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Cornell University

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The original of this book is in
the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http:/www.archive.org/details/cu31924014933752

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES
AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

IN AND ROUND LONDON

a2ardsipuotey NOH HONOAOTTAVINV

GARDENS CELEBRITIES

CELEBRATED GARDENS
IN AND AROUND LONDON

ey
JESSIE MACGREGOR

with QO Coloured Ptatas

aid © Venetl Drawinas
by the Author. ”

LONDON > - - HUTCHINSON €& CY
PATERNOSTER ROW % ce & os

‘‘And if indeed in some old garden thou and I have wrought
And made fresh flowers bloom from hoarded seed,
And fragrance of old days and deeds have brought
Back to folk weary, all was not for nought;
No little part it was for me to play
The idle singer of an empty day.”
WILLIAM MORRIS,

“ The Earthly Paradise."’

TO THE MEMORY OF
MY SISTER AMY

CONTENTS

CHAP,
J.— INTRODUCTORY
II.—LaMBETH PaLacE AND GARDENS.
II.—Futyam Patace anp GARDENS
IV.—Sion House anp GarpDENs, ISLEworTH
V.—Tue CuetsEa “ PuysickKE GARDEN”
VI.—MarLeoroucH Housr aNnD GARDEN
VII.—Cuiswick Housrt AND GARDENS .
VIII.—Watpo.te House, THE Mau, Cuiswick
IX.—HoLLanp HousE aND GARDENS .

X.—HocartH Houst anp GARDEN, CHISWICK

XI.—No. 3, Tue Grove, HicucatTe, AND SAMUEL TayLor COLERIDGE.

XII.—CartyLe Houset, CHELSEA .

XIII.—Keutmscotr HousE anp GarRDEN, Upper Mati, HAMMERSMITH,

AND W1LL1AmM Morris

XIV.—LeicHTonN Housrt, KENSINGTON, AND Lorp LEIGHTON

AFTERWORD ‘ $ ‘ ‘ ‘ é

114
139
154
188
198
227
237
255

271
297
321

PREFACE

For kind permission to make the drawings reproduced in the following
pages, and for the facilities so freely given me in doing so, my thanks are due

To Her Gracious Majesty Queen Alexandra. F

His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury.

His Grace the late Duke of Northumberland.

The Right Honourable Mary Countess of Ilchester.

The Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London.

Major Goldman, M.P., of Walpole House, The Mall, Chiswick.

The late Dr. Tuke and Charles Tuke, Esq.

Charles Grant Church, Esq., of 8, The Grove, Highgate.

Warwick Draper, Esq., formerly of Kelmscott House, Upper Mall,
Hammersmith.

The Trustees of Hogarth House, Chiswick ; The ‘“‘ Physicke Garden,”
Chelsea ; Carlyle House, Chelsea, and Leighton House, Kensington.

I also cordially acknowledge the valuable aid I have received, through
information not otherwise obtainable, from Mary Countess of Ilchester, The
Lady Frances Balfour, The Hon. Charlotte Knollys and Lady Thornycroft.

And there are two others to whom—though I do not name them—I am
deeply grateful, for without their sympathy and steady, kindly encourage-
ment I am inclined to think the book would never have been written—or,
at least, completed.

With regard to the work itself, I should like to say in explanation of a
certain want of continuity that may be felt in its pages, the manner of
its genesis should be known.

Pictures in a picture gallery are regarded as distinct entities, but the
chapters of a book (unless it be frankly a collection of short stories) ought
to have some logical connection. I have dealt chronologically with the
various histories related in the following pages, as far as it has been possible
to do so. Also, if the Reader will look for it, there is a well-defined chain
of circumstance linking together many of the chapters in ‘“ Gardens of
Celebrities ’—but since its existence is accidental, and it is broken in places
—the book, I fear, must plead guilty to a Jack of cohesion.

This is largely because the illustrations earliest in point of time—those of
Kelmscott House, Hogarth House and Holland House, which were executed

PREFACE

as long ago as 1911 and 1912—were originally intended solely for an exhi-
bition of garden pictures. The exhibition was inevitably deferred, when it
was decided that they should first appear in book form, because the drawings
had to be held over for reproduction in colour. oo,

In its first inception, the raison d’étre of the book was purely a pictorial
one, and the text accompanying the pictures would therefore have been
merely elucidatory and descriptive. The text, in short, was to have illus-
trated the drawings, not, as now, vice versa.

But alas! in six months there followed the cosmic upheaval of the last
four years—with the inevitable postponement or destruction of all human
plans and projects. In August, 1914, when I was in the full swing and
enjoyment of my outdoor work—like a bolt from the blue—the measureless
calamity of the Great War was uponus! At the moment when all eyes were
turned to the stricken fields of France and Flanders, when, there, and else-
where in the wide area of strife, husbands, sons, brothers and nephews—
heroes all, in their readiness and steadfastness, martyrs in their faith—were,
voluntarily, paying so heavy a price for the ultimate freedom of mankind
—none at home would have had heart or time to consider the beauty and the
peace of gardens—and therefore the book itself was—more than once—post-
poned.

But my own small bit of work went on. The drawings themselves were
ready in 1915—and in working at the text I came unexpectedly upon a
mine so rich that, since the unhappy prolongation of the war allowed it—
I seized the chance to treat my subject—or rather subjects—for thirteen
different ones are dealt with—much more fully. To treat it exhaustively,
even without reference to many interesting or beautiful metropolitan gardens
existing, which I have not so much as mentioned—would be impossible within
the limits of one volume.

And the book, even so far as it goes, is incomplete. I had purposed, as a
matter of course, to include a drawing of ‘‘ Strawberry ”’—the famous
garden of Horace Walpole, and to make more than a passing allusion to his
place in the history of gardening ; but much to my regret I was not permitted
to do so. And though facilities were kindly given me to draw in the gardens
of Gray’s Inn, laid out, it is said, by Bacon himself, I found that they had
been so sorely cut up and worn by the perpetual drilling of thousands of
troops, that on zsthetic grounds I was compelled to leave them out.

JESSIE MaccREcor.
Swallowfield,
October 15th, 1918.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

WATER COLOUR DRAWINGS

Maruporoucu House. : : ; ‘ ; , . Frontispiece
LAMBETH :

The Palace from the Gardens. : : ' ‘ . Facing p. 82

The Tudor Gateway . : , : : : : : 6 46
FULHAM :

The Courtyard . , : i ; ‘ _ 86

The Flower Walk in the Walled eiiian ‘ 5 : ‘ a 90

Gateway between Walled Garden and Grounds ; ‘ : ee 92
SIon :

Looking toward Parterres and Fountain ‘ ‘ ‘ . 3 98

Looking toward the River Thames ; : ‘ ; 33 110
PuysickE GARDEN, CHELSEA :

View of Garden . : : : ; ‘ ; : a 134
Cuiswick House :

The Obelisk in the Pool ‘ ; ‘ : : : ; - 166

The Inigo Jones Gateway . 3 , : , ' , 5 170

The Conservatory ‘ ‘ ; j : : ‘ F “i 182
Wa pote House, THE Maui, CHISwIck : .

+ View of House and Garden ‘ ; : ; : : 35 194

Houuanp House:

The Dutch or West Garden ‘ : : : F : 3 218
Hocartu House:

View of House and Garden ; , F : : : 7 232
No. 8, THe Grove, HiGuGatTe :

View of Garden and House ; , ; F F . ss 250
CarLYLE HouskE, CHELSEA :

View of Garden and House ' ‘ 7 : . : ee 260
Ketmscott Housrt, Upper Maui, HAMMERSMITH :

The Garden, looking from the River . ‘ : : : 9 270

View of House and Garden, looking riverwards . . ‘ 45 292
LretcHTton Houst, KENSINGTON :

The Studio Balcony, from Garden : 2 : . , ‘5 296

xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PENCIL DRAWINGS

LaMBETH :

The Fig-tree, in Greater Courtyard . ‘ F : . Facing p. 60
Fuuam :

The Entrance to the Palace . ‘ ‘ ‘ ; : 55 64
SION :

Ancient Cedar in Grounds . : ' ; : . ” 112
PuysICcKE GARDEN :

The Gateway in Swan Walk : ; . : : : re 120
Cuiswick House: ‘

Sketch of Temple in Grounds. ; ' ; ‘ : 164

South Front and Cedar Avenue . : z ‘ : F a 168

xil

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES AND
CELEBRATED GARDENS

CHAPTER I

FTER the Romans left Britain, about a.p. 300, the art
of landscape gardening, in which they had _ instructed
the islanders, died out, and under the Saxons the garden

was merely a yard; the word “ yard’’—etymologically derived
from the Anglo-Saxon geard, t.e., hedges, enclosure—signifying the
small, enclosed space in which those plants intended for domestic
use were sheltered. But though neglected in England, the art
had advanced in France; and when, in 1066, the Normans came
over, they reintroduced it, bringing with them many plants and
fruits hitherto unknown in Britain, and an appreciation of flowers
for their own sake. The author of ‘‘ Gardens Old and New ” tells
an anecdote that attests this: Christina, Abbess of the famous
Abbey of Romney, in Hampshire, who was closely allied to the
former royal house of England, had under her care her young
niece, Matilda, afterwards Queen of Henry I. She must have
been considered beautiful, for William Rufus desired to see her,
and when (his reputation being dubious) the Abbess demurred,
he pretended that he had only come to see the flowers in the
convent garden, reported to be worth a visit.

Henry of Huntingdon, an early authority, tells us that Henry II.
made a ‘‘ Parke,”’ or chase, at Woodstock, in Oxfordshire. In a
bower in its leafy groves, approached by a labyrinthine path,
accessible only to one who had the clew, the King concealed his
love, fair Rosamund Clifford. It was there his Queen discovered
her, and offered her the choice of death by the poison bowl or
the dagger. ‘Tradition has it that she chose the former.

1

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

Speaking of Blenheim in his ‘‘ Observations on Modern Gardens,”
Wheatley says: ‘The sides are open lawn. On that farthest
from the house formerly stood the palace of Henry I., celebrated
in many an ancient ditty as ‘ Fair Rosamund’s Bower.’” A little
clear stream, which rises there, is by the country people still called
‘‘Fair Rosamund’s Well.”’ Since at Blenheim the remains of a
Roman Villa were found, it is possible that the trees in Henry’s
‘‘ Parke” were survivors of those that had been in the garden of
that Villa; and if so, Blenheim may claim to be the most ancient,
as it is one of the finest examples of landscape gardening, in the
country.

The first English writer on Gardens was one Alexander Mark-
ham, foster-brother of Richard Coeur de Lion—who became a
professor in the University of Paris, and towards the end of his
life, Abbot of the Augustinian convent of Cirencester.

In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge, there is a poem
entitled, ‘‘ John the Gardener,” composed in the fourteenth
century, that gives practical advice upon sowing and grafting ;
and a fifteenth century manuscript still extant, contains a treatise
bearing the wordy title :

‘* For a man to know in which time of the year it is best for
a man to plant trees, also to make a tree bear all manner of fruit
of divers colours and odours, with many other things.” The
reader is advised to give due attention to the signs of the Zodiac,
for in that age astrology—the forerunner of astronomy—con-
cerned with the supposed influence of the stars on terrestrial
affairs, determined the times to sow and to graft; and the efforts
of the alchemist to transmute inferior metal into gold were
rivalled by the attempt of the horticulturist to produce hybrid
varieties of flowers and fruit—peaches with the kernels of nuts,
stoneless cherries, pomegranates from peaches, and so forth.

Chaucer is a rich mine in which to dig for information on the
subject of medieval gardens. He took many of his plots from
Boccaccio. “The Black Death,” the most devastating of the
five visitations of the plague in the fourteenth century, of which
the Italian poet, in the introduction to the ‘‘ Decameron” gives a
vivid and terrible description, swept through Europe—reaching
Florence, where sixty thousand persons are said to have died, in
1348, when Chaucer was eight years old. Boccaccio’s lavish praises

2

AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

of the garden wherein Fiametto and her companions took refuge,
and which he likened to a Paradise on earth—have almost their
counterpart in Chaucer’s ‘‘ Romaunt of the Rose,”’ in which he
describes :
A ‘garden fair to see,” bounded by a high, embattled wall,
and entered only by “‘ a wicked smal... .”
** So fair it was, that trusteth wel

It seemed a place esperitual

For certes! as at my devys

There is no place in Paradys

So good in for to dwelle or be
As in that garden thoughte me.”

He describes the concert of the birds—the nightingale, the
finch, the laverock (sky lark), the throstle, the mavis, and the
turtle, each one seeking to eclipse the other in the sweetness of
its song—truly a chorus known to few foreign lands. He tells
us also of another garden :

‘A garden saw I, full of bloomy bowes

Upon a river in a grene mede .. .
With flowers whyte, blew, yeloe and rede.”

The poet of the “‘ Canterbury Tales ” died in 1400, and thirty-
seven years later another British singer, James I. of Scotland, fell
by the hands of assassins at Perth. His poetic genius was of no
mean order, but I fear Scotland may scarcely claim him exclusively,
since it was nurtured in England, where he was a captive for nineteen
years. From his prison at Windsor he beheld the fair young
daughter of the Earl of Sussex walking in the garden below, and
fell in love with her. She ultimately became his Queen.

In his beautiful poem, ‘‘ The King’s Quhair,” he describes the
garden :

“So thick the boughis and the leavis greene
Beshaded all the alleys that there were,
And mids of every arbour might be seen

The sharp greene sweete juniper,
Growing so fair with branches here and there.

‘“* And on the smalle greene twistie sat
The little nightingale and sung
So loud and clear, the hymis consecrat
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud, the wallis rung
Right of their song.”
3 1*

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

Then, walking beneath his tower, he espies the maiden and thus
apostrophizes her :

‘“* Ah sweet ! are ye a worldly creature
Or heavenly thing in likeness of nature ?

‘“* Or are ye God Cupides own princess
And comin are to loose me out of band ?
Or are ye very Nature the goddess
That have depainted with yr heavenly hand
This garden full of flowers as they stand ? ”

The medieval ‘‘ arbour” here referred to, according to W. C.
Hazlitt, was not a summer-house as we understand it, but a
garden within a garden, sufficiently large to enclose great trees.
He quotes in support of this statement the ancient rhyme :

“* And in the garden, as I weene
Was an arbour fair and greene ;
And in the arbour was a tree,
A fairer in the world might never be.”

In the King’s poem before quoted, however, the word “ arbour ”
is so used as to convey much of its present meaning—a meaning
which it had indisputably acquired at the beginning of the
sixteenth century.

So early as the first century after Christ the English climate had
been eulogized by Tacitus as favourable to the cultivation of all
vegetables and fruits except the vine and the olive. Therefore,
it is not surprising to find that melons, cucumbers, and many of
the more expensive products of the kitchen garden were common
in England as early as the reign of Edward III. But the Wars
of the Roses interrupted agriculture, and these vegetables after-
wards were unknown, until the reign of Henry VIII., when the
art of gardening came to a new birth.

There was for some time a curious prejudice against hops, and
in the reign of Henry VI. Parliament was petitioned against the
‘“ wicked weed.” But in 1576 Reginald Scott published a pamphlet
entitled, ‘“‘ The Perfect Platform of a Hoppe Garden.”

Potatoes were not in common use before the middle of the
seventeenth century. A writer in the ‘‘ Topographical Antiquities
of Great Britain and Ireland” in 1753, though himself of opinion
that Sir Walter Raleigh brought them over, remarks that “ the

4

AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

public is much obliged for the cultivation of them to the
anonymous author of ‘ England’s Happiness increased, or a
Remedy against succeeding Dear Years, by a Plantation of
Potatoes’ (1664). And he further tells us that “ sallads,”
carrots, and turnips, and cabbages, were brought over from Holland.
And we read of pumpkins, garlic, onions and peas.

‘* Rassins ” (raisins) are said to have formed part of the second
course of the institution feast of Archbishop Nevil in 1464; if
this be true, they must have come from abroad. Pippins were
introduced in 1514, and the ‘ pale gooseberry’ about the same
time; and so well have we succeeded with the gooseberry, that
we have come almost to regard it as indigenous. On the other
hand, though both oranges and figs were certainly known in England
in the reign of Henry VIII., orange trees have never flourished here
in the open, nor have fig trees done much better. The two famous
fig trees mentioned in the account of Lambeth Palace, are descended
from those planted in the Archiepiscopal garden by Cardinal Pole,
and were then regarded as “‘ trees of curiosity ” and very carefully
nurtured.

It is said that the first mulberry trees were those in the Protector
Somerset’s garden at Sion, Middlesex, and were doubtless planted
under the auspices of Dr. Turner, physician to Edward VL., of
whom I shall have more to say. However, according to others,
the mulberry was first planted in the gardens at Hatfield.

It seems to have been James I., and not Queen Elizabeth as
sometimes supposed, who, with a view to the establishment of
the silk industry in this country, caused the mulberry tree to be
planted freely in the South of England.

That strawberries were common in England in the sixteenth
century we have Shakespearean authority for stating, for Gloucester
says in Richard III. : «‘When I was last in Holborn I saw good
strawberries in your garden there. I dobeseech you send for some
of them.” But whether Shakespeare was guilty of an anachronism
in mentioning the fruit as having been grown in this country a
hundred years earlier, I do not pretend to know. We read of
peaches, and even citrons, and attempts were made to cultivate the
grape, but without success.

