and I am told that in order to realise something on the produce, the
pony cart of a costermonger in charge of two of the young women goes
into Lewes laden with vegetables for sale. I have no doubt that the
vegetables are of the highest grade, but I am afraid that if it
becomes understood that the pupils are to be trained in the arts of
costermongery the prestige of her college, as it has very properly been
called by Lady Wolseley, will suffer.
What I cannot understand is why, with so admirable a work being done
at that place, it should not he subsidised by the State. It may be,
however, that Lady Wolseley has had such experience of the way in
which the State authorities mismanage almost everything they handle, as
prevents her from moving in this direction. The waste, the incompetence,
and the arrogance of all the Departments that sprang into existence with
the war are inconceivable. I dare say that Lady Wolseley has seen enough
during the past four years to convince her that if once the “State” had
a chance of putting a controlling finger upon one of the reins of the
college pony it would upset the whole apple-cart. The future of so
valuable an institution should not be jeopardised by the intrusion of
the fatal finger of a Government Department. The Glynde College should
be the Norland Institution of the nursery of Flora.
CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH
It was when a gardener with whom I had never exchanged a cross word
during the two years he was with me assured me that work was not work
but slavery in my garden--he had one man under him and appealed to me
for a second--that I made my apology to him and allowed him to take
unlimited leave of me and his shackles. He had been with me for over two
years, and during all this time the garden had been going from bad to
worse. At the end of his bondage it was absolutely deplorable. At no
time had we the courage to ask any visitor to walk round the grounds.
And yet the man knew the Latin name of every plant and every flower from
the cedar on the lawn to the snapdragon--he called it antirrhinum--upon
the wall; but if he had remained with me much longer there would have
been nothing left for him to give a name to, Latin or English.
I took over the garden and got in a boy to do the pot-washing at six
shillings a week, and a fortnight later I doubled his wages, so vast
a change, or rather, a promise of change, as was shown by the place.
Within a month I was paying him fifteen shillings, and within six
months, eighteen. He was an excellent lad, and in due time his industry
was rewarded by the hand of our cook. I parted with him reluctantly at
the outbreak of the war, though owing to physical defects he was never
called up.
It was when I was thrown on my own resources after the strain of
leave-taking with my slave-driven professor that I acquired the secret
of garden design which I have already revealed--namely, the multiplying
of “features” within the garden space.
It took time for me to carry out my plans, for I was very far from
seeing, as a proper garden designer would have done in a glance, how the
ground lent itself to “features” in various directions; and it was
only while I was working at one part that the possibilities of others
suggested themselves to me. It was the incident of my picking up in
a stonemason's yard for a few shillings a doorway with a shaped
architrave, that made me think of shutting off the House Garden, which
I had completed the previous year, from the rest. I got this work done
quite satisfactorily by the aid of a simple balustrade on each side.
Here there was an effective entrance to a new garden, where before
nothing would grow owing to the overshadowing by the sycamores beyond my
mound. My predecessor took refuge in a grove of euonyma, behind which
he artfully concealed the stone steps leading to the Saxon terrace. This
was one of the “features” of his day--the careful concealing of such
drawbacks in the landscape as stone steps. Rut as I could not see that
they were after all a fatal blot that should put an end to all hope to
make anything of the place, I pulled away the masses of euonyma, and
turned the steps boldly round, adding piers at the foot.
Here then was at my command a space of forty feet square, walled in,
and in the summer-shade of the high sycamores, and the winter-shade of a
beautifully-shaped and immense deciduous oak. And what was I to do with
it?
Before I left the interrogatory ground I saw with great clearness the
reflection of the graceful foliage in a piece of water. That was just
what was needed at the place, I was convinced--a properly puddled Sussex
dew-pond such as Gilbert White's swallows could hardly resist making
their winter quarters as the alternative to that long and tedious trip
to South Africa. The spot was clearly designed by Nature as a basin. On
three sides it had boundaries of sloping mounds, and I felt myself equal
to the business of completing the circle so that the basin would be in
its natural place.
