I had occasion to go to Guildford yesterday despite the weather, and met
in the train our eminent horticultural acquaintance, Mr. R. P. We have
always a good deal to say to one another on the subject of our
respective gardens, although his is a long-established and renowned one,
ours such a callow young thing that it is hardly fit as yet to be called
a garden at all. On this occasion, seeing that he was coming from
London, my first remark was not a horticultural one.
“Is there anything fresh?” I asked. “News seems so often to come in just
after the morning papers are out.”
“Fresh? Oh, you mean about the war? No, I think not. Everybody seems to
be pretty sick over the whole business. I saw Sir F. J. the day before
yesterday, and he was very much in the dumps about it. He says the
Tommies out there don’t like it one bit. That they have got their tails
regularly between their legs, and I’m sure _I_ don’t wonder.”
“How dare he!--I mean I don’t believe a word of that!” I exclaimed.
“Anything else I am willing to believe, but not that. We have got our
tails between our legs here at home if you like; I am quite ready to
admit that. But they! Never!”
“Well, I don’t know. I only tell you what I hear. They have had a
baddish time, you must remember. Stormberg and all that!--quite enough
to give anyone the jumps, _I_ should say. Of course it has been kept out
of the papers. In the papers the Tommies always figure as heroes. Is
Anemone Blanda in flower with you yet?"--this with a sudden rise of
animation.
“Anemone Blanda?” I repeated, feeling slightly confused by the rapidity
of the transition. “Yes. At least no. I think not--I haven’t looked
lately.”
“It is with me! Sixteen tufts in full flower--beauties! I shelter them a
bit of course, but only to save them from getting knocked about. You
never saw such a colour as they are! Yours were the pale blue ones,
weren’t they? I know there’s a lot of that sort in the trade that are
sold as Anemone Blanda, but they’re not the right Blanda at all. Mine
are as blue as, oh, as blue as--blue paint.”
“We have numbers of bulbs at present in flower,” I said severely.
“Scillas and chinodoxas, and daffodils, and tulips, and Iris Alata, and
many others.”
“Ah, potted bulbs. They’re poor sort of things generally, don’t you
think? Some people, I believe, like them though.”
“We have Cyclamen Coum in flower out of doors,” I added; garden vanity,
or more probably deflected ill-humour, arousing in me a sudden spirit of
violent horticultural rivalry.
“Oh, you have, have you?"--this in a tone of somewhat enhanced respect.
“Don’t you shelter it at all?”
“Not in the least!” I replied contemptuously. “We grow it out in the
copse; on the stones; in all directions. It is a perfect weed with us.
No weather seems to make the slightest difference.”
I am really surprised that I did not assert that we had Orchids and
Bougainvillæas growing out of doors in the snow! It is probable that I
should have done so in another five minutes, for irritation sometimes
takes the oddest forms. Luckily for my veracity our roads just then
diverged; my horticultural acquaintance getting out at the next station,
and I continuing on my way to Guildford.
I don’t think I have ever in my life felt more ruffled, more thoroughly
exasperated than I was by that most uncalled-for remark about the
Tommies. Had they been all individually my sons or my nephews I doubt
if I could have felt more insulted! I adore my garden, and yield to no
one in my estimation of its supreme importance as a topic; still there
are moments when even horticulture must learn to bow its head; when the
reputation of one’s Flag rises to a higher place in one’s estimation
than even the reputation of one’s flower-beds. “Anemone Blanda!” I
repeated several times to myself in the course of the afternoon, and
each time with a stronger feeling of exasperation. “_Anemone Blanda_,
indeed!”