An essay on gardening by a certain Thomas Hills, which

appeared about 1560, shows a distinct advance both in the theory
5

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

and practice of horticulture. He recommends the planting of
hedges of briars and thorns, and dwells much on the maze, or
labyrinth, an example of which we see at Hampton Court. Indeed,
in Hills’ time no self-respecting horticulturist would have laid
out a garden of any importance, without one of these curious
places. in which to “sport at times.’ Such treatises, and the
various herbals, were written avowedly to advance the science
of horticulture ; but there are many accidental allusions to garden-
ing and flower-growing in the general literature of the age, which
throw valuable and illuminating sidelights on the history of
gardening in England in the Middle Ages.

In the chapter on Sion reference is made to Turner—and his
herbal. Following his lead, in Elizabeth’s reign, appeared a notable
work, the ‘‘ Herbal or Historie of Plantes,” by John Gerarde, who,
as we shall find when we come to the Chelsea ‘* Physicke Garden,”
owned the first herb garden in this country. The earliest on the
Continent was that established at Padua. Gerarde’s garden was
attached to his house in Holborn, and must have been of con-
siderable size, since he was able to raise eleven hundred different
plants and trees. He was a citizen and surgeon-apothecary of
London, and head gardener to Lord Burleigh.

Nor were medicinal plants and herbs forgotten. They were
cultivated by the thrifty dames of the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries in every farm-house, manor house, and baronial hall.
Dwelling for the most part, as they did, in country districts where
intercommunication between towns, and villages, and outlying
hamlets, was painfully slow and difficult, and in an age when the
science of medicine was in its infancy, in default of the presence
of well-equipped disciples of Esculapius, they were content, to a
great extent, to practise the healing art themselves; and if many
of their nostrums, as we find from the herbal literature, were
extravagant and absurd, and calculated, according to modern ideas,
to do their patients more harm than good, they themselves brought
often to the service of humanity—if not science and learning—at any
rate, skill, initiative, and common sense, as well as the wisdom
which may be derived from practical experience, and handed
down from mother to daughter. But there can be but little doubt
that, up to the sixteenth century, we owe the preservation, if not

positively the new birth of the science, after the Wars of the Roses,
6

AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

largely to the monks. They were able and industrious gardeners,
and often skilled in the application of the herbs and simples they
so assiduously cultivated ; and in remote neighbourhoods, in the
absence of the leech or apothecary, must frequently have been
called upon to undertake, not only the cure of souls, but the cure
of bodies also. We owe a good deal to the ‘* monks of old”; their
place knows them no more, though such names as “‘ Grey Friars ”’
and ‘“‘ Covent ”—or Convent—‘‘ Garden ” are suggestive of the old
Romish times.

It would seem from the illuminated manuscripts in the British
Museum and elsewhere, that the English medieval gardens were,
for the most part, square in shape, and had grass plots, sanded
walks, and little alleys and borders. Box played a great part in
the outlining of these borders, and there was generally in each
domain a “‘ Privy Garden,” or playing place. A little later there
was invariably a bowling-green. Among the characteristic features
of the Tudor garden may also be cited the ‘‘ Mount,” by means
of which in a flat country a view of the landscape could be
obtained.

It was ascended by a winding path, described by an old writer as
being ‘‘ like a cockle-shell, to come to the top without paign.”
Mounts did not go out of fashion until the boundary wall was
superseded in the eighteenth century by the sunk fence, or “‘ Ha ha.”’
In large Tudor establishments there was often a gallery leading
from the great house to the pleasure-grounds, by which they
could be reached under cover; and even in the time of Erasmus
these and other garden buildings were sometimes frescoed inside,
a fashion which came from Italy. Erasmus speaks of a garden
with such galleries, the doors painted in imitation of grass and
flowers, and the walls representing woods. At a later period
Evelyn describes one which he had seen at Rucil, (that he
has the bad taste to commend) in which “‘ the arch of Constantine
was painted on a wall in oyle as large as the real one at Rome,
so well done that even a man skilled in painting may mistake it
for stone and sculpture ;”’ and so cleverly was the sky painted in
the opening of the arch, that birds dashed themselves against it,
thinking to fly through.

The old game of bowls is comparatively little played nowadays,
except by rustics in remote country villages; but at the time of

7

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

which I am writing a banked-up bowling-green was attached to
almost every considerable residence, and answered the same
purpose as the modern tennis-ground: or perhaps it would be
more correct to say of the golf links; for though more limited
in area, it provided suitable recreation ground for men of mature
years ; and it is said that Drake was playing bowls when the Armada
was sighted. At any rate, it was the favourite pastime of the
sturdy squires and yeomen of England, just as the maypole dance
was that of her youths and maidens.

It was under the Tudors that English gardens first assumed
national character. The Tudors were richer than the Plantagenets,
and more secure in possession, and had also the advantage of the
new learning of the Renaissance that, ere long reaching our shores
and providing a stimulus to every form of intellectual activity,
inspired fresh ideas and undertakings in horticulture, scarcely less
than in literature and art. Henry VIII. had done much to
encourage gardening and garden-planning, and justly celebrated
appear to have been the royal gardens of Nonsuch, near Ewell,
in Surrey ; but these, together with the palace, have since been
entirely destroyed. Although greatly altered, some portions of
those at Hampton Court yet testify to the care which Henry VIII.
spent on their embellishment when the Palace and Grounds passed
into his hands. Not always commendable, however, were his
schemes, if it be true that ‘‘ Beasts and the columns they stood
upon”? were a prominent feature of the Hampton Court Gardens
during the period of his ownership.

At the time of Elizabeth’s accession, English gardens had
probably arrived at their highest beauty, and since as yet they
were but little affected by French and Dutch notions of garden-
planning, they had acquired that peculiar, indefinable charm that
we have learnt to associate with the words, ‘an old English
garden.”

In Elizabeth’s reign a passion for travel and discovery awoke,
with large results ; one of which was the advance of horticulture as
a science. For a new impulse was given to its study when men of
the type of Cavendish and Raleigh, animated by a keen spirit of
adventure and a desire for wider horizons, set forth to navigate
summer seas in the far Indies, and, ere long, to explore the newly-
discovered continent of America.

8

AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

These travellers brought back with them to this country the
seeds and roots of foreign plants and herbs, which quickly adapted
themselves to our climate: and as Elizabeth, who is said to
have loved flowers, like her father encouraged gardening, when
once the fame of Raleigh’s collections had spread abroad—it will
be seen—when we come to the Chelsea ‘‘ Physicke Garden ”—that
more than one distinguished botanist and horticulturalist was
attracted to this country from the Continent.

The orchard, in Elizabethan times, is frequently mentioned, and
would almost appear to be synonymous with the garden. In
Much Ado About Nothing, Hero, standing with Margaret in
Leonato’s garden, in which the scene is laid, bids her go seek out
Beatrice, and

‘* Whisper her ear and tell her, I and Ursula
Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse
Is all of her: say that thou overheard’st us
And bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen’d by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter SO WCE Re aM

Be ilae 8s tae there will she hide her,

To listen to our purpose.”’

The “ pleached” (i.e., the intertwined and interwoven bower)

the maze, and the bowling-green, were all indispensable adjuncts of

the pleasure-grounds attached to the abode of any person of
social importance.
The word ‘‘ arbour,” which, as previously remarked, had to us

a doubtful meaning as employed in Chaucer’s time, had in Shake-

speare’s day certainly come to be used more in our modern sense.

The arbour was then commonly constructed of timber.

Henry VIII., in the Privy Purse expenses in 1593, was charged

five shillings for the making of an arbour at “* Baynardes Castell.’

I think it is only in the same restricted sense that Shakespeare,
in the passage quoted above, put into Hero’s mouth the word

** bower.” He means an arbour in the modern sense, but a rather

large one. Such a ‘“‘ bower”? Horace Walpole had in mind when

planning his garden at Strawberry Hill more than one hundred

and fifty years later. He wrote: ‘‘ My bower is determined, but

not at all what it should be. . . . I had determined that the outside

should be of treillage (trellis)... .. Rosamond’s bower, as you
9

’

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

and I, and Tom Hearne, know, was a labyrinth; but as my
territory will admit of a very small clew, I lay aside all thoughts of
mazy habitation, though a bower is very different from an arbour,
and must have more chambers than one.” Gardens probably
assumed the definite character to which I have referred, before
the reign of Elizabeth, and there was little or no variation
from this during that of her successor. The gardens of
Hatfield, where Elizabeth as Princess spent so much of her time,
are typical of the period. There is the pleached, or platted, alley
and the little ‘‘ Privy Garden ”’ enclosed by it. John Tradescent,
who succeeded his father as gardener to Queen Elizabeth, and
whose son founded the famous Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
was gardener to the first Lord Salisbury, and ultimately to
Charles I.

English gardens in Tudor times were distinguished from foreign
ones by the evidence of the gardener’s greater pleasure in their culti-
vation. We are told that to make up for the disadvantage of our
damp atmosphere, and a comparative lack of sunshine, the English
‘‘indulged in bright flower parterres rather than in the use of
coloured earth, sculpture, and vases,” as abroad. The Tudors
introduced the ‘‘ knot,” or intricately designed, box-bordered
flower-bed, of which, later, we hear so much. They rejoiced also
in sweet-smelling herbs; ‘‘ the comfortable smell of their rooms,”
says Lavinius Leminius, a Dutchman, who paid a visit to England
in 1560, ‘‘ cheered me up and entirely delighted my senses,” and
this was owing to the English custom of strewing their houses
with fragrant herbs and decorating them with flowers. Mar-
joram, thyme, rosemary, etc., were largely cultivated, and in
many cases formed the borders of the above-mentioned “ knots,”
that, as it were, divided the parterre into compartments. In
many instances the centre of this flowery area was occupied by
a fountain, and sometimes open conduits conducted water to all
parts of the garden. A fountain-pool might also often be found
in the middle of the turfed, or stone-paved fore-court in front of
the mansion. The servants’ offices, stables, etc., surrounding the
base, or ‘“‘ bass-court,” usually lay at one side of this fore-court.
Qn the other were the pleasure gardens and parterres; very
often a wide terrace overlooked the garden, so raised as to com-
mand a view of the parterre,

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The garden thus overlooked would be very gay indeed, and
very sweet also. In the sixteenth century Spenser could write
of one wherein

“* Nature lavish, in her best attire
Puts forth sweet odours and alluring sight

And art with her contending doth aspire
T’ excell the natural with made delight.”

He further describes how all things “‘ fair and pleasant” in this
garden abound ‘in riotous excess,’ which surely includes the
English singing-birds. William Lawson, in his ‘‘ New Orchard,”
published in 1618, remarks that ‘‘ Blackbirds on a May morning
may gratify the senses,” but he had rather want their company
than his fruit ; but ‘‘ nightingales,”’ he says, “‘ are another matter ;
a brood of them is a chefe grace ; but they will clear you of cata-
pillars and noysome wormes, and the gentle Robin Redbreast,
and the silly wren will help in this.”

The gardens that I have been chiefly describing were, of course,
those of the noble, or the squire, or, at any rate, of the substantial
yeoman and richer citizen. They were the pleasure places of
palaces and manor houses, and, in an earlier age, of the feudal
castle, when, unless they overflowed beyond the walls, they were
necessarily circumscribed. They appear always to have taken up
a considerable part of the demesne, and even in Plantagenet times
were used for pleasure and refreshment as well as for utility.

‘* Wherein,” asks Lawson, ‘‘ do kings and the great most delight ?
And whither do they withdraw themselves from the troublous
affairs of State, being tyred with the hearing and judging of
litigious controversies ? choked (as it were) with the close Ayre«
of their sumptuous buildings, their stomacks cloyed with a variety
of Banquets, their ears filled and overburdened with tedious dis-
coursings ? Whither but in their orchards ? made and prepared,
dressed and destinated for that purpose, to renue and refresh
their sences, and to call home their over-wearied spirits, it is
(no doubt) a comfort to them to set open their casements into a
most delicate Garden and Orchard, whereby they may not only
see that wherein they are so much delighted, but also to give fresh
and sweet and pleasant Ayre to Galleries and Chambers.”

W. C. Hazlitt is of opinion that the cottage garden cannot be
confidently referred to a date anterior to Worledge, whose

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

“* Systema Horticultural,” published in 1677, was one of the
earliest manuals for the guidance of those laying out and culti-
vating a garden; this is a rash statement, for we have only to
refer to Shakespeare again, to disprove it.

In The Winter's Tale, Perdita, in the Shepherd’s Cottage,
bestows upon her foster-father’s guests, flowers cottage-grown to
suit all ages: of ‘“‘ Carnations and streak’d gillyflowers,” she says,
“* our rustic garden’s barren,”’ but adds; “‘ Here’s flowers for you ”’
{addressing the Greybeards) :

‘** Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram,
The marigold that goes to bed wi’ the sun
And with him rises weeping, these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age on

Then turning to Florizel (and others present), she says :

‘** I would I had some flowers o’ the Spring that might
Become your time of day, and yours, and yours
he, BR RR SW es Oh, Proserpina,
For the flowers now that frighted thou let’st fall
From Dis’s waggon ! daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty,—violets dim,
But sweeter than the lids of Juno’s eyes—
Or Cytherea’s breath ; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength—a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips and
The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds,

* The flower-de-luce being one!”

It is clear that Perdita describes here flowers that in their
season must have been blowing in her cottage garden ready to
her hand ; and that Shakespeare loved such flowers well, because
they were of English growth, for he knew nothing of foreign flora,
there being no shadow of evidence that he ever crossed the Channel,
or even went nearer to it than Dover. There, as everybody knows,
is a cliff which bears his name, but since Edgar in King Lear
exaggerates its height in his description of it, it is questionable
whether Shakespeare ever actually beheld it, whether he is but
giving hearsay evidence. He was an islander, and moreover
a lowlander, and whether he placed his dramatis persone in

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Italy, Denmark, or Bohemia, their environment, in his mental
picture of them, is always an English one. The action of The
Winter’s Tale takes place ostensibly in Bohemia, but Perdita
is essentially an English maiden, and the plants she tended are
British ones. Therefore, in some of the loveliest lines in English
verse, spoken by Shakespeare’s sweetest heroine, we find the fact
established, that sixty years before Worledge’s Manual appeared,
if not earlier, the peasant’s humble cot, and the yeoman’s home-
stead, as well as the baron’s castle and the royal demesne, had
each its own garden-plot. It is, however, pretty certain that up to
the fourteenth century, and perhaps even up to the sixteenth, the
English garden must everywhere have much resembled a modern
kitchen-garden, in which we frequently find the commoner kinds
of flowers growing side by side with vegetables.

The orchard and the garden, until after 1618, were one. The
smaller gardens would very much resemble what we now call a
‘‘ cabbage patch,” and all evidence goes to show that in earlier
times, in the ground attached even to lordly residences, herbs
designed for culinary uses were allowed to grow up together, side
by side with flowers and flowering shrubs.

From all the foregoing it is clear that long before the seventeenth
century the garden played a considerable part in the life of the
English people. It would naturally do so, for the houses of the
commonalty, especially in towns, were confined, gloomy, and
airless. They were badly lit by small, deeply-recessed, heavily-
leaded lattice windows, such as are still to be seen in old, thatched,
gabled, and half-timbered cottages in some parts of the country—
habitations that are deliciously picturesque, but insanitary. Even
the larger farm-houses, where the yeomanry dwelt, and the abodes
of substantial citizens in town, were dark by reason of their heavily-
mullioned windows and thick walls, and also because in cities
the streets were narrow, and the upper story of a dwelling com-
monly projected beyond the lower, and sometimes almost touched
its opposite neighbour, leaving only a narrow strip of sky visible
between. Such houses could not be good to live in. Yet the
English race has always been ruddy and healthy, the men stal-
wart, the women fresh and fair. From this we may infer that
not only the country gentry, always addicted to sport, and the
peasant who tilled the soil, but the citizen also, lived very much.

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

in the open. Many of the most stirring episodes in English history
happened there—in the green fields, or on the King’s highway.
We picture Queen Elizabeth less in the council chamber, than in
her girlhood, in the old garden at Hatfield ; or at Greenwich stairs,
stepping from her barge on to the velvet cloak that the astute
Raleigh sacrified in order that the Royal stocking should not be
sullied by Thames mud, or haranguing her troops at Tilbury
when an invasion of England was threatened. I venture to
think that ballads, nursery rhymes, and lyrics innumerable, attest
the fact that the life of our forefathers was. much more alfresco
than is ours. When “all the maids of Islington went forth to
sport and play,” it is safe to assume that the maidens of other
towns and hamlets did so also. The lover woos his mistress with
the promise of country joys :

“ Come, live with me and be my love
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hill and valley, dale and field
And all scraggy mountains yield.”

Again:
‘* Ye little birds that sit and sing

Amidst the shady valleys,

And see how Phillis sweetly walks
Within her garden alleys,

Go, pretty birds, about her bower ;

Sing, pretty birds, she may not cower :

Ah me! methinks I see her frown !
Ye pretty warblers, warble ! ”’

And Herrick, to Corinna gone a-maying sings :
“Tis sin,
Nay, profanation to keep in,

Whereas a thousand virgins on this day
Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in May.”