I consulted my builder as to whether or not my plan was a rightly
puddled one--which was a way of asking if it would hold water in a
scientific as well as a metaphorical sense. He advised concrete, and
concrete I ordered, though I was quite well aware of the fact that in
doing so I must abandon all hopes of the swallows, for I knew that with
concrete there would be none of that mud in the pond which the great
naturalists had agreed was indispensable for the hibernating of the
birds.
A round pond basin was made, about fifteen feet in diameter, and
admirably made too. In the centre I created an island with the nozzle
of a single _jet d'eau_, carefully concealed, and by an extraordinary
chance I discovered within an inch or two of the brim of the basin, the
channel of an ancient scheme of drainage--it may have been a thousand
years old--and this solved in a moment the problem of how to carry
off the overflow. The water was easily available from the ordinary
“Company's” pipe for the garden supply; so that all that remained for
me to do was to tidy up the ground, which I did by getting six tons
of soft reddish sandstone from a neighbouring quarry and piling it in
irregular masses on two sectors of the circular space, taking care to
arrange for a scheme of “pockets” for small plants at one part and for
large ferns at another. The greatest elevation of this boundary was
about fifteen feet, and here I put a noble cliff weighing a ton and a
half, with several irregular steps at the base, the lowest being just
above a series of stone rectangular basins, connected by irregular
shallow channels in a descent to the big pond. Then I got a leaden pipe
with an “elbow” attachment to the Company's water supply beneath, and
contrived a sort of T-shaped spray which I concealed on the level of the
top of my cliff, and within forty-eight hours I had a miniature cascade
pouring over the cliff and splashing among the stone basins and the ir
channels--“_per averpace coi seguaci sui_”--in the large pond below.
[Illustration: 0197]
Of course it took a summer and a winter to give this little scheme a
chance of assimilating with Nature; but once it began to do so it did so
thoroughly. The cliff and the rocky steps, which I had made in memory
of the cascade at Platte Klip on the side of Table Mountain where I
had often enjoyed a bath, became beautifully slimy, and primroses were
blooming so as to hide the outlines of the rectangle, while Alpines and
sedums and harts-tongue ferns found accommodation in the pockets among
the stones. In the course of another year the place was covered with
vegetation and the sandstones had become beautifully weathered, and
sure enough, the boughs of the American oak had their Narcissus longings
realised, but without the Narcissus sequel.
Here, then, was a second “feature” accomplished; and we walk out of
the sunshine of the House Garden, and, passing through the carved stone
doorway, find ourselves in complete shade with the sound of tinkling
water in the air--when the taps are turned in the right direction; but
in the matter of water we are economical, and the cascade ceased to flow
while the war lasted.
I do not think that it is wrong to try to achieve such contrasts in
designing a range of gardens. The effect is great and it will never
appear to be cheap, provided that it is carried out naturally. I do not
think that in a place of the character of that just described one should
introduce such objects as shrubs in tubs, or clipped trees; nor should
one tolerate the appearance for the sake, perhaps, of colour, of any
plant or flower that might not be found in the natural scene on which
it is founded. We all know that in a rocky glen we need not look for
brilliant colour, therefore the introduction of anything striking
in this way would be a jarring note. To be sure I have seen the
irrepressible scarlet geranium blazing through some glens in the island
of St. Helena; but St. Helena is in the tropics, and a tropical glen is
not the sort to which we have become accustomed in England. If one has
lived at St. Helena for years and, on coming to England, wishes to be
constantly reminded of the little island of glens and gorges and that
immense “combe” where James Town nestles, beyond a doubt that strange
person could not do better than create a garden of gullies with the
indigenous geranium blazing out of every cranny. But I cannot imagine
any one being so anxious to perpetuate a stay among the picturesque
loneliness of the place. I think it extremely unlikely that if Napoleon
I. had lived to return to France, he would have assimilated any portion
of the gardens of Versailles with those that were under his windows
at Longwood. I could more easily fancy his making an honest attempt to
transform the ridge above Geranium Valley on which Longwood stands--if
there is anything of that queer residence left by the white ants--the
natural owners of the island--into a memory of the Grand Trianon, only
for the “_maggior dolore_” that would have come to him had such an
enterprise been successful.