Old songs tell the same story—it is everywhere the outdoor call
that is strong.

““ Come, lasses and lads, get leave of your dads
And away to the Maypole hie.”

Or:
‘* Boys and girls, come out to play,
The moon doth shine as bright as day.”
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Then comes the reference to gardens :
‘Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow ?”’

And many other examples. I have made no study of folk-
lore, but I cannot help thinking that though some of these rhymes
and songs may be comparatively modern, others bear the mark
of antiquity, and that the origin of the simplest of these may be
traced back to customs and observances that have fallen into
disuse ; to beliefs, traditions, and superstitions, themselves for-
gotten; or to some incident, maybe, in the life of medizval
England, which, did we but know it, would invest the childish
rhymes and the bucolic songs with even greater charm, interest,
and significance, than on the surface they may seem to possess.
If the Rush-bearing still practised in some parts of the country, if
the festival of Harvest Home, if the ceremonies attendant on
bringing in the May, if the crowning of the fairest and most
virtuous maiden of the village annually, as Queen of the May,
if Milton’s lovely “‘ Hymn on May Morning” mean anything at
all, they point to an outdoor manner of existence practically
universal, and in which garden and meadow alike played an
important part; and surely “ Little Jack Horner who sat in the
corner” is the only evidence forthcoming on the other side—that
the youth of “‘ Merrie England ” did not live out of doors even at
Christmas-time !

I am indebted to W. C. Hazlitt for an amusing story, which
gives indirect support to the theory that the English always lived
much in plein air.

A man, whose demesne probably sloped to the water’s edge,
having invited a friend to dinner, contrary to the wish of his wife,
insisted that the repast should be served on the river’s bank.
The lady could not endure contradiction, and sat sulking, with
her back to the stream. The more he begged her to look pleasant,
the farther she pushed her chair from the table, till at last, backing
too near the edge of the river, she fell in. The husband, jumping
into a boat, insisted on going against the tide in search of her,
and when his friend remonstrated, urging him to look for her
down-stream, he refused, saying that, as his wife had been so

opposite all her life, he was sure her body would float against the
current.

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

There seems to have been but little change in the methods of
horticulture, or in the character of the gardens themselves, under
the Stuarts, until we arrive at the reign of Charles II. During
the Commonwealth little gardening was done, and the garden of
Evelyn’s family mansion at Wotton was one of the few laid out
during the years of Cromwell’s rule. Still, the taste for horticul-
ture was not altogether dormant, since even one of Cromwell’s most
capable captains could indulge in it. General Lambert, second
only to Monk in distinction, who in 1656 was Lord of the Manor
of Wimbledon, when estranged for a time from Oliver, withdrew
from public life, and devoted himself to the care of his garden, of
which he was very fond. He was so successful in the cultivation
of tulips and gillyflowers, that in a satirical pack of cards published
during the Commonwealth, the eight of hearts bears a small full-
length portrait of him, carrying in his right hand a tulip, beneath
which is the legend, ‘‘ Lambert—Kt. of ye Golden Tulip.”

But by this time foreign influences were beginning to work,
modifying the national character of the English garden as it had
been under the Tudors. These influences, though not without
trace of Dutch formality, were probably chiefly Italian and
French. Later on the Dutch fashions, under William III. and
Mary, were dominant. But, on the whole, during the reigns of
James I. and Charles I. there were but few changes in the manner
of laying out gardens. This was to be expected; the same
gardeners or their sons were living.

‘‘ Paradise Lost” gives us a hint of the style of garden most
approved of in Milton’s time; elsewhere the blind poet of the
Commonwealth speaks of those who “‘ in trim gardens take their

pleasure,” but in his great epic he describes that wondrous
garden wherein grew

“Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose.”’

Horace Walpole thinks he had some recollection of the famous

pleasure grounds of Nonsuch, and of Theobalds, Lord Burleigh’s
garden, when he wrote :
“* The crisped brooks

Ran nectar! visiting each plant, and fed

Flowers worthy of Paradise ; which not nice art

In beds and curious knots, but nature boon

Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.”

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Obviously the reference is to a fashion prevalent at the time,
of planting in beds and plots, a fashion that was not set in the
Garden of Eden, and therefore not commendable.

Such, as far as I can gather, was ‘‘ the happy garden state”
of our ancestors up to the eighteenth century. Old-world gardens,
in many respects unchanged, may yet be found “in and round
London,” to one or two of which I shall later introduce you.
They are touched, it is true, by ‘‘ decay’s defacing finger,” but
they are still flowery, shady, and sunshiny too. In them old-
fashioned flowers—the cabbage rose, the sweet william, the stock,
the monkshood, the snapdragon, and the pansy—flourish ; and in
spite of dividing walks of springy turf, and borders of ancient box,
elbow each other in their eagerness to invade the territory of the
turnip and the cabbage. There, in the months of April, May and
June, the lilac and the hawthorn intermingle boughs and blossoms,
and, in August and September, peaches slowly ripen on sunny
walls, whilst apples grow rosy in other quarters.

In such a garden, reminiscent of the time when orchard and
garden were one, apple-trees, pear-trees, and plum-trees, hoary with
age, mossy with long inertia (in some sense an illustration of the
proverb that “rolling stones gather no moss”), mount guard over
the vegetable kingdom, dropping windfalls for the children to pick
up. They stretch gnarled and twisted arms benevolently over the
rosemary and southernwood, the lavender and the rose-bushes, as
though in mute benediction on the little ones playing, or on the
lovers seated, beneath.

The names of four distinguished Englishmen, who were experi-
mental and practical gardeners, stand out conspicuously in_the
history of horticulture in this country during the years intervening
between the beginning of the seventeenth and the latter half of
the eighteenth century. They are Francis Bacon Lord St. Albans,
Sir William Temple, John Evelyn the diarist, and Horace Walpole.

The ideas of the aristocratic Bacon on the subject of pleasure-
grounds are on a grandiose scale. In his famous essay, ‘“‘ Of
Gardens,”’ he says that the ideal garden should comprise not less
than thirty acres of ground, and he tells us that he is speaking only
of those that are ‘‘ indeed Prince-like.”’

Dying in 1626, in the second year of the reign of the unhappy
Charles I., it is probable that, owing to the vastness of his

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ideas in horticulture, and the difficulties to be met with in
carrying them out, Bacon left the sciences of horticulture and
floriculture very much where he found them, and he himself
being under a cloud, his various schemes would be dis-
credited.

I do not propose to dwell upon his theories, which are well
known to all readers of his essays. ‘‘ God Almighty,” he says,
‘* first Planted a Garden, and indeed it is the purest of Humaine
pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man.”
He does “ not like Images Cut out in Juniper, or other Garden
Stuffe. They be for Children.” He recommends Fountains as
‘““a great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pooles marre all and
make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs.”
He gives a long list of flowers and plants that flourished in his day,
among them, all those that are mentioned by Spenser and
Shakespeare.

‘“IT do hold,” he prettily says, ‘“‘in the Royall ordering of
Gardens, there ought to be a garden for all the moneths of the
yeare ; in which severally, things of Beauty may be there in Season ;”
and then he proceeds to unfold the wonderful pageant of the
procession of Flora, and under the heading of each month gives
a catalogue surprisingly long of her offspring, beginning with
things that are ‘“‘ Greene all Winter,” and winding up with “ These
Particulars are for the Climate of London.” ‘‘ Roses Damask and
Red,” he says, *‘ are fast flowers of their Smels ”; three hundred
years ago ‘‘ damask ”—so often used by the poets in describing a
maiden’s cheek—meant pink, not dark crimson, as with us. When
I was a child I wondered why the delicately-fringed, sweetly-scented
little flower which I was taught to call a “ pink”’ was so named,
since, unlike Burns’ daisy, the common example was not even
‘* crimson-tipped,”” but pure white. Bacon teaches us that the
modern name is etymologically incorrect. Pink would appear to
be a corruption of Pinct—or pinked—stabbed, pierced, decorated by
scallops—as the petals of this flower certainly are. ‘‘ Prime-Roses”
is a better word than primrose. ‘‘ Dammasin”’ js prettier than
damson ; but one does not at once recognize in Bacon’s “‘ Lelacke
Tree,” the lilac, the favourite of our April gardens, with its heavy
clusters of pale purple flowers—to my mind the fairest and most
fragrant of all the flowering trees of our English spring.

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Far less well known than Bacon’s essay ‘‘ Of Gardens,” is_his'
“ Sylva Sylvarum,” or ‘‘ Natural Historie in Ten Centuries,’’
published after the illustrious author’s death. His studies and
practical experiments in horticulture are recorded in detail in the
fifth, sixth, and part of the seventh centuries, of this learned work.
Nothing was too large and nothing too small to attract and engage
the attention of this extraordinary man. Lord Chancellor of
England, and occupied with the highest affairs of state, he could
yet turn from them at any moment and bring the vast powers of
his intellect to the consideration of the method of raising straw-
berries, of bringing sun to ripen wall-fruit, of grafting, of water-
ing, and to the discussion of the causes of the degeneracy of plants,
and of the colours of fruit and flowers ; and, as one of his admirers
puts it, ‘‘he could descend from the Woolsack to investigate the
economy of manure beds.”

As before stated, horticulture made no advance during the
Civil War and the Commonwealth, and not until the Restoration
was any change in the character of English gardens apparent.
Then a new interest was awakened. French gardening had made
progress, and Charles II. and his exiled courtiers, had had excep-
tional opportunities for studying its methods, and had imbibed
a preference for the French manner of laying out pleasure-grounds.
With Le Notre and other great gardeners of Louis XIV., spacious-
ness was the chief desideratum in gardens; and these were laid out
with mathematical precision, but no great originality of design.
And, as Ruskin says, in a passage which, although referring to
another art, may with propriety be applied here: ‘‘ Grandeur
depends on proportion and design, not, except in a quite secon-
dary degree, on magnitude. Mere size has, indeed, under all
disadvantages, some definite value, and so has mere splendour.
But even splendour may be purchased at -too heavy a cost.” Ere
long, much of the French character impressed itself upon English
gardens, so that before the end of Charles’ reign all traces of the
medizvalism that had lingered round the gardens of Henry VIII.
had vanished. Size and elegance, or what passed for elegance,
usurped the place of the picturesqueness and privacy of the gardens
of the Tudors ; the galleries, the mount (that, according to Bacon,
should properly be thirty feet high, offering a view from its summit
over the high walls of the enclosure) had been swept away, and a

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

flat effect was aimed at. ‘‘ Knots and parterres,” we are told,
‘““beeame so elaborate that the small tortured spaces between
the box patternings were less and less homes for plants, more and
more filled with coloured sand.’ Topiary work—that is, clipping
and training trees and shrubs into fantastic shapes—now came
into fashion, but as yet was not carried to excess, and the seven-
teenth-century garden, no doubt, had much beauty. J. D. Sped-
ding says: ‘‘ There is about the Jacobean Garden an air of
scholarlism and courtliness, a flavour of dreamland and Arcadia
and Italy—a touch of the Archaic and classical—yet the thing is
saved from utter artificiality by our English love of outdoor
life °—and also, I suggest, by that independence of restraint that
is innate in the British character. And ever we find the English
gardener, except when by force of circumstances he came very
much under foreign influences, indisposed towards formalism;
though of course the ideal garden holds the balance between nature
arid art.

John Evelyn, author of the famous diary, did much more than
Bacon, with all his theories and experiments, to advance horti-
culture. Whilst Bacon schemed and talked, Evelyn was _ prac-
tical. He was born in 1620 at Dorking, of parents who occupied
a good position, and he was educated at. Balliol. A devoted
Royalist, he yet seems to have placed prudence before patriotism,
as he understood it, for, lest he and his brother should be exposed
to ruin by their espousal of the King’s cause without any com-
pensating advantage to His Majesty, he joined the King’s army
only to leave it at the end of three days. After travelling on the
Continent for four years, he returned to England, and settled
in 1652, at Sayes Court, near Deptford, where he was able to indulge
his horticultural tastes. But Evelyn was a courtier as well as a
gardener, and after the-Restoration we find him much at White-
hall, and occupying several official posts. And he was from the
beginning a prominent member of the newly-founded Royal
Society.

His diary—not published until a hundred and twelve years after
his death, and of which Sir Walter Scott said he ‘“‘ had never seen so
rich a mine ”’—is no less illuminating in the light it throws on
the history of his day, than that of his lively contemporary, Pepys.

From time to time in its pages—pages that deal with the important
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events of seventy years—we glean something of his interest in
gardens and gardening.

In laying out his estate at Deptford he tells us that he first
began with the ‘‘ oval garden.”” When he went there it was
merely a rough field of one hundred acres, ‘‘ with scarcely a hedge
to it,” but he covered it with groves, walks, and plantations.
When, in 1694, he went to live at Wotton, with his brother (to
whose property he succeeded five years later), he let Sayes
Court to Admiral Benbow, on condition that he kept it up,
which he failed to do. In 1698 Benbow sublet it to the Czar
Peter the Great, at that time visiting the dockyard at Deptford.
He proved “‘ a right nasty tenant.” So great was the injury done
to the property by him and his retinue, that Benbow, who was
responsible to Evelyn, called in Sir Christopher Wren—with London,
the King’s gardener, as his assistant—to estimate the damage,
which was assessed at £350 9s. 6d. Irreparable injury was done
to trees and shrubs; and no wonder, for one of Czar Peter’s
refined amusements was to be wheeled in a barrow through the
garden hedges, and among the things specified in the inventory
as having been damaged, were three wheelbarrows !

Evelyn translated a work called ‘“‘ The French Gardener,”
which has much to do with pickling, preserving, and drying fruits ;
and Hazlitt says that ‘‘ Jam, as an ingredient of our culinary
economy, does not date much farther back than the middle of
the seventeenth century,” when Evelyn published his adaptation
from the French.

But Evelyn accomplished a greater feat than popularizing
preserves.

In Tudor times it had been complained that men ‘‘ were more
studious to cut down trees than to plant them,” and in the reign
of Charles II. the scarcity of timber began to make itself severely
felt. What was to be done? Wood was wanted for ships, and
none was forthcoming.

The Navy Board turned to the newly-founded Royal Society
for help; and Evelyn, as the member most competent to advise
on the subject, took the matter up, and in 1664 published his
‘“* Sylva,” by which, as the King afterwards told him, he had
induced many people to mend their broken estates, and the woods
‘““ which the greedv rebels had wasted and made havoc of.”

21

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The result was that a century and a half later Isaac Disraeli
remarked : ‘‘ Inquire at the Admiralty how the fleets of Nelson were
constructed, and they will tell you that it was with the oaks that
the genius of Evelyn planted.”

Sir William Temple, had he no other claim to attention, would
command it as the patron of Swift, who for years was his secretary :
and also as the husband of Dorothy Osborne, whose charming
letters to him during a long courtship are universally admired.

My object in this book is primarily to write about the gardens
J have painted, but I desire also to interest the reader in the men
and women who made, or owned, and in many cases, loved them.
Therefore, I claim the right to be discursive at times, and occasion-
ally to dwell upon events apparently irrelevant, and if I should
linger longer than may seem necessary over the early history of
Sir William Temple and Dorothy Osborne, his wife, it is because,
as a horticulturist, he comes legitimately into my scheme, and
also because never was there a more chequered and prettier love-
story than theirs. In its very opening it is romantic! Temple,
a youth of twenty, and described as a lively, agreeable young man
of fashion (fresh from Cambridge), son of Sir John Temple, Master
of the Rolls in Ireland, who was a follower rather than a keen
partisan of Cromwell, sets out upon his travels abroad, in the.
year before King Charles was brought to the scaffold.

‘“On his road to France,” says Macaulay, in his fascinating
essay, ‘“‘ he fell in with the son and daughter of Sir Peter Osborne.
Sir Peter held Guernsey for the King, and the young people were,
like their father, warm for the Royalist cause. At an inn where
they stopped in the Isle of Wight, the brother amused himself
with inscribing on the windows his opinion of the ruling powers.
For this instance of ‘ malignancy’ the whole party were arrested
and brought before the governor. The sister, trusting to the
tenderness which even in those troublous times scarcely any ©
gentleman of any party failed to show where a woman was con-
cerned, took the crime on herself, and was immediately set at
liberty with her fellow-companion.”

The incident made a deep impression upon Temple. He
fell in love with the charming Dorothy (who was accounted a
beauty), and whose vivacity and sweetness are shown in her
letters. Although she reciprocated his feeling and accepted his

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addresses, the course of their true love never did run smooth
And little wonder, since “‘ the father of the hero was sitting in the
Long Parliament ; the father of the heroine was commanding in
Guernsey for King Charles’; and even when the war was ended,”
continues Macaulay, ‘“‘ and Sir Peter Osborne returned to his
seat at Chicksands, the prospects of the lovers were scarcely less
gloomy. Sir John Temple had a more advantageous alliance in
view for his son. Dorothy Osborne was in the meantime besieged
by as many suitors as were drawn to Belmont by the fame of
Portia.”” Among them was Henry Cromwell, son of the Lord-
General, afterwards the Protector. Dorothy’s relatives were
bitterly opposed to her intended marriage with Temple, and she
had to defend her lover’s character from all sorts of attacks. She
held firm, and when at last, after seven years, her constancy was
on the point of being rewarded, she fell ill of smallpox; she
escaped with her life, but her beauty was gone. Temple, however,
was not lacking in chivalry, and the pair were married. Hereafter
we hear little of Dorothy.

Sir William Temple’s fame as a statesman rests chiefly on the
celebrated league by which England, Sweden, and the Netherlands,
in 1668, united to curb the power of France under Louis XIV.
But the sympathies of Charles II. were thoroughly French, and
in 1670 he treacherously concluded another and secret treaty
with France, the Treaty of Dover, which rendered Temple’s work
futile, and the great Triple Alliance, which Pepys, in his diary,
calls ‘‘ the only good thing that hath been done since the King
came into England,” inoperative. Temple thereupon retired to a
small estate which he had purchased at Sheen, near Richmond,
and threw himself with such ardour into horticulture that the
fame of his fruit trees spread far and wide. He did not return to
public life until the popular resentment against the French Alliance
and the Dutch war rose to clamorous heights, and compelled
Charles to send for him to negotiate a separate peace with Holland.

For, easy and pleasure-loving as Charles was, and though served
by unscrupulous ministers, he still had wit enough to seek to bind
to his interests a man whose political character was unblemished,
who was in high favour with the nation, and whose capacity might
even at that hour have restored England to the position she had
held abroad under Elizabeth and Cromwell. Over and over again

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

the King pressed upon Temple the office of Secretary of State ;
over and over again he refused it! On more than one occasion,
as Macaulay tells us, when the country was in danger, ‘“‘ the Triple
Alliance was mentioned with reverence in every debate, and the
eyes of all men were turned to that quiet orchard, where the
author of that great league was amusing himself with reading and
gardening.” He obeyed the royal command, it is true, and left
his garden and his books as Cincinnatus left his plough ; but, his
mission accomplished, he returned to them, for his was not the
sustained patriotism which at all risks must wait to see the vessel
of the State floating smoothly in placid waters.

Macaulay charges Temple with shirking responsibility and fear-
ing to imperil a safe position by grasping at prizes which he might
not reach, even when the best interests of his country demanded
the risk. He ‘“‘ dreaded failure more than he desired -success.”
“Fain would I climb but that I fear to fall,’? would almost seem
to have been his motto, as it was that which Raleigh had engraved
upon a window in Queen Elizabeth’s presence. I think it possible
that finer reasons may have influenced the man whom Dorothy
Osborne loved during seven faithful years, and in whose career
she was apparently content to merge her own strong individuality.
Such a woman as Lady Temple would have been out of place at
Whitehall, and Temple’s firm rejection of place and power may have
been partly due to his recognition of this fact, and his high appre-
ciation of her. She seems to have been his companion in Ireland
and at The Hague, and she probably shared his passion for flowers.

Temple was an enthusiastic and very successful experimental
gardener, and though undoubtedly his chief abilities lay in diplo-
macy and politics, he loved to slip away from both to his “little
nest” at Sheen. Among his diplomatic successes may be reckoned
the part he took in bringing about a marriage between the Prince
of Orange and the niece of Charles, the Lady Mary—that union
which, amid other and more important results, had ultimately so
much to do with spreading the taste, in this country, for Dutch
gardening and garden-planning.

In 1699 Temple, who had been in Holland, returned to England
at an urgent summons from Charles, and found the country
in a fearful state. Eighteen years of misrule had wrought
dire consequences. He patiently organized new schemes for

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AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

Government ; was elected to the new Parliament for Cambridge ;
had a seat in the Cabinet—that Council within a Council—the new
Privy Council of thirty, which was his own panacea for the evil
he found. But at any moment of difficulty, at a crisis when violent
passions were called forth, “ when the whole nation was con-
vulsed by party spirit, he told his constituents that he should not
again apply for their suffrages, and set off for Sheen, resolving
never again to meddle with public affairs.”

Did Lady Temple applaud this conduct? I wonder! Any-
way, he held to his resolution, and says Macaulay : ‘“ The troubles
which agitated the whole country did not reach the quiet orangery
in which Temple loitered away several years without once seeing
the smoke of London.”

The revolution came, and he remained neutral; but soon he
transferred the loyalty which Macaulay stigmatizes as “‘ lukewarm ”
to the new sovereign, who would only too gladly have made him
his Secretary of State, would he have accepted office. ‘‘ He paid
court to William at Windsor, and William dined with him at
Sheen.” His eldest son died under distressing circumstances, and
the family retired from Sheen to Moor Park, at a greater distance
from London. There Temple passed the remainder of his life.
“The air agreed with him, the soil was fruitful and well suited
to an experimental farmer and gardener. The grounds were laid
out with the angular regularity which Sir William had admired
in the flower-beds of Haarlem and The Hague. A beautiful rivulet
flowing from the hills of Surrey bounded the domain. But a straight
canal which, bordered by a terrace, intersected the garden, was
probably more admired by the lovers of the picturesque in that.
age.”

The form of garden which Sir William himself most approved
was an oblong on a slope. In his essay upon “ The Gardens of
Epicurus, or of Gardening in the Year 1685,” he says: ‘‘ But efter
so much rambling into Ancient Tomes, and Remote Places, to return
home and consider the present Way and Humour of our Gardening in
England, which seem to have grown into such vogue, and to have
been so mightily improved in Three and Four and Twenty years.
of His Majesty’s reign, that perhaps few countries are before us ;
either in the Elegance of our Gardens; or in the number of our
Plants, and I believe none equals us in the Variety of Fruits, which

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

may be justly called good; and from the earliest Cherry and
Strawberry to the last Apples and Pears, may furnish every Day
of the circling year.”

To achieve this end, the production in this country of fruit in
great abundance and variety, Temple himself worked assiduously.
And perhaps we shall never know how much in this respect we
owe to the author of the Triple Alliance.

Lysons, who wrote in 1792,.nearly one hundred years after
Temple’s death, speaks of the visits which King William III. was
in the habit of paying to Sir William Temple at Moor Park, and of
his futile efforts to induce him to become his Secretary of State.
If the King called when Temple was laid up with the gout, Swift,
the Irish amanuensis, was deputed to show him round the garden.
On one of these occasions, it is said William offered to make Swift
his Master of the Horse, and taught him how to cut asparagus in
the Dutch manner.

But far more interesting to many of us it is to know that pretty
and dark-eyed Hester Johnson was about this time employed
in Temple’s household as waiting-maid to his sister, Lady Giffard,
who lived with him, and that in the garden at Moor Park Swift
first made love to Stella.

William III. no doubt would have had everybody, not only cut
asparagus, but also lay out gardens in the Dutch manner. At any
rate, Dutch taste in garden-planning now came much into vogue;
and it continued so, despite all ridicule and criticism, for many years.

By the time of Addison the love of stiffness and topiary work
had gone to such extravagant lengths that The Spectator inveighs
against it. ‘‘ The Chinese,” he points out, laugh at the planta-
tions of our Europeans, which are laid out by the rule and line;
because they say anyone may place trees in equal rows and uni-
form figures. ... Our British gardeners, instead of humouring
nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our Trees
rise in Cones, Globes, and Pyramids. We see the mark of the
scissors upon every plant and Bush. ... For my own part, I
would rather look upon a Tree in all its luxuriance and diffusion
of Boughs and Branches than when it is cut and trimmed into
Mathematical Figures, and cannot but fancy that an Orchard in
Flower looks infinitely more delightful than all the labyrinths of
the most finished Parterre.”’

26

AND CELEBRATED GARDENS

But then Addison, as he himself says, was one who was looked
upon “as a humourist in gardening . . . if a field flower pleased
him he gave it a place in his garden . . . he always thought a
kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest orangery
and artificial greenhouse:” he owns himself to be in another
respect ‘‘ very whimsical,” for his garden invites into it all the
birds of the country; he offers springs and shade, solitude and
shelter, and suffers no one to destroy their nests in the spring, or
drive them from their usual haunts in fruit time. ‘‘ I value my
garden,” he says, ‘‘ more for being full of blackbirds than cherries,
and very frankly give them fruit for their songs.” Furthermore,
he tells us, thus unconsciously describing for us the fashionable
gardens of the period, that he “‘ thinks there are as many kinds of
gardening as of poetry. Your makers of parterres and flower-
gardens are epigrammatists and sonneteers in this art: contrivers
of bowers and grottoes, treillages and cascades, are romance-
writers ; Wise and London are our heroic poets.”’

Wise and London, mentioned more than once in future chapters,
were gardeners to William III. and Queen Anne. They had a
nursery between Brompton and Kensington. Evelyn mentions
visiting it in 1701, when he himself was in his eightieth year ;
and it was London, the King’s gardener, who, as the reader will
remember, was called in by Admiral Benbow to assist Sir Chris-
topher Wren in estimating the damage done by the Czar Peter
to Evelyn’s gardens at-Sayes Court.

In their day Wise and London were distinguished horticul-
turists, but they carried on the tradition of a bad school. Dutch
gardeners endeavoured to make Nature statuesque. Shears were
ruthlessly used, and shrubs and trees—the holly, the yew, and the
box—as The Spectator had stated, were clipped and teased
into all manner of unnatural shapes, with the result that the
natural growth of the plant and tree was destroyed in this ex-
travagant abuse of topiary work.

The reaction was bound to come; and it came with the advent
of Bridgman, Launcelot, known as “ Capability’ Brown, Kent,
and other great landscape gardeners of the eighteenth century.
Horace Walpole’s “ Essay on Modern Gardening” issued from
the Strawberry Hill Press in 1785. His letters to Sir Horace
Mann are full of allusion to his own attempt to turn a few acres of

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

ground into an entire country-side. He says: ‘‘ I have enough
land to keep such a farm as Noah’s when he set up in the Ark with
a pair of each kind.” ... Again: ‘‘ My present sole occupation

is planting, in which I have made great progress, and talked very
learnedly with the nurserymen, except that now and then a lettuce
runs to séed, overturns all my botany, and I have more than once
taken it for a curious West Indian flowering shrub. Then the
deliberation with which trees grow is extremely inconvenient to
my natural impatience.” Strawberry Hill, accurately described
by Walpole himself in his letters to Sir Horace Mann, is so famous
that, had I been allowed to do so, I would have introduced
a picture of the garden as it now is, with the trees its dilettante
owner planted, grown up. I should then have added to it a
fuller report of his distinct place in the history of English garden-
ing. But all requests, by myself and my publishers, for permis-
sion from its present owners to draw there, were firmly refused,
this being the only exception, I rejoice to say, to that universal
rule of kindly and courteous acquiescence, that has made my task
im preparing these drawings so delightful.

We learn that the taste of Pope, as shown in his own grounds
at Twickenham, had a marked effect on landscape gardening in
England, and helped a good deal to abolish the stiff Dutch style.
The introduction of landscape-gardening, or rather its revival—
because it was the Romans who first brought the art to Britain—
whatever its defects, was undoubtedly a great improvement on the
extravagance of the topiary school.

So much will be said of landscape-gardening in the following
chapters that I will only here remark that, when formality went
out of vogue, fashions in gardens ere long passed to the other
extreme. It was the inevitable swing of the pendulum, and no
more need be said.

28

CHAPTER II
LAMBETH PALACE

HE vicissitudes in the fortunes of England, political as
well as ecclesiastical, may be followed in the story of
Lambeth Palace with scarcely less completeness than in

that of the Tower of London itself. So truly is this the case,
that a series of pictures by a competent brush, of events of which
Lambeth has been the scene—from the time of the building of
the chapel about 1270, up to the Gordon Riots in 1780—would,
if they could be executed, be almost a sufficient substitute for a
text-book for the use of the previously well-instructed student
of English history, inasmuch as they would suffice to recall to him
the entire course of his studies.

Such a sequence of pictures in their right order would be es-
pecially serviceable in the regrettable absence of a really complete
history of the building. This, as Mr. Arthur Sheppard, secretary
to the present Archbishop, says, has ‘“‘ yet to be written ’—and
to write it the historian will require much help from within—and
access to all the archives.

Dr. Ducarel, who was Librarian at Lambeth in 1758, is the
‘chief authority on its early history. His account is interesting
but confused ; he gives undue prominence to events comparatively
unimportant, and omits mention of some of greater interest.
The ‘“‘ Lambeth Palace ” of the Rev. Cave-Brown is an admirable
paraphrase of Ducarel’s work, but fails to throw much new light
on the subject. In the short account offered in the present chapter
I acknowledge considerable indebtedness to both writers, and
fill up the gaps in their evidence with data gleaned from general

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

history, whereby some sidelights on Lambeth’s story are inci-
dentally thrown.

The connection of Lambeth with the ecclesiastical history of
this country began long before the present archiepiscopal palace
—or any part of it—was built. It began when Goda, the pious
sister of Edward the Confessor,—and wife, first, of Walter, Earl of
Mantes, and afterwards of Eustace, Earl of Boulogne—presented
the Manor of Lambeth to the Bishop and Monks of Rochester—
reserving, however, all church patronage to herself. At the
Conquest, the Manor was seized by the Crown, and a portion of
it granted to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, a half-brother of William I.,
but it was afterwards restored by William Rufus, who added to
the gift the Church of St. Mary at Lambeth.

Ducarel gives a somewhat drawn-out and confusing account
of the manner in which the land, whereon the Palace is built,
passed from the possession of the See of Rochester to that of
Canterbury.

It seems that considerable friction had for some time existed
between the secular clergy and the monks of Rochester, who,
among other privileges, claimed the right to elect the Archbishop.

Archbishop Baldwin, the prelate who afterwards accompanied
Richard Cceur-de-Lion to the Holy Land, was desirous of restraining
the power of the monks, and to this end he proposed to form a
college for the secular priesthood at Harlingden, near Canterbury.
The King, Henry II., who had suffered much from ecclesiastical
insolence, encouraged the scheme, and the Archbishop, in order
to conceal his real design from the monks, pulled down the church
of St. Stephen under the pretext of building one to SS. Stephen,
and Thomas a Becket. Meeting with strenuous opposition he
hurried on the work, and having no stone for the chapel, built
it of wood, and solemnly consecrated it, declaring that in so doing
he was only carrying out the pious intention of his saintly pre-
decessors, Anselm, and Thomas & Becket.

Urged by the monks, who appealed to Rome, Pope Urban III.
ordered the Archbishop to stop all further work at Harlingden,
and to demolish all that was already completed there. But at
this juncture the Pontiff, who had protected the monks, died.
During the short reign of his successor, with whom Baldwin had
some influence, the latter—finding the demolition of his collegiate

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LAMBETH PALACE

buildings could no longer be delayed,—seized the opportunity to
begin rebuilding, but wisely decided to do so elsewhere. He
effected an exchange with the See of Rochester, and secured a
piece of land on the Thames, near London, and with the con-
currence of King Richard, the Bishops, and Barons, laid the founda-
tion of the collegiate buildings at Lambeth, and for their construc-
tion he moved thither, by water, all the building materials he
had collected at Harlingden. But the energetic prelate did not
see his work completed, for he died in Palestine at ‘the Siege of
Acre.

It thus fell to Archbishop Hubert Walter to carry out his pre-
decessor’s plans. To do so he made further exchange of land with
Rochester, and in 1197 he and his successors were confirmed in the
possession of the entire demesne by Richard I. But the monks,
still jealous and discontented, and rejecting the friendly and
advantageous overtures of the Primate, sent to Rome two of their
number, who succeeded in obtaining a Bull from Innocent III.,
couched in arrogant and unreasonable terms. These were that
the newly-built chapel on the banks of the Thames was to be
demolished, as in Baldwin’s time the chapel at Harlingden had
been, and the canons were to be ejected within thirty days;
failing which the province of Canterbury was to disown the Arch-
bishop as its Metropolitan, and he himself was to be suspended
from office.

So the quarrel dragged on, until in 1202 the matter, still under
dispute, was subjected to arbitration, the decision being that after
the destruction of the recently created chapel, Walter was to be
permitted to build an ordinary church upon its site, to place therein
a limited number of canons, and to endow them with one hundred
pounds per annum. This was only on condition that no bishops
were consecrated there, no councils held, no abbots admitted, and
no orders conferred, and, naturally, the Archbishop declined to
build upon such terms.

However, says Dr. Ducarel, ‘‘ these disputes between the Arch-
bishop and monks of Canterbury proved of infinite advantage
to this place, since they brought and fixed the Archbishops of
Canterbury at Lambeth, who have ever since honoured that town
with their palace and chief residence.”

Archbishop Hubert Walter, and his successor, Stephen Langton,

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

the same who, in 1215, headed the Barons and obtained the Magna
Charta, each in turn resided“at the Manor House, which Glanville,
Bishop of Rochester, at the end of the twelfth century, had built
for a London residence for the Bishops of Rochester.

By the year 1262 it appears to have become dilapidated, for at
that date a Bull from Pope Urban IV. empowered Archbishop
Boniface to dispose of a fourth of the offerings at the shrine of
St. Thomas of Canterbury, ‘‘ and to turn them to pious uses” ;
and he was ordered either to repair his ‘“‘ houses” at Lambeth, or
to build new ones.