My opinion is that a garden should be such as to cause a visitor to
exclaim,--
“How natural!” rather than, “How queer!”
A lake may be artificial; but it will only appear so if its location
is artificial; and, therefore, in spite of the fact that there are
countless mountain tarns in Scotland and Wales, it is safest for the
lake to be made on the lowest part of your ground. I dare say that a
scientific man without a conscience could, by an arrangement of forced
draught apparatus, cause an artificial river to flow uphill instead of
down; but though such a stream would be quite a pleasing incident of one
of the soirees of the Royal Society at Burlington House, I am certain
that it would look more curious than natural if carried out in an
English garden ground. The artificial canals of the Dutch gardens and
of those English gardens which were made to remind William III. of his
native land, will look natural in proportion to their artificiality.
This is not so hard a saying as it may seem; I mean to say that if the
artificial canal apes a natural river, it will look unnatural. If it
aims at being nothing but a Dutch canal, it will be a very interesting
part of a garden--a Dutch garden--plan, and as such it will seem in the
right and natural place. If a thing occupies a natural place--the place
where you expect to find it--it must be criticised from the standpoint
of its environment, so to speak, and not on the basis of the canons that
have a general application.
And to my mind the difference between what is right and what is wrong in
a garden is not the difference between what is the fashion and what is
not the fashion; but between the appropriate and the inappropriate. A
rectangular canal is quite right in a copy of the Dutch garden; but it
would be quite wrong within sight of the cascades of the Villa d'Este or
any other Italian garden. Topiary work is quite right in a garden that
is meant frankly to be a copy of one of the clipped shrubberies of
the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century that preceded landscape
treatment, but it is utterly out of place in a garden where flowers
grow according to their own sweet will, as in a rosery or a herbaceous
border. A large number of people dislike what Mr. Robinson calls
“Vegetable Sculpture,” and would not allow any example to have a place
on their property; but although I think I might trust myself to resist
every temptation to admit such an element into a garden of mine, I
should not hesitate to make a feature of it if I wanted to be constantly
reminded of a certain period of history. It would be as unjust to
blame me on this account as it would be to blame Mr. Hugh Thomson for
introducing topiary into one of his exquisite illustrations to Sir Roger
de Coverley. I would, I know, take great pleasure in sitting for hours
among the peacocks and bears and cocked hats of the topiary sculptor,
because I should feel myself in the company of Sir Roger and Will
Wimble, and I consider that they would be very good company indeed; but
I admit that I should prefer that that particular garden was on some
one else's property. I should spend a very pleasant twenty minutes in.
a neighbour's--a near neighbour's--reproduction of the grotto at Pope's
Villa at Twickenham, not because I should be wanting in a legitimate
abhorrence of the thing, but because I should be able to repeople it
with several very pleasant people--say, Arbuthnot, Garth, and Mr. Henry
Labouchere. But heaven forbid that I should spend years of my life in
the construction of a second Pope's grotto as one of the features of my
all-too-constricted garden space.
One could easily write a book on “Illustrating Gardens,” meaning not the
art of reproducing illustrations of gardens, but the art of constructing
gardens that would illustrate the lives of certain interesting people
at certain interesting periods. The educational value of gardens formed
with such an intent would be great, I am sure. I had occasion some
time ago to act the part of their governess to my little girls, and to
Dorothy's undisguised amazement I took the class into the garden, and
not knowing how to begin--whether with an inquiry into the economic
value of a thorough grounding in Conic Sections, or a consideration of
the circumstances attending the death of Mary Queen of Scots--I have
long believed that a modern coroner's jury would have found that the
cause of death was blood poisoning, as there is no evidence that the
fatal axe was aseptic, not having been boiled before using--I begged the
girls to walk round with me.