Which alternative he elected to follow is not quite certain;
it is supposed that Boniface erected the present chapel over the
then existing crypt, but the crypt itself contains no architectural
work earlier than the close of the twelfth, or beginning of the
thirteenth century. Ducarel suggests that he also laid the
foundation of the Great Hall; and, on the whole, Boniface is
generally credited with being the first builder of the present
palace.

Fach succeeding Primate, with one exception, appears to have
done something to add: to its dignity and convenience. The
exception was Archbishop Kilwarby, or Kilwardby, who, about
1275, robbed the See of Canterbury, and carried away with him
to Rome all the jewels, plate, money, and, most important of all,
the Register books belonging to the Archiepiscopate. The loss
of these Registers has made the early history of Lambeth House
very difficult to trace.

In 1351, during the reign of Edward II., Archbishop Reynolds
restored portions of the house. In 1381, in the reign of Richard II,
Wat Tyler, incensed by the unpopular Poll Tax, headed a rebellion
against the King, seized the Tower of London, and led a party
against Lambeth House. They beheaded the Archbishop, Simon
de Sudbury, sacked the building, and “‘ did all the mischief that
a careless and enraged mob is capable of doing.”

This mischief two succeeding prelates, Courtney and Arundel,
did their best to repair. Arundel, the great persecutor of the
Lollards, was followed by an eminent building Archbishop, Henry
Chicherley, to whom Lambeth owes more, architecturally, than
to any occupant of the See of Canterbury except Cardinal Morton,
who built the great Gatehouse about the year 1490.

32

ze asp
suopipy ay, wotf avd YL ?HLAGNVT

LAMBETH PALACE

Chicherley spent vast sums upon the demesne of Lambeth.
He restored the house and added a fountain, or aqueduct, and
also a ‘‘rabbed garden.” A fountain suggests a garden, and we
thus come upon the earliest reference to the gardens of the Palace.
Chicherley’s chief contribution, however, to the growing pile of
buildings on the south bank of the Thames, was the square, grim,
battlemented tower, built of rough, grey stone, standing at the
western extremity of the chapel; it was erected about the thir-
teenth year of the reign of Henry VI., when Chicherley had been
eight years Primate. An old stone building was cleared away to
make room for it, of which a small turret was spared and incor-
porated in the main body of the new tower. From the steward’s
accounts for that year, the latter is found to have cost £278 2s. 114d.,
something like £3,000 of our present currency.

The tower has long been known as the ‘ Lollards Tower.”
Ducarel records this fact, but makes no comment on it. Dr.
Maitland, however, who was Librarian at Lambeth about 1840,
states authoritatively that there is no foundation for the popular
belief that the unfortunate followers of Wycliff were ever incar-
cerated there; and that the stone chamber on the summit, in
which a so-called ‘‘ oubliette ’’ is shown, was never used as their
prison. Nevertheless, the ‘‘ oubliette,” though it is no oubliette,
and certain rings and staples to which prisoners might have been
chained, are still regarded by some as evidence of the melancholy
purpose to which they assume it had been put by its builders.

This is unfair to the memory of Chicherley, for the disgrace of
the persecution of the unhappy reformers should fall chiefly on
Arundel, who was responsible for the statute legalizing the burning
of heretics in 1401, the year when the fires of Smithfield were, [
believe, first lighted.

Any priest who had arrived at the dignity of Archbishop of
Canterbury, was bound in those days to be more or less a per-
secutor, and Chicherley was no exception; but he was not only an
ecclesiastic, he was also a statesman, and a man of the world,
occupied with large public and benevolent undertakings. It was
Chicherley who encouraged Henry V. to begin the successful
campaign against France, and to found the famous twin monastery
of Sion at Isleworth, concerning which there will be more to say
in a succeeding chapter. Above all, he will always be remem-

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

bered as the beneficent founder of All Souls’ College, Oxford, and
of other similar institutions. In character he was certainly more
humane than Arundel, for he was instrumental in passing the
Act that in some cases substituted the lash, and other lighter
punishments, for the horrible penalty of death at the stake. In
any case, it is difficult to believe that he could have been guilty of
the deliberate cruelty of building a great addition to the Lambeth
pile, for the express purpose of therein immuring and torturing
the Wycliffites, and the popular belief that he did so leaves an
undeserved stain on his memory. The true Lollards Tower,
according to Dr. Maitland and to other evidence both direct and
indirect, was not at Lambeth at all, but at the ‘‘ Bishop’s prison ”
attached to London House, the town residence of the Metropolitan
Bishop, and was, in fact, a portion of old St. Paul’s.

Foxe, in his “‘ Actes and Monuments,”’ speaks of the ‘“ Lollard’s
Tower ” of St. Paul’s—“ Paul’s,” as the cathedral was colloquially
termed—and Stowe, writing in 1598, makes mention of two towers
at its western extremity, of which the one at the southern corner
was known as “ The Lowlarde Tower, and hath been used as the
Bishop’s prison of such as were detested for opinions contrary
to the faith of the church.”

One might suppose that such evidence would have been con-
sidered conclusive, but it seems it was not so; for after the
Commonwealth, and the Restoration, when the Great Fire of 1666
had swept away every vestige of old St. Paul’s, of London House,
its Lollard Tower, and its prison—the tradition of a “ Lollard’s
Tower ”’ still remaining, it was transferred bodily to Lambeth,
and the odium attaching to its erection and use, came at last,
by a not unnatural sequence of ideas, to be cast upon the man,
who having punished heresy and built a tower, had (so it was
erroneously concluded) intended it, and used it, as a prison for
Lollards.

Popular beliefs, like prejudices, are not easily eradicated ;
they take much uprooting ; and, therefore, so long as the walls of
Lambeth Palace stand, so long will idle passers-by look up at the
hoary stones of the supposed Lollard’s Tower, and vaguely picture,
as having been enacted behind them, scenes of sorrow and violence
that never took place. Posterity has fixed this stain upon the
memory of the great building Archbishop, and there it will remain,

34

LAMBETH PALACE

perpetuated in the name by which the tower is best known. Thus
“the evil that men do lives after them, the good is oft interred
with their bones.”

There are people who, finding the stories they had believed in
to be apocryphal, straightway lose their chief interest in history ;
for, robbed of its romance, it becomes to them merely a dry thing
of dates, and statistics, a catalogue of Acts of Parliament and
accounts of the struggles to get them passed, punctuated, and
relieved, here and there, by a battle, or a revolution. Hence,
while it is a good thing to bring criticism and research to bear upon
the perversions and exaggerations that distort historical fact, it is
not always necessary, while it is frequently undesirable, to sweep
away ruthlessly all the picturesque and innocent accretions that
may in time have grown round them. When a tradition apper-
taining to a person, or a place, is morally beautiful, inspiring
and harmless, when no memory is unfairly attacked by its accept-
ance, when there can be no question at all of giving even the devil
his due, it is surely a pity that it should be robbed of a shred of
its picturesqueness by means of a merciless investigation, that,
when accomplished, cannot in the least alter the trend of that
history of which it is, in all probability, merely an unimportant
side-issue.

For example, childish faith in the stories of William Tell and
Fair Rosamond did nobody any harm, and what earthly interest can
we find in “ Tell’s ’” chapel on the shores of Lake Leman now that
we all know that the incident of the shooting of the apple from
the child’s head is pure fiction, and since that most disagreeable
person, the iconoclastic historian, has gone so far as to assure
us that Tell himself never existed ?

With regard to Fair Rosamond and the dreadful choice she had
to make, we cannot whitewash the memory of the jealous queen
by doing away with the bowl and the dagger, the labyrinth and
the clew; for Eleanor, the divorced Queen of France before she
became Queen of England, was in no position to cast a stone at
the unhappy object of her hate. It is a sordid, ugly story, anyway,
though founded on solid fact, for there really was a beautiful
Rosamond Clifford, and, as I had occasion to mention in the first
chapter, Henry II. actually had a palace and a shooting lodge,
and a “ parke”’ or chase, at Woodstock ; and if the poison-chalice

35 3*

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

and all the rest of the tragic happenings, be indeed all moonshine,
or rather limelight and stage effect, their elimination would serve
no purpose.

The case of the tower that Archbishop Chicherley built, however,
and the tradition attached to it, is‘ altogether different, since to
remove the calumny from the builder, as we are bound to do, is
not to perceptibly diminish the interest in the building; for so
intimately has Lambeth been associated with events of importance
in England’s history, so constantly, and of necessity, have the
Primates played a great part in these, that it is unnecessary to
work up a fictitious emotion by the aid of incorrect or uncor-
roborated assertions.

The Water Tower, to give it its right name, has claims upon the
attention of the student of history and archeology that are
independent of any supposed connection with Lollardism; to
these we shall return later.

The Computus Bellevorum, or steward’s accounts, were very
regularly kept at Lambeth, and they show that Chicherley restored,
if he did not actually rebuild, the whole of the Great Hall, which
many years later was certainly carefully reconstructed by Juxon,
on the lines laid down by his predecessor. But if Archbishop
Chicherley was thus a great builder, one who has largely left his
mark upon Lambeth, Cardinal Morton, who became Primate in
1486, and Lord Chancellor of England in the following year,
was yet a greater. He it was who erected the massive and
stately Gatehouse which is the most remarkable feature of
the Palace buildings. Of its kind there is no finer or more
characteristic example of Tudor architecture in England. It is
built of red brick, with stone quoins and dressings, and must have
been one of the earliest erections of the kind in this country, for,
up to the time of the fifth or sixth Henry, stone, or timber with
an admixture of brick, was exclusively used in buildings in the
southern part of the island.

There seems to have been no attempt at consistency or unity of
design in the several additions made at various dates at Lambeth;
and there was none in the material of which they were constructed.
This varicty makes for picturesqueness. One cannot, however,
fail to note that the rough grey stone of the Water Tower has
received no added charm and dignity from age, whereas the smooth

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LAMBETH PALACE

brickwork of Cardinal Morton’s Gateway, once red, but now
under certain effects of light wearing a true mulberry bloom, has
but gained fresh charm in the process of growing old. The same
rich but subdued colouring may be seen in the more ancient
portions of Hampton Court, and also in the quaint quadrangle
and porch of the Bishop of London’s Palace at Fulham.

What can have been the secret of that art in brick-making
possessed by those fifteenth-century builders ?—a secret that seems
to have been entirely lost, for the squares and streets of Georgian
and Victorian London betray no sign of its possession; they are
dingy, and grimy, and brown; whereas Morton’s Gatehouse, in
spite of equal- exposure to London’s atmospheric conditions, and
its vastly greater antiquity, has only become mellowed into
greater beauty in the passage of four centuries and more.

Solid though it be, when approached from Lambeth Bridge it
wears an aspect of curious unreality. One could easily conceive
its strength to be make-believe, and itself a bit of stage architec-
ture; for it seems to stand, without foundation, on the bit of
roadway in front of it—much as a painted scene might do. But
whether real or not, it is an anachronism—seeming to belong, as
indeed it does belong, to another and old-time world ; it wears an
air of total detachment from the present. Nor have I found that
a more intimate acquaintance with the venerable Gatehouse
destroys or even modifies this first impression. While one is
standing at the postern, waiting for it to open, and seeing nothing
of the rest of the Palace, the gateway appears a derelict survival
of the past, stranded there in medieval grandeur. But when at
last one is within the precincts, this impression vanishes.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Lambeth. Palace was
separated only by a leafy “‘ Bishops’ Walk” from the Thames,
which flowed within a stone’s throw of it. At the present day a
broad roadway and the Albert Embankment intervene; thus its
environment is the spirit of modernity visualized; and yet it
stands, a precious relic of England in the olden time, curiously out
of keeping with the constant passing of the London County Council
trams, and the ceaseless traffic by land and by water.

From within, the best view of the Gatehouse is to be obtained
from the opposite side of the courtyard on a fine summer’s day.
Then, if one return from visiting the gardens on the north side of

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

the Palace by way of a little passage and a small pointed archway
at the base of the Water Tower, one is confronted by the impressive
vision of this imposing entrance gate. It might very well be the
approach to some gigantic fortification of the Middle Ages, instead
of to the peaceful dwelling of the head of the English Church. —

The Great Hall, now known as “ Juxon’s Hall,” is to our left,
and opposite to it is the long high wall separating the archiepis-
copal demesne from the public road. Intervening, there is a wide
stretch of green soft turf, and also a broad gravel walk, across
which the long shadows of the hawthorn, sumach, and other trees,
cast by the westering sun, travel with such rapidity that my
brush was well-nigh beaten in the breathless race to overtake them.

The gateway itself is facing us: the span of its nearer and inner
arch is greater than that of the outer. Heavy gates and the solid,
iron-studded, oaken postern before mentioned, shut out the high
road. Below the arch, and between the great flanking towers,
there is a vestibule of considerable size, which has a flagged floor
and a groined roof. On either side of it are the janitors’ private
rooms and offices, and above it is a spacious chamber, with an
embattled roof, and a three-light perpendicular window. This
room was formerly used as a record, or muniment room, but the
precious archives and registers of the See of Canterbury, once kept
there, are now removed elsewhere.

Abutting closely upon the Gatehouse—so closely that the two
would- appear to have drawn together for mutual comfort and
protection in this strange, new, twentieth century with which they
have so little in common—is the ancient grey tower of St. Mary’s,
the parish church of Lambeth. It owns a clock which has its
own independent computation of time, even bravely challenging
Big Ben itself, for it ventures to strike a quarter of a minute later
than its powerful rival.* Has it not the best of rights? For
Lambeth Church Tower is of such venerable age that, compared
with it, the clock tower of Westminster is but of mushroom
growth—a thing of yesterday. It forms an integral portion of
the picturesque, gatehouse-group of buildings, and is the only
remaining part of the second, possibly of the third, church erected
on the site, for one is mentioned in “‘ Domesday Book,” and there

* The drawing of the gateway was already far advanced, when war was declared in August,
1914—since when Big Ben has been silent.

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LAMBETH PALACE

have been rectors of Lambeth for eight hundred years. In the
churchyard lie buried several of the Archbishops, but they
are interred in greater number at Canterbury. ; ae

In connection with gardens and their historical evolution, it is
interesting to relate that in Lambeth Churchyard lie three genera-
tions of a family of famous gardeners, mentioned in the itro-
ductory chapter. John Tradescent, senior, was gardener to Queen
Elizabeth ; his son succeeded him in her service, and on her death
became gardener to Cecil, the first Lord Salisbury; thus helping
to make the celebrated Hatfield Gardens, and he ended his career
as gardener to Charles I.

His son was that John Tradescent who founded the Ashmolean
Museum at Oxford. The Tradescents being prosperous and highly-
esteemed residents of Lambeth, it is extremely probable that—at a
period when their royal mistress frequently visited the Primate—
father, or son, or both, may have been called in to give advice con-
cerning the Archbishop’s garden. Their tombstone in Lambeth
Churchyard has an inscription that is worth quoting ; it runs thus :

“ Know, Stranger, ere thou pass, beneath this stone
Lye John Tredescent, Grandsire, father, son,
The last dy’d in his spring: the other two

. Liv’d till they had travell’d Art and Nature through,
As by their choice collections may appear
From what is rare, in Land, in Sea, in Air.
Whilst they (a Homer’s Iliad in a Nut)
A world of wonder in one closet shut.
These famous antiquarians that had been
Both gardeners to the Rose and Lily Queen,
Transplanted now themselves, sleep here and when
Angels shall with their trumpets waken men,

And fire shall purge the world, these hence shall rise
And change the garden for a Paradise.”

Notwithstanding their close connection, matters did not always
run smoothly between Lambeth House and the township or parish.

In the quaint, but rather tedious pages of Ducarel, there.is a
detailed report of a suit brought in 1776 by the then Archbishop,
by which he pleaded exemption from payment of taxes, on the
ground that Lambeth Palace was in the diocese of Canterbury
and not in that of Winchester, the bishops of which instituted the
Rector of Lambeth to the living, that town and parish being
within their ecclesiastical jurisdiction.

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It was urged for the plaintiff that though ‘“‘ there are instances
of a parish fying in two counties, there is none of one lying in
two dioceses.”? Lambeth, therefore, claimed to be extra-parochial ;
and the claim was allowed, the question whether the house and
gardens known by the name of the Archbishop’s Palace at Lam-
beth, was or was not in the parish of Lambeth, being settled in
favour of the plaintiff. ‘‘ In consequence,” says Ducarel, “ the
Parish was condemned in costs amounting to one hundred and fifty
pounds, which money was raised by an assessment on all the
inhabitants, and paid to Archbishop Cornwallis, who a few months
after, very generously presented the whole and more to the Parish,
and paid his Solicitor’s bill out of his own pocket.”

Lambeth parish continued in the diocese of Winchester until
1877, when it was transferred to the enlarged and rearranged
diocese of Rochester. This circumstance is interesting, when it
is recalled that the Palace occupies land that, in the first instance,
was acquired from the Bishop and monks of Rochester.

In the days when London had but one bridge, and houses and
shops were crowded upon it, the right of passage by the horse
ferry at Lambeth, the only ferry for cattle over the Thames, was
a monopoly of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and brought in a
considerable revenue in tolls, prior to the building of a bridge at
Westminster in 1750. The See of Canterbury, and the surviving
patentee, were paid £2,208 in compensation for the loss of the tolls.

Tremendous state was kept up by the Primates, as befitted their
exalted position. As is well known, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
in the order of precedence, ranks after the Princes of the Blood
Royal; but it is perhaps not so generally remembered that in the
past there have been six Cardinals, and eleven Lord Chancellors,
among them. The post of Lord Treasurer was also, in former
times, occasionally held by the Primate; while Archbishop
Radulphon, about 1414, and Hubert Walter, about 1494, each
united in his own person, the offices of Lord Chief Justice and
Archbishop. Noblesse oblige, and William Stubbs, in his ‘‘ Con-
stitutional History of England,” tells us that the two Arch-
bishops maintained households on the same scale as dukes, and
the bishops, as far as influence and expenditure were concerned,
maintained the state of earls. They had their embattled houses,

their wide, enclosed parks, and unenclosed chases ; they kept their
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LAMBETH PALACE

court with just the same array of officers, servants, counsellors and
chaplains; they made their progresses with armed retinues, and
trains of baggage. And we read that in 1559, Tunsdall, or Tunstall,
the good old Bishop of Durham, when he came up to the Metro-
polis to be deprived and to die, came riding to London with
three-score horsemen.

In the Middle Ages a body-guard and a guard-room were as
necessary in these great ecclesiastical establishments, as was a
great hall in which to dispense hospitality. After the Wars of the
Roses, the Guard-room at Lambeth was turned into an armoury ;
and even as late as the time of Archbishop Laud it was said to
contain munitions of war sufficient to equip two hundred men. It
is now the state dining-room, and round its walls hang the interest-
ing portraits of the Archbishops.

The building at the left-hand side of the drawing of the Gate-
house is the Great Hall, supposed to have been originally erected
by Boniface when he received the Pope’s mandate to repair, or re-
build, the Lambeth “‘ Houses.’ As we have seen, it was ‘‘ re-edify’d,”
which probably meant largely reconstructed and decorated, by
Chicherley, but it goes by the name of ‘“‘ Juxon’s Hall,” because,
having been entirely wrecked by the partisans of Cromwell, it
was rebuilt by Archbishop Juxon in 1660. It is nearly one hundred
feet long, is forty feet broad, and fifty feet high; and since Juxon
retained the fine oaken roof of the interior, and as far as possible
followed the design of the earlier building, we may assume that
these were the original dimensions of the great room.

Such halls were necessarily large, because, as remarked before,
the retinue of an Archbishop in olden times had to be commen-
surate with his dignity, and he kept open house. Strype, the
ecclesiastical historian, writing in 1694, says that of Cranmer
included a master of the horse, yeomen of the horse, gentlemen
riders, ushers of the chamber, grooms of the chamber, yeomen of
the chamber, yeomen of the wardrobe; the steward, almoner,
treasurer, and comptroller, the janitors, chandlers, caterers,
clerk of the kitchen, clerk of the spicery, the butchers and bakers,
and the pantlers, who had charge of the bread and other provisions,
the butlers, who looked after the wine and ale, the server who set
down and removed all dishes, the carver, the cup-bearer, and
finally the harbinger; whose duty seems to have been to go forward

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

on occasions, probably on the Primate’s journeyings overt his
diocese, to provide lodgings; and certainly, if my lord of Canter-
bury travelled with but half his train of servitors, the office could
have been no sinecure.

Great state was kept up by his successor, Cardinal Pole, who,
by virtue of a patent from Philip and Mary, was allowed to keep
one hundred servants.

Strype gives an account of the manner in which the good Arch-
bishop Parker, who was appointed to the See of Canterbury by
Elizabeth, kept open house. ‘‘ In the daily eating,” he says,
“this was the custom; the steward, with servants that were
gentlemen of the better rank, sat down at the tables in the hall
at the right hand, and the almoner, with the clergy and other
servants, sat on the other side,’ which reads as though the
chaplains and lower order of clergy were ranked with the lower
order of servants. The food left over from each day’s feast “ did
suffice to feed the bellies of a great number of poor hungry people
that waited at the gate; and so constant and unfailing was this
provision at my lord’s table, that whoever came in either at dinner
or at supper, being not above the degree of a knight, might there
be entertained worthy of his quality either at the steward’s or the
almoner’s table, and moreover it was the Archbishop’s command
to his servants that all strangers should be received and treated
with all manner of civility and respect, and that places at the table
should be assigned to them according to their dignity and quality,
which redounded much to the praise and commendation of the
Archbishop. The discourse and conversation at meals was void
of all brawls and loud talking, and for the most part consisted in
framing men’s manners to religion, or to some other honest or
becoming subject.” F

There was a monitor in the hall, whose business it was at meal-
times to ery silence if any person spoke too loud, “‘ or concerning
things less decent.”

In the Great Hall were also held the consecration banquets of
the Southern Province, at the charge of the newly consecrated
bishop ; pcrhaps the one most memorable for its magnificence
being that of William of Wykeham in 1367.

These, however, were special occasions ; but so bounteous was
the provision even for the daily feasts, during the time of Cranmer,

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LAMBETH PALACE

Parker, and others, that the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s
table sufficed to feed an army of mendicants ; and not seven only,
but seventy times seven, scriptural basketsful of the fragments
that remained, must have been taken up in the course of a year.
The surplus was distributed daily at the gates, and thus arose
the famous “‘ Lambeth Dole.”

It was at Lambeth, under the roof of the Archbishop, that
Katherine of Arragon, on arriving in England for her first marriage
with Arthur, Prince of Wales, was for some days lodged. Here,
thirty-two years later, Archbishop Cranmer confirmed the union
of Henry VIII. with poor Katherine’s rival and successor, Anne
Boleyn. Still more important was that meeting over which he
soon after presided, on a day late in April, 1534. England had
reached one of the many crises in her history. The Spanish party
at Rome had triumphed; the marriage of Henry VIII. with
Katherine of Arragon had ‘been pronounced valid, and if the
King refused to acquiesce in this decision, he was to be declared
““excommunicate,”’ and to forfeit the allegiance of his subjects,
and the Emperor was. to invade England and Henry to be
deposed.

He did not acquiesce, for now it was that, in the words of Froude,
“the Tudor spirit was at length awake in the English sovereign
. . . he met defiance by defiance. The Act of Parliament, altering
the succession to the children of Anne Boleyn, was immediately
passed ; Convocation, which was still sitting, hurried through a
declaration that the Pope had no more power in England than
any other bishop. The ordnance stores were examined, the repairs
of the navy were hastened, and the garrisons were strengthened
along the coast. . . . A commission appointed under the Statute
of Succession opened its sittings to receive the oaths of allegiance.
. .. The peers swore, the bishops, abbots, priests, heads of
colleges, swore with scarcely an exception; the nation seemed to
unite in unanimous declaration of freedom. . . . The Commis-
sioners sat at the Archbishop’s Palace at Lambeth, and at the
end of April, Sir Thomas More received a summons to appear before
them. He was at his house at Chelsea, where for the last two years
he had lived in deep retirement, making ready for evil times. Those
times at length were come. On the morning on which he was to
present himself, he confessed and received the Sacrament in

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

Chelsea Church; ‘and whereas,’ says his great-grandson, ‘ at
other times, before he departed from his wife and children, they
used to bring him to his boat, and he there leaving them, bade
them farewell; at this time he suffered none of them to follow him
forth of his gate, but pulled the wicket after him, and with a heavy
heart he took boat with his son Roper.’ He was leaving his house
for the last time, and he knew it. He sat silent for some minutes,
and then with a sudden start said, ‘I thank our Lord the field is
won.’ ”’? Lambeth Palace was crowded with people who had come
on the same errand as himself. More was called in early, and
found Cromwell present, with the four Commissioners and also
the Abbot of Westminster. The oath was read to him. “ He
desired to see the Statute of Succession himself, and, after reading
it, said he would swear to the part of it that secured the succes-
sion to the children of Queen Anne, but he refused to ‘ peril his
soul ’ by subscription to the remainder of the statute. He was asked
to reconsider his answer.” To do so he was sent into the garden,
and in his absence others were called in; among these, Fisher,
Bishop of Rochester, who replied in the same terms. Returning
from the garden, More made his choice. It is a matter of history
what that choice was.

Here, so far as Lambeth is concerned, ends a momentous
chapter in the history of Tudor England, for the well-known
melancholy sequel belongs of right to that of the Tower, to which
prison More and Fisher were committed. Thus Henry VIII. had
his Catholic martyrs, as his daughter Mary had her Protestant
ones.

Meanwhile the Succession was seemingly securely settled on the
children of Anne Boleyn, whose star was now in the ascendant.
But wait! Two short years only, and another chapter is opened,
another and very different page is turned. Again the stage is
Lambeth; again the instrument of Henry’s will is Cranmer ;
again the season is Spring—-the lovely English Spring ; everything
is green and bursting into beauty in the large gardens behind the
Palacc, the same in which More had been sent to walk to reconsider
his refusal. But this time the scenc is laid neither in the Great Hall
nor the Guard-room, but in the gloomy crypt beneath the beautiful
chapel of the Palace.

Conveyed hither by water from her prison in the Tower, pale,

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LAMBETH PALACE

frightened, hysterical, and under sentence of death, the once
brilliant and triumphant Anne stood before the Archbishop, who,
in his own words, “ had loved her not a little for the love I judged
her to bear towards God and his gospel.” She made her confession,
in hopes perhaps, that, if she did so, her life might be spared, and
Cranmer, “ sitting judicially, pronounced her marriage with the
King null and void.”

The crypt, described as a “‘ certain low chapel beneath his [the
Archbishop’s] house at Lambeth,” is the oldest part of the Palace
buildings. Too long perverted to ignoble uses, it has now, by the
liberality of the present Primate, Archbishop Davidson, been
excavated and restored. On the way to the gardens, which are
reached at the river side by a short cut from the outer courtyard,
its low, dingy windows, rising but a little above the level of the
ground, are still in evidence. Small and square, they look dreary
enough, for smoke and time have still further darkened a spot
where God’s sunshine never seems to penetrate.

In the days when the Thames washed the foundation of the
Water Tower, the river stairs and landing-place to the Palace, were
situated at its north-west corner, on a little creek, crossed, it is
said, by a wooden bridge. Within the tower itself a short flight
of steps still leads from the crypt to the ‘‘ Post-room ”’—a chamber
that forms a stately vestibule to the beautiful chapel. Incident-
ally it should be mentioned that the ‘‘ Post,” or pillar, which gives
the name to this apartment, is merely a support to the roof, and
was never, as is vulgarly supposed, a whipping-place for Lollards.

On that fatal Wednesday, Anne, a queen no longer, returning
from her dread ordeal in the crypt, must necessarily have mounted
the stone steps, and crossed the Post-room to reach the doorway,
now built up, which led to the landing-place. Here awaited her
the boat that was to take her back to the Tower, where, the next
day but one, she met her fate. Unhappy Anne Boleyn! For
unhappy she was, whether sorely erring, or merely guilty of most
unbecoming and unqueenly levity! One gladly closes this chapter
in Lambeth’s chequered history, although there are others scarcely
less dark to follow.

Lambeth Palace has been honoured by many Royal visits, all
of which are duly noted in the parish vestry books in the form of
fees paid to bellringers.

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

Even so early as 1845, Edward III. received homage here from
John de Montfort, Duke of Brittany, during the régime of Arch-
bishop Stratford; and in his ‘‘ Survey of London” Stowe tells.
us that ‘‘ Henry Bolingbroke, while staying in his palace at Ken-
nington, accepted the hospitality of Archbishop Bouchier, a few
days before his coronation.”

Here Henry VIII. visited Archbishop Warham in 1518, and
thirty years later he crossed to Lambeth Stairs to warn Cranmer
in a friendly manner, of the intrigues of Bishop Gardiner
against him.

Mary Tudor frequently came to Lambeth to see her cousin,
Cardinal Pole, when, as Archbishop, he was in residence here; and
it is said, that, at her own expense, she furnished and redecorated
the Palace for his benefit. During her brief reign nought but the
fires of Smithfield went merrily; two hundred and seventeen
persons suffered at the stake in three years, and it is difficult to
conceive of the gloomy Queen taking active part in any festivities :
and yet many such must have been held by Pole in her honour,
since, as previously mentioned, by virtue of a patent from herself
and her consort Philip, the Cardinal was permitted to keep one
hundred servants, a fact which implies lavish hospitality, fit only
for royalty.

Things changed on the rising “ of that bright occidental Star
Queen Elizabeth; ” as the translators of the Bible have designated
her. She loved state and show, and many times honoured
Matthew Parker, the Archbishop par excellence of the Reformation,
by visiting him during his Primacy of seventeen years. But she
disliked the idea of a married clergy; and on one occasion, after
a sojourn of three days at Lambeth, while thanking her host on
her departure for his hospitality, she did not hesitate to make
sundry caustic, and disagreeable remarks to his wife, in bidding her
farewell. Grindal, the next Archbishop, came under the ban of
Her Grace’s displeasure, and to him she paid no visits, even when
he became old and enfeebled ; but she was frequently the guest
of his successor, Whitgift, visiting him no less than fifteen times,
and she sometimes stayed two or,three days at Lambeth.

The Gatehouse dominates the precincts, and its aspect can have
so little changed in four hundred years, that, when the great gates

are closed, and the twentieth century shut out, it requires but a
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LAMBETH: The Tudor Gateway

LAMBETH PALACE

small stretch of the imagination to call up a mental vision of the
same place in the days when Elizabeth was Queen.

And so we will picture her on a certain fine day in the year 1574,
when she has come to pay one of her frequent visits to Archbishop
Parker, and the bells of Lambeth Church tower are ringing merrily.
It is ‘‘ the time when lilies blow, and clouds are highest up in air; ”
and as she issues from the shadow of the archway, the sunlight
flashes on the jewel in the little green cap that partially conceals
her frizzy, red-gold hair. She is mounted on a richly caparisoned
palfrey, and its saddle cloth nearly reaches the ground. Her
riding coat of green velvet, richly wrought in a diaper pattern with
gold and seed pearls, stirred by the movement of the horse, shows
a lining of cloth of silver, and we catch a glimpse of a jewelled
stomacher, and a heavy rope of pearls. Her ruff to-day is lace-
trimmed, but of comparatively modest dimensions ; and her hands
are encased in embroidered gloves, over which she wears many
rings. She sits with easy dignity in her saddle, and carries her
forty-one years lightly; and it is very easy to see that, like her
cousin Mary Stuart, she has been unlucky in her portraitists, for
all have given more attention to the last button on her sleeve, than
to the force and character in the countenance of the woman in
whose reign England first became a world power. She is always
represented as a dressed-up wooden doll, with a large aquiline
nose, a somewhat hard mouth, and tousled red hair. But mark
her as she turns to address a gracious remark to the cavalier in
cream-coloured velvet, riding on her left, who is none other than
the Earl of Leicester. The severity of mien we associate with the
wearer of the portentous ruff and formidable farthingale, is absent
now. She has come from Greenwich, and ridden fast to consult
my Lord Archbishop on some pressing affairs of State, and the pale
skin wears the becoming flush of exercise. She smiles, and there
is even fascination in her smile, for is she not Anne Boleyn’s
‘daughter ? The severe lines in her face relax, the dark-brown eyes,
beneath their curiously heavy lids, brighten. The woman is upper-
most now, yet she looks every inch a queen—not the queen of starch
and whalebone, of tags and finery, compact of vanity and im-
periousness, of the National Portrait Gallery, but the “‘ Rose and
Lily Queen” of the Tradescent tomb in Lambeth Churchyard.
Ah! depend upon it, there was a lovable side to her nature, since,

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so long after she had “ shuffled off this mortal coil,” and when
flattery could no longer reach or move her, that tender, graceful
epithet could be applied to her by the servants and dependents
who knew her best.

Its testimony does not stand alone. Numerous other memorials
to the great queen-regnant, erected after her death when the recol-
lection of her was still green and vivid, tell the same story, and
equally express the love, veneration, and admiration of her subjects
for the “ good Queen Bess.”

Prime favourite at this time, of his sovereign, Leicester bends
smilingly towards her saddle-bow; gay words are on his lips,
exultation in his heart, for never again will Robert Dudley be so
near his ambition’s goal as at this moment.

On her left rides the great Burleigh, but recently made Lord
Treasurer. To him she now and then addresses a few gracious
words, for Elizabeth, with the wit to choose her servants well,
knows also how best to bind them to her service.