“This is something quite new,” said Rosamund--“lessons in a garden.”
“Is it?” I asked. “Did Miss Pinkerton ever tell you about a man named
Plato?”
It was generally admitted that if she had ever done so they would have
remembered the name.
I saw at once that this was a chance that might not occur again for me
to recover my position. The respect that I have for Miss Pinkerton is
almost equal to that I have for Lemprière or Dr. Wilkam Smith.
I unfolded like a philaetery the stores of my knowledge on the subject
of the garden of Academus, where Plato and his pupils were wont to meet
and discover--
“How charming is divine philosophy!
Not harsh and crabbed as some fools affirm,
But musical as is Apollo's lute,”
and the children learned for the first time the origin of the name
Academy. They were struck powerfully with the idea, which they thought
an excellent one, of the open-air class.
This was an honest attempt on my part to illustrate something through
the medium of the garden; but Miss Pinkerton's methods differed from
those of Plato: the blackboard was, in her opinion, the only medium of
illustration for a properly organised class.
It was a daily delight to me when I lived in Kensington to believe that
Addison must have walked through my garden when he had that cottage on
the secluded Fulham Road, far away from the distracting noise and bustle
of the town, and went to pay a visit to his wife at Holland Park. Some
of the trees of that garden must have been planted even before Addison's
day. There was a mighty mulberry-tree--a straggler from Melbury (once
Mulbery) Road--and this was probably one of the thousands planted by
King James when he became possessed of that admirable idea of silk
culture in England. Now, strange to say, I could picture to myself
much more vividly the presence of Addison in that garden than I can the
bustle of the old Castle's people within the walls which dominate
my present ground. These people occupied the Castle from century to
century. When they first entered into possession they wore the costume
of the Conquest, and no doubt they honoured the decrees of fashion as
they changed from year to year; but they faded away without leaving a
record of any personality to absorb the attention of the centuries, and
without such an individuality I find it impossible to realise the scene,
except for an occasional hour when the moonlight bathes the tower of the
ruined keep, and I fancy that I hear the iron tread of the warder going
his rounds--I cannot plunge myself into the spacious days of plate
armour. It is the one Great Man or the one Great Woman that enables us
nowadays to realise his or her period, and our Castle has unhappily no
ghost with a name, and one ghost with a name is more than an armed host
of nonentities. There is a tradition--there is just a scrap of evidence
to support it--that Dr. Samuel Johnson once visited a house in the High
Street and ate cherries in the garden. Every time I have visited that
house I have seen the lumbering Hogarthian hero intent upon his feast,
and every time that I am in that garden I hear the sound of his “Why,
sir----”
I complained bitterly to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he was with us in
the tilt-yard garden, that we had not even the shadow of a ghost--ghosts
by the hundred, no doubt, but no real ghost of some one that did things.
“You will have to create one for yourself,” he said.
“One must have bones and flesh and blood--plenty of blood, before one
can create a ghost, as you well know,” said I. “I have searched every
available spot for a name associated with the place, but I have found
nothing.”
“Don't be in a hurry; he'll turn up some day when you're not expecting
him,” said my friend.
[Illustration: 0208]
But I am still awaiting an entity connected with the Castle, and I
swear, as did the young Lord Hamlet:--
“By Heaven! I'll make a ghost of him that lets me.”
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH
Our Garden of Peace is a Garden of Freedom--freedom of thought, freedom
of converse. In it one may cultivate all the flora of illiteracy without
rebuke, as well as the more delicate, but possibly less fragrant growths
of literature, including those hybrids which I suppose must give great
satisfaction to the cultivators. We assert our claim to talk about
whatever we please: we will not submit to be told that anything is out
of our reach as a subject: if we cannot reach the things that are
so defined we can at least make an attempt to knock them down with a
bamboo. Eventually we may even discourse of flowers; but if we do we
certainly will not adopt the horticultural standard of worth, which
is “of no/some commercial value.” A good many things well worthy of a
strict avoidance in conversation possess great commercial value, and
others that we hold very close to our hearts are of no more intrinsic
value than a Victoria Cross. We have done and shall do our best,
however, not to make use of the word culture, unless it be in connection
with a disease. The lecturers on tropical diseases talk of their
“cholera cultures” and their “yellow fever cultures” and their “malaria
cultures but we know that there is a more malignant growth than any of
these: it is spelt by its cultivators with the phonetic “K” and it has
banished the word that begins with a “c” from the English language,
unless, as I say, in referring to the development of a malady. That is
where victory may be claimed by the vanquished: the beautiful word is
banished for ever from the English literature in which it once occupied
an exalted place.
It is because of the Freedom which we enjoy in this Garden of Peace of
ours that I did not hesitate for a moment to quote Tennyson to Dorothy
a few' days ago, when we were chatting about Poets' Gardens, from
the “garden inclosed” of the Song of Solomon--the most beautiful ever
depicted--to that of _Maud_. It requires some courage to quote Tennyson
beyond the limits of our own fireside in these days. The days when he
was constantly quoted now seem as the days of Noë, before the Flood--the
flood of the formless which we are assured is poetry nowadays. It is
called “The New School.” Some twenty-five or thirty years ago something
straddled across our way through the world labelled “New Art.” Its
lines were founded upon those of the crushed cockroach, and it may have
contributed to the advance of the temperance movement; for its tendency
was certainly to cause any inebriate who found a specimen watching
him wickedly from the mouth of a vase of imitation pewter on the
mantel-shelf in a drawingroom, or in the form of a pendant in
sealing-wax enamel on the neck of a young woman, to pull himself
together and sign anything in reason in the direction of abstaining.
The new poetry is the illiterary equivalent of the old “New Art.” It
is flung in our faces with the effect of a promiscuous handful from the
bargain counter of a draper's cheap sale--it is a whiz of odd lengths
and queer colours, and has no form but plenty of flutter. Poetry may not
be as a great critic said it was--form and form and nothing but form;
but it certainly is not that amorphous stuff which is jerked into many
pages just now. I have read pages of it in which the writers seem to
have taken as a model of design one of the long dedications of the
eighteenth century, or perhaps the “lettering” on the tombstone of the
squire in a country church, or, most likely of all, the half column of
“scare headings” in a Sunday newspaper in one of the Western States of
America.
It may begin with a monosyllable, and be followed by an Alexandrine;
then come a stuttering halfdozen unequal ribbon lengths, rather
shop-soiled, and none of them riming; but suddenly we find the tenth
line in rime with the initial monosyllable which you have forgotten.
Then there may come three or four rimes and as many half-rimes--f-sharp
instead of f--and then comes a bundle of prosaic lines with the mark
of the scissors on their ragged endings: the ravellings are assumed
to adorn the close as the fringes of long ago were supposed to give a
high-class “finish” to the green rep upholstering of the drawing-room
centre ottoman.
And yet alongside this sort of thing we pick up many thin volumes of
verse crowded with beauty of thought, of imagination, of passion.
And then what do we find given to us every week in _Punch_ and several
of the illustrated papers? Poem after poem of the most perfect form
in rhythm and rimes--faultless double rimes and triple and quadruple
syllables all ringing far more true than any in _Hudibras_ or the
_Ingoldsby Legends_. Sir Owen Seaman's verses surpass anything in the
English language for originality both in phrase and thought, and Adrian
Ross has shown himself the equal of Gilbert in construction. The editor
of _Punch_ has been especially happy in his curry-combing of the German
ex-Kaiser; we do not forget that it was his poem on the same personage,
which appeared in _The World_ after the celebrated telegram to Kruger,
that gave him his sure footing among the _élite_ of satirical humour.
“The Pots--
Dam silly,”
was surely the most finished sting that ever came from the tail of what
I venture to call “vespa-verse.”
I remember how, when I came upon Barham's rime,--
“Because Mephistopheles
Had thrown in her face a whole cup of hot coffee-lees,”