Behind Burleigh comes his brother-in-law, Sir Nicholas Bacon,
distinguished father of a much more famous son, and they are
followed by a bevy of fair ladies and many courtiers. A number
of Jackeys, and a detachment of those yeomen of the guard who
were the institution of the Queen’s grandfather, Henry VIL,
bring up the rear of a procession which, in splendour and brilliancy
of apparel and accoutrements, far exceeds any pageant of modern
times. It passes from the arch to the courtyard, and scintillates
for some brief minutes in the sunshine. There is a trampling of
horses’ feet and rapid dismounting, a clatter of arms, the ringing
of steel upon stone, and then its constituent parts break up into
many-tinted, moving fragments, resembling the bits of coloured
glass in a kaleidoscope, and, in true kaleidoscopic fashion, they
separate, and come together again. They form into knots and
groups before the door of the Great Hall: some of these follow
the Queen to the principal entrance, to which the Archbishop
hurries to receive her; and others wander off into the gardens
behind the Water Tower, and that other tower that is the com-
paratively recent erection of the late Archbishop Cranmer. But,
even as one looks, the day-dream fades, and resolves itself into
nothing more romantic than a group of very tall, well-grown, Boy
Scouts, lads of sixteen or seventeen, whose picturesque costume,

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LAMBETH PALACE

with its touches of colour, and the staves that, seen from the dis-
tance, suggested lances, had, on that bright summer’s day, sufficed
for one brief moment, to revivify the past, and to carry me back
from the twentieth century to the sixteenth.

And so it was almost with a shock of surprise that I was roused
from this vision to the crude, present-day reality ; for, staring at
the Gatehouse, one can scarcely help living backwards, and pro-
jecting oneself into that bygone age to which it properly belongs,
for the history of England, or its side-issues, is writ all over it.
At the present day all sorts and conditions of men pass in and out
of it, as they have done for four hundred years, as they did when
the famous Lambeth Dole was distributed there. Watching the
gates, I half expected to see them open to admit one of the great
gilded coaches, with heavy fringed hammer-cloth, decorated panels,
and mighty wheels, still to be seen reposing in the seclusion of a
dignified old age in a corner of the Victoria and Albert Museum ;
or else that an Archbishop’s lady, of the middle of the eighteenth
century, would soon be returning home from some function in the
fashionable west-central district, conveyed by two servitors in
one of those cosy carrying-chairs on poles, then in constant use;
chairs, on the embellishment of which some of the greatest French
pastoralists did not disdain to employ their exquisite art, and
which took their name from a town in France which has since
acquired a sinister significance, Sedan.

But the gates rolled back and let in only the Archbishop’s motor-
car, a characteristic product of this age of steel and petrol: next
came a boy on a bicycle, with a basket of loaves for His Grace’s
household, and this was followed presently by that already unusual
sight in the metropolis, a hansom cab, which seemed even more
oddly out of keeping with the ancient pile than the auto-
mobile. It had here much the same incongruous effect that a
horse and cab, on the stage, always have. The pigeons, of which
there are many hundred at Lambeth Palace, clearly thought it
had no business there, for, though near feeding-time, they rose in
a fluttermg cloud from the grass and stones, and, with the rushing
noise of wings in rapid flight, sought refuge on their favourite van-
tage ground, the cornices and pinnacles of the Great Hall. Yet
they did not disturb themselves at all when two grave dignitaries
of the Church, the Lord Bishop of —— and the Very Reverend

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the Dean of ——, in close confabulation, passed out by way of
the postern door in the Gatehouse. As the gates closed on. all
who went and came, one caught a glimpse of the prosaic modern
world outside—of Lambeth Bridge, of some men in khaki, and of
a passing Tooting tram !

Still, however insistently, and almost grotesquely, the present
may sometimes intrude itself upon the old-world calm of the
ancient Palace, there is a certain charm and attractiveness in this
strange intermingling of the old with the new, of the past with
the present. No doubt the old exceeds the new in interest. Yet
when the later chapters of its history come to be written, though
outwardly Lambeth seems to take but little part in the terribly
stirring events of our times, its inner history may prove to have a
large significance ; and the influences emanating from it may be found
to have had a most important bearing upon the trend of history.
At present, however, the past surges up, and its interest verily
overwhelms the present. In mental retrospection, we see the
ghosts of scores of notable men and women who lived between the
eras of Cranmer and Juxon. A few are smiling, many are weeping ;
and we place them instantly in their proper environment. As we
look, they shape themselves, vanish, and give place to others.
We see Thomas Cranmer, the tool of the King, and the instrument
of his pleasure in the matter of the divorce of Katherine of Arragon :
we see him later, truly attached to the Reformed faith, yet for
want of moral courage recanting his opinions ; then, repenting of
his recantation, nobly vindicating what he had before repudiated,
and dying a martyr’s death, the hand that had signed the recanta-
tion being forced by his own will to be the member first to suffer.
We see the recalcitrant bishops who refused to take the oath of
supremacy at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, consigned to the
custody of Archbishop Parker, and watch him treating them more
as guests than prisoners. We see the Duke of Norfolk and Lord
William Howard, his brother, in 1574, joining in a conspiracy in
favour of Mary Queen of Scots, the elder punished by death, the
younger, who ill requited the Primate’s kindness, interned at
Lambeth. Next arises a vision of a wet and stormy night in 1600,
when the once debonair and powerful Essex, now disgraced and
forlorn, together with his friend, the young Earl of Southampton,
was on his way to the Tower by water. The river, lashed into

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LAMBETH PALACE

fury by the wind, was rough, the rain splashed on the decks of the
light craft, and added physical discomfort to the captives’ mental
misery. The voyage had to be broken at Lambeth, where many
a time, in happier days, the favourite had landed from Elizabeth’s
gilded and cushioned barge of state. How bitter must have been
the contrast between then and now !

The boat was moored to the landing-place at the foot of the
Water Tower. Archbishop Whitgift, apprised of the unexpected
visit, met the noblemen at the head of the stairs ; the flaring light
from a cresset, fell full on his grey head and grave face. He was
visibly distressed. ‘‘ My lord,” he said sadly, addressing the
fallen favourite, ‘‘ I am indeed concerned to see this time when
you are brought here thus!” But it would require the pen of a
Carlyle, the brush of a Rembrandt, to paint that scene! Suffice
to say, that by and by, when the storm abated, the barge was
remanned, the prisoners took their places, and by the same watery
way that had swept Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and others
to their doom, the Earl of Essex passed to his, and, in his passing,
broke an old Queen’s heart !

‘* She is much disfavoured and unattired,’’ wrote her godson,
Sir John Harrington; ‘‘ she disregardeth every costly cover that
cometh to her table, and eateth little but manchet and succory
pottage. . . . Her Highness hath worn but one change of raiment
for many daies,” a pregnant sign in one whose love of dress was
notorious.

Among so many tragic happenings at the old archiepiscopal
residence, it is a relief to meet with a romantic story of true love.
By a clandestine marriage, which upset the royal plans, two lovers
of high degree had incurred the displeasure of Charles I. The
bride was the Lady Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of the Earl of
Lennox, and ward and kinswoman to the King, whose purpose it
had been to unite the great Scottish houses of Lennox and Argyle,
by the bestowal of her hand on the Marquis of Lorne. But the
girl had vastly preferred the Lord Montravers, heir to the earldom
of Arundel (the duchy of Norfolk being then under attainder).
For supposed connivance in the match, her. parents were sent to
the Tower, but Charles, for all his extravagant notions of the
divine right of kings, was no tyrant, and he merely punished the
rebellious pair by committing them to the care of Archbishop

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Abbot. Then were there billings and cooings, other than those
of the pigeons, in the shady garden of the archiepiscopal residence,
and happy hours also; even although in the near distance could
already be discerned the first mutterings of coming civil strife.

Many years later, when the storm of internecine war was ac-
tually about to break, we find Edward Hyde, afterwards Earl of
Clarendon, the historian of the great rebellion, and a devoted
servant of the monarchy, coming to Lambeth to warn Archbishop
Laud of his unwisdom in forcing a liturgy on the Scots.. He
found him in the garden pacing up and down an alley afterwards
called the “ Clarendon Walk,” which is supposed to be the leafy
path that runs at the side of the wall now separating the gardens
of Lambeth, from Lambeth Palace Road and the Embankment.

The future Chancellor entreated the Primate to be wise in time,
pointing out that unless he changed the course of the ship of state,
it must inevitably be dashed against the rocks which he discerned
ahead.

The warning was unheeded, and the year 1641, says Evelyn,
““saw the Bishop of Canterbury’s Palace at Lambeth assaulted
by arude rabble from Southwark.” A fortnight later, during which
the Archbishop, by his own account, had had time to get cannon
and fortify the house—a midnight attack was made on it, “ but
God be praised,” said he, “I had no harm.’ The end of his
troubled reign was near, notwithstanding. Attainted by the
Commons in 1644, he was imprisoned, and executed a few
months later.

Then followed a change in the nature of the events I have been
recalling. From this time, for sixteen years or more, there was.
no Archbishop—Episcopacy itself was abolished, and we look
at Lambeth, and find it the theatre of tragic events very painful
to contemplate. The building itself suffered severely, as was but
to be expected, seeing that it was the very citadel and heart of
episcopacy, and naturally drew upon itself the vindictive wrath, and
fanatical zeal, of the most violent and iconoclastic of those spirits.
in whose eyes the Church of England was an accursed - thing.
Even before Laud’s death, “‘ Lambeth House lying empty and
convenient ” began to be used by the Commons as a prison for
dispossessed clergymen and Royalist prisoners,—‘ the malignants

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LAMBETH PALACE

and delinquents having to bear their own charges,” which were
often extortionate.

“ Near an hundred ministers,” says Bishop Kennet in his “ Regis-
ter and Chronicle,” ‘“ were brought out of the West and clapp’d
up in Lambeth House where almost all of them were destroyed by
a pestilential fever,” a gross exaggeration; though it is true that
after Naseby, the Lambeth prisons were greatly overcrowded,
resulting in a serious epidemic, and rather heavy mortality.

This dismal retrospect is relieved but by one picturesque episode
The devoted wife of Dr. Guy Carleton, who had been ejected from
his Berkshire living and was suffering many hardships during
his Lambeth incarceration, planned his escape. She managed to
have a boat in readiness beneath the Water Tower, and a rope
conveyed to him, by which to descend; but the rope was too
short, and underestimating the distance, Carleton risked a drop
by which he severely injured both legs :—he managed, however,
to crawl to the boat, and was rowed away to a place of safety.
The heroic wife, by selling her belongings, and by hard manual
labour, contrived to support him till he could escape to France,
and he lived to become after the Restoration, Bishop, first of
Bristol, and afterwards of Chichester.

As we follow the fortunes of Lambeth House, we find them at
their lowest ebb in 1648, when a considerable part of the building
was purchased by Colonel Scott and Matthew Hardy, two leading
parliamentarians, for the sum of some £70. They divided the
spoils, Scott taking the Great Hall, demolishing it, and selling the
material—Hardy the chapel—which he robbed and desecrated,
destroying the tomb, and removing the remains of Archbishop
Parker, which had rested there since 1575. After the Restoration
they were reinterred, and the Great Hall rebuilt, as before related,
by Archbishop Juxon.

After this, for a time, there seems to have been comparative
tranquillity at the Palace, and only incidentally is it mentioned
in contemporary diaries and chronicles.

But in 1688 one more picture presents itself. It was a night
in December, and Mary of Modena, Queen Consort of England,
with her infant son the Prince of Wales, two attendants, and
Lauzun, and Saint Victor, who had arranged the flight, stole down
the back stairs at Whitehall, and crossed the river in an open

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES
skiff. ‘St. Victor had wrapped up in his warm cloak the infant

heir of so many kings” ... “It was,” says Macaulay, “a
miserable voyage. The night was bleak, the rain fell: the wind
roared: the water was rough: at length the boat reached Lam-
beth; and the fugitives landed near an inn where a coach and
horses were in waiting. Some time elapsed before the horses could
be harnessed. Mary, afraid that her face should be known, would
not enter the house. She remained with her child, cowering for
shelter from the storm under the tower of Lambeth Church, and
distracted by terror whenever the ostler approached her with his
horses... . :

““ At length the coach was ready. St. Victor followed it on
horseback. The fugitives reached Gravesend safely, and em-
barked in the yacht which was waiting for them. . . . St. Victor,
having seen her under sail, spurred back with the good news to
Whitehall.”

Thus far in Macaulay’s graphic language; everybody knows
the sequel—how in the early morning of the following day,
James himself rose, in abject fear of meeting with his father’s
fate, commanding Northumberland not to open the bedchamber
door until the usual hour. Taking the Great Seal in his hand,
he disappeared through a secret passage, and left Whitehall. He
crossed the river at Millbank in a small wherry, and as he passed
Lambeth threw the Great Seal into the stream, whence three
months later, it was dragged to light in a fishing net.

And as that picture belongs to Lambeth, so, too, does the coura-
geous action of Archbishop Sancroft, who, to meet the emergency
that immediately arose, and to stop the confusion and uproar
which followed when next morning the King’s flight was known,
issued from the seclusion of his Palace, and put himself at the
head of a hastily-organized Provisional Government, until the
Prince of Orange should arrive.

But, with James’ further adventures, though they are interesting
as a novel, the story of Lambeth Palace has nothing to do.

Yet once more in. its history we see the old place alive with
men at arms, for the third time threatened with destruction, and
the lives of its inmates menaced by a London mob, even as they
aes ae in the days of Wat Tyler,"and during the primacy of

aud.

54

LAMBETH PALACE

For a second time within a century and a half, the cry of “ No
Popery ” was raised. It was during the Gordon Riots in 1780,
when 40,000 rioters assembled in St. George’s Fields on the other
side of Lambeth Marsh, and in the near neighbourhood of Lambeth
Palace: thirty-six incendiary fires were lighted, and a second
great fire of London but narrowly averted. Five hundred of the
mob came to the Palace, but the gates were closely shut, and no
notice taken of their demand for admission.

Finding this, the rioters went away with the avowed intention
of returning at night. Before they could do so Archbishop Corn-
wallis and his family were persuaded to leave the place, the
military were summoned, and by two o’clock in the afternoon
one hundred guards arrived and took possession.

Sentries were stationed in the towers and elsewhere, and im-
mediate danger was over. Nevertheless the rioters did not at
once disperse. For several days they lingered about the Palace,
undeterred by the presence of the soldiers, who, to the number of
two or three hundred, were quartered there for two months.

Of the independent history of the gardens I have been unable
to discover much.

The Rev. J. Cave-Brown in his ‘‘ Lambeth Palace ” makes
little or no reference to them, but in the somewhat tediously dis-
cursive pages of Dr. Ducarel, who is the chief authority, as before
said, upon the history of the archiepiscopal residence, and upon
whose stores Cave-Brown himself has chiefly drawn, I have found
allusions that bear upon the subject, incidentally. In the suit
brought by Archbishop Cornwallis in 1776, by which he claimed
exemption from taxation on the plea that the Palace was “‘ extra
parochial ”’—a legal action described, in detail by Ducarel, to
which I have previously referred—the question raised was ‘‘ whether
the house and garden known by the name of the Archbishop’s
palace at Lambeth was, or is not, in the parish of Lambeth,”
and in the course of the arguments for and against, reference is
made to the Archbishop’s “‘ garden,” his ‘‘ park,” and his ‘‘ cherry-
orchard.”

Hence, since we know on the authority of Dr. William Stubbs
in his “‘ Constitutional History,” that wide, enclosed chases and parks
surrounded the “‘ embattled” residences of the two Archbishops,

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

it may be safely assumed that the enclosed lands of Lambeth
Palace included, once upon a time, not only gardens, but also
chase, and park, and that they were very extensive.

Where ‘“‘ Lambeth Palace Road’ now is, was formerly an
avenue of elms known as ‘“ Bishop’s Walk.” It was a favourite
promenade until it was swept away to make room for the Albert
Embankment ; but it did not exist in very early days, although
some of its patriarchal trees may have been in the Palace gardens
in the time when the latter stretched to the river bank. Much
of the land where now stands St. Thomas’s Hospital, has been
reclaimed from the mud of the river; the remainder of it was
covered by a grove of trees, no doubt originally on lands belonging
to the Palace. In those days Lambeth Marsh and St. George’s
Fields must have come close up to these. ‘‘ St. George’s Fields,”
says the writer of ‘‘ Old and New London,” “ appear to have
been marked by all the floral beauty of meadows uninvaded by
London smoke. And yet these fields, together with Lambeth
Marsh, which lies between them and the river, were at one time
almost covered with water at every high tide.”” Across them the
Romans threw embanked roads, and raised villas after the Dutch
summer-house fashion, on piles.

When John Tombs in his ‘‘ Curiosities of London ”’ says “* Lambeth
abounded in gardens,’ he probably meant market gardens, for
these occupied much land on the opposite Middlesex shore, and
doubtless did so on the Surrey side also; and according to Pennant,
between Southwark and Lambeth there was not a single house in
1560. Even a hundred years later Pepys wrote in his diary:
“Went across the river to Lambeth and so over the fields to
Southwark.”

All this goes to prove that in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seven-
teenth centuries, the demesne of Lambeth was really in the country ;
although so rapid, even at that day, was the growth of London,
that James I. predicted that ‘‘ England will shortly be London,
and London England.”

It must be remembered, as mentioned in the previous chapter,
that before Elizabeth’s days, English gardening, having developed
a distinct style of its own, had arrived at great excellence. The
pleasure-grounds of Lambeth House, which, even at the present
day, when they are surrounded by acres of houses and factories,

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LAMBETH PALACE

retain much charm, must have been exceedingly fair to look
upon in the reign of the Virgin Queen, being ideally situated—
bounded on one side by the then pellucid Thames, which ran
between high and irregular banks—on the other by the blue, illimit-
able distances of Surrey. Unfortunately our information con-
cerning them is meagre, and we have but slender data to go upon :
the Computus Bellevorum, so regularly kept, seem to have dealt
only with the domestic expenditure of the household, and with
the outlay, for additions and repairs, to the buildings. The refer-
ence, however, toa “ Rabbed garden ”—by which must have been
meant a rabbit warren—suggests that only a portion of the attached
land was cultivated, the rest being allowed to remain picturesquely
wild. Among the long list of the Primate’s servants there is no
mention of gardeners, probably because the outdoor service was
not included at all: but the flowers of Chaucer, Shakespeare,
and Spenser, did not spring up unbidden; and gardeners there
certainly were to plant and water, before the age of the Tradescents,
who, though gardeners to royalty, were resident at Lambeth,
where their influence would be exerted and felt.

Ducarel tells us that Cranmer erected in the gardens a curious
“‘ Solar” (or summer house) of exquisite workmanship ; and that
Archbishop Parker, who did repair and “ re-edify ”’ all the houses
of the See of Canterbury, “in the year of our Lord 1569, greatly
repaired and beautified this Palace. The Great Hall he covered
with shingles : he made entirely the long bridge”’ (7.e., the horse
ferry pier) “that reached into the Thames: the famous ‘ Solar,’
or summer-house in the garden built by Archbishop Cranmer
and now almost decayed, he restored to its ancient form and
beauty. He also repaired two aqueducts for the conveyance of
water, one in the garden, and another for the common use of the
household in the inner cloister.”

It is probable that the summer-house was destroyed when the
regicides, Scott and Hardy, demolished so much that was venerable
and of historic interest ; for no trace of it remains.

Nor is there any longer any vestige of a park, or of the chase, or
wilderness ; but the grounds, at the end of the seventeenth century,
had already attracted attention; and Gibson, in his account of
the Gardens near London in 1691, at the beginning of the reign
of William HI., remarks that “The Archbishop of Canterbury’s

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

garden at Lambeth hath little in it but walks, the late Archbishop
not delighting in one, but they are now making them better ; and
they have already made a greenhouse, one of the finest and costliest
about town. It is of three rooms, the middle having a stove under
it; the foresides of the room are all, almost all glass, the roof
covered with lead, the whole part (to adorn the building) rising
gravel-wise higher than the rest ; but it is placed so near Lambeth
Church that the sun shines not on it in winter after eleven o’clock—
a fault owned by the gardeners, but not thought of by the con-
triver. Most of the greens are oranges and lemons, which have
very large ripe fruit on them.”

Evelyn, who did so much for horticulture in the seventeenth
century, when Archbishop Tillotson was installed at Lambeth in
1691, tells us in his diary, that he dined at Lambeth with the
new Archbishop “‘ and saw the effect of my greenhouse furnaces
set up by my son-in-law.”

It is probable that when Archbishop Howley, some seventy
years ago, built the residential portion of the Palace as we now
see it, he laid out the gardens in their present form. The gardens,
together with the buildings, are said to occupy about thirteen acres
of ground only ; for a recent Archbishop, Dr. Temple, for the term
of his life, generously alienated some acres of the land attached
to the Palace, and surrendered it to the London County Council
for a people’s park, called the “‘ Archbishop’s Park.” His successor
has not withdrawn the privilege, although the quiet of the place
is certainly disturbed by the shouts of boys and girls at play on
the south side of the garden walls, and the shrill cries and cockney
accent of these slum children strike the ear unmusically ; but—
who would have it otherwise ?

So far as the flowers go, the character of an old English garden
is well maintained at Lambeth in the present day. There are
no hateful “ribbon borders,” debased in taste, anywhere or
at any time; but which would be entirely incongruous in such
venerable surroundings. The gardens make no claim to rival
those of Sion Park, Holland House, or Chiswick House, in beauty ;
they are too near London smoke, and Southwark’s factories, for
that to be possible; and I do not think that the hand of the
Dutch gardener of the seventeenth, or the landscape gardener of
the eighteenth centuries, is to be traced here at all.

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LAMBETH PALACE

No longer does “the river of Thames,” as Stowe quaintly calls it,
wash any part of their walls, nor do the gardens themselves slope to
its banks. The groves where nightingales sang, are covered now
by the wards of a great hospital, and the benevolent Archbishop
makes some of its inmates free of his green lawns and shady walks,
for the nurses from St. Thomas’s play tennis on the turf, or recline
on chairs beneath the trees.

Many are the garden parties for both rich and poor given at
Lambeth in the piping times of peace. The humblest, as well
as the highest in the land, find generous entertainment there,
though the character of that entertainment has entirely changed
since Archbishops Parker and Whitgift made Queen Elizabeth
welcome within their walls. Of course there are many al-fresco
gatherings, where the ecclesiastical soft hat, gaiters, and even
apron, are much in evidence. It was of one of these parties that
a story is told that I may be pardoned for introducing here, for
it may raise a smile at the close of this chapter, and the history of
Lambeth of which I have had the telling, has hitherto contained
much of gravity, and nothing of mirth.

Having so far tried to be accurate in matter of dates, I will
now merely say that once upon a time, probably at the end of
the last century, there was a garden féte at Lambeth, on an occa-
sion which drew together a concourse of newly-ordained young
clergymen.

It was a lovely afternoon, and all went well and gaily, until
the time for tea and strawberries. Then His Grace’s pet parrot
escaped, and flew into the garden. Dear me! It almost seemed
that an ecclesiastical parrot breaking bounds is as great a delin-
quent as was the Jackdaw of Rheims of Ingoldsby fame, so in-
tense was the excitement, so tremendous the hullabaloo! The
ladies put down their tea-cups, and waved their parasols at him,
and called out “Pretty Poll!” enticingly. The gentlemen
followed him from bush to bush, and from tree to tree. They
tempted him with sugar and strawberries, and everything to which
a pampered bird, brought up in a palace, might be supposed to
be partial. But the parrot, having newly tasted the greater sweets
of liberty, was not to be lightly won. No mind had he at present
to return to his gilded cage. He resisted both blandishments and
threats, and, moreover, he behaved reprehensibly ; for aggravatingly

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

hopping from bough to bough and flying from tree to tree, he
always eluded the clutch of the most agile of his pursuers at the
very moment of that person’s apparent success.

Presently the bird began to mount higher and higher, until he
reached the loftiest branch of a tall and spreading ailanthus, and
was quite out of everybody’s reach. A ladder was brought, which
half a dozen aspiring young curates eagerly volunteered to climb.
But whilst the long chase waxed sterner, and excitement grew
apace in the ranks of the guests below, the parrot himself, con-
spicuous among the foliage in his scarlet and grey, calmly began
to plume his feathers, which was quite a perfunctory performance,
because they were really not in the least degree ruffled. Serenely
and rather haughtily, he looked down upon his would-be captors,
then closing one eye,—it is a way that parrots have and expresses
the acme of knowingness,—he put his head on one side and solemnly
ejaculated, “Let us pray.”

It is supposed by some that the smooth shaven lawn of the outer
court, shown in the drawing of the gateway, was at one time a
bowling-green. This is not unlikely, but it must certainly have
been paved with cobble-stones in earlier days, for then the principal
entrance to the great hall opened, as I understand, directly upon
it. The primate, as we know, kept high state, and the courtyard
would be crowded with men and horses on occasions commemorated.
in the Parish annals by the usual charges for ringing the church
bells.

There are some ancient and dusty fig trees in the inner court,
and these, according to Tombs in the “‘ Curiosities of London,” are
the offspring of ‘‘ two fine white fig trees which were traditionally
planted by Cardinal Pole. The parent trees were more than fifty
feet in height, and forty in breadth, and their circumference
twenty-eight to twenty-one inches.” Their immediate descendants,
though showing signs of wear and tear, form a very interesting
link in the chain of historic happenings of which the old Palace
has been the scene; events which have taken us from the days
of Baldwin, Chicherley, Morton, and Cranmer, to those of Laud,
Juxon, and Tillotson.

There are many fine old trees at Lambeth, and one would be
glad to know who planted them, but alas! in these gardens there
is no talking oak to tell us! A distinct character is given to the

60

Lambeth Palace: The Fig-tree, in Greater Courtyard,

(fo face p.

LAMBETH PALACE

grounds by the presence in great numbers of magnificent speci-
mens of the ailanthus, commonly and picturesquely named the
‘Tree of Heaven.” It is singularly prolific, continually sending
up suckers, and there must be at least a hundred examples at
Lambeth, for I myself, one day counted eighty! ‘‘The Tree of
Heaven,” or ‘‘ Tree of the Gods,” has a strong family likeness
to the ash, and is own sister to the sumach. Can there be any
subtle connection between the Scandinavian idea of the great
World-tree ‘* Yggdrasil”’—the ash-tree of existence, whose top-
most branches stretched up to Asgard, and whose roots reached
down to the regions of Hela, Queen of the Dead—and the “‘ Tree
of Heaven” in the garden of a Christian prelate? Anyway,
these foreign-looking trees with their fern-like foliage, and signifi-
cant and picturesque name, give a distinct character to Lambeth,
where they are more in evidence than anywhere else; and here,
therefore, of all places, one may feel that with

“* The kiss of the sun for pardon,
The song of the birds for mirth,
One is nearer to God in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth,”

G1

CHAPTER III
FULHAM PALACE

ULHAM PALACE is the well-known summer residence of
the Bishops of London.

It is said to be thirteen hundred years since the bishops
first established themselves on the banks of the Thames at Fulham,
and assuming this to be correct, they must have settled there soon
after 4.D. 597, the date of the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity.

According to some authorities the word Fulham, or Fullerham,
means the “ place” either “ of fowls”’ or “‘ of dirt,” but we ask
in vain for the why, or the wherefore, of this. Somewhere, no
doubt, lost in the mists of centuries, there lies hidden some tradition
or historical fact which would explain it—but most of the events
of that early period are shrouded in an obscurity which it is im-
possible to penetrate, and the false and the true are inextricably
mixed up together. y

The ‘‘ Manor House” of Fulham, as it was called until com-
paratively recent times, is almost as badly off for historians as
Lambeth, the chequered story of which was sketched in the last
chapter. Therefore I base my account of it mainly on the
testimony of Thomas Faulkner, who wrote of the Parish of Fulham
in 1813, and of Lysons, whose “* Environs of London ”’ was published
rather earlier. These two writers have left us the best history
extant of the episcopal Palace, and of the lives of its learned
occupants.

The gardens of the Manor House are far more beautiful and
famous than those of the Primate, and have been so from the days

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of Mary Tudor. But, on the other hand, the historical interest
of Lambeth is incomparably greater, and this notwithstanding
that Fulham had earlier beginnings. Fulham, although seldom
entirely out of touch with passing events, was generally only a
passive spectator of them. The spot was in those days far removed
from London, which, then as now, was the arena of action and
conflict. Hence those public happenings, which, as we have seen,
east a lurid light on the archiepiscopal residence on the south
bank of the river, and so often disturbed its peace, as a rule left
the repose of the bishop’s house on the opposite shore unbroken,
and the tragical episodes in the lives of highly-placed men and
women, which have given a romantic though painful interest to
every stone of Lambeth, very rarely occurred at Fulham. When-
ever the Bishops of London: were concerned in them, the scene
of the events was “‘ London House ’’—near old St. Paul’s—their
winter home.

To this rule there were, of course, exceptions. For Foxe, the
““ martyrologist,”” tells us that when Bonner was Bishop of Lon-
don, some of the acts of persecution of which he was guilty, were
perpetrated at his own summer residence at Fulham, his ghost
in consequence being long popularly supposed to haunt the gardens
and part of the Manor House.

The dignity of a metropolitan bishop, though great, is inferior
to that of an archbishop; and unless when exceptional circum-
stances, accident, or conspicuous talent and force of character,
brought them into unwonted prominence, the Bishops of London
were not called upon to take a leading part in secular affairs. As
a rule we find that the most distinguished of their number were
translated to Canterbury ; and, as in the archiepiscopal See there
was greater scope for their abilities and their influence, it was
generally during their residence at Lambeth, that the more notable
events in their public careers occurred. Laud and Juxon—each
in turn Bishop of London, and Archbishop of Canterbury—are
eminent examples of this.

Mellitus—sent to Britain by Gregory I. to convert the Anglo-
Saxons to Christianity, was the first Bishop of London, and in
A.D. 619 he became the first Archbishop of Canterbury.

Erlkenwald, afterwards canonized, was bishop from a.D. 675 to
693. It was in his time that the Manor of Fulham was presented

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to the See of London, being held by a service of prayer and masses
for the dead. He was the son of Otto, King of the East Saxons,
and is said to have heard the preaching of Mellitus in his boyhood.
He is credited with having spent large sums on the erection and
embellishment of old St. Paul’s, and also to him is attributed
the building of the Manor House at Fulham.

In the reign of Alfred the Great, Conqueror of the Danesy that
people, so long the terror of northern Europe, and the veritable
scourge of the Anglo-Saxons, on the occasion of one of their frequent
incursions, sailed up the Thames and wintered at Hammersmith
and Fulham, on the spot where the Manor House was ultimately
built. It is supposed that, as a defence against attack, they con-
structed the moat that surrounds the demesne.

Fulham Palace is thus literally built upon an island, about
thirty-five acres comprising the area of the gardens and park. We
shall return to these later, for the historical survey of the place
claims some attention, and so do the lives of some of the more
celebrated occupants of the See, although, for the reasons before
given, some of these are more correctly to be associated with Lam-
beth than with Fulham. Many prelates, however, lived and died
at the latter place, and several are interred in the burial-ground
of the adjoining Parish Church, to which access is given by a
bridge over the moat, and a postern, both to be described later.

Robert de Sigilla, a monk of Reading, said by some to have been
Archdeacon of London, was appointed to the metropolitan See in
1148. He had been presented to it by Queen Matilda, but civil
war was raging between Matilda and Stephen, and Geoffrey de
Mandeville, a partisan of the latter, in spite of the protection of
the moat, made the unfortunate bishop a prisoner in his own
house at Fulham, compelling him to pay a heavy fine in order to
regain his liberty.

Sixteen years later we find the See occupied by one Ralph
Baldock, a learned man, writer of the ‘‘ Annals of Ely,” who also
filled the office of Lord Chancellor.

The prelate, however, who has most left his mark upon the
Manor House was Richard Fitzjames, who in 1521 rebuilt the
great quadrangle.

Fitzjames was a native of Somersetshire, and educated at
Oxford. Attracted by his talents and learning, Henry VII., in

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1496, appointed him Bishop of Rochester; from Rochester he
was translated to Chichester, and ultimately, in 1505, he became
Bishop of London. Fitzjames is credited with having done much.
for the decoration of old St. Paul’s, which seems to have been a
magnificent example of the combined Norman, Early English, and
Early Decorated styles. The spire that completed the church—
said to have been the highest in the world—had been erected early
in the fourteenth century, therefore Fitzjames can have contri-
buted only to the internal adornment of the cathedral. Alas!
nothing remains to us of old St. Paul’s except the tradition of its
beauty ; but in the courtyard of Fulham Palace we have a very
interesting and picturesque example of the domestic architecture
of the age of Henry VII., and of the energy and taste of Fitzjames.
A sketch of the porch, with the clock, and beneath the latter the
arms of a later bishop, will be found in the illustrations.

Cuthbert Tunsdall was consecrated Bishop of London in 1522,
but Henry VII. and Cardinal Wolsey had previously sent him on
sundry diplomatic missions to Brussels and Cologne. He was
present at the famous Diet of Worms in 1531, negotiated
with Charles V. after his victory against the French in 1525
at Pavia, and helped four years later to arrange the Peace of
Cambray.

At home his promotion was rapid. He appears to have retained
the favour of Henry VIII. through all that monarch’s changes of
opinion and policy. He became successively Master of the Rolls,
Dean of Salisbury, Bishop of London, and Keeper of the Privy
Seal. On the fall of Wolsey, in 1530, he succeeded him in the See
of Durham, the bishops of which exercised almost regal power.
Tunsdall, though devotedly attached to the traditions of the
Church, and though he bought and burnt Tyndall’s New Testa-
ment, betrayed no animus against the Reformers ; he even accepted
Henry as head of the Church. But on the accession of that King’s
young son his troubles began. In those days persecution was not
confined to any one religious party ; each side in turn was equally
intolerant. Henry VIII. had his Catholic Martyrs, and under
Edward VI. many prelates who had conscientiously adhered to the
ancient faith, were persecuted. Among them was Tunsdall, who
was sent to the Tower for his steadfast attachment to Romanism.
He was released in 1553, when Queen Mary restored him to his

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diocese. In 1559 he was again suspended for refusing to take the
oath to Elizabeth. This time he was not committed to the state
prison, but to the kindly guardianship at Lambeth, of Matthew
Parker, the Archbishop at whose consecration he had refused to
assist. Tunsdall was respected by all parties. ‘“‘ He showed
mercy,” said Thomas Fuller, in his ‘“‘ Worthies of England,”
“and found it in his adversity, having nothing but the name of
prisoner, in which condition he died on 18th of November, 1559,
aged eighty-five, and was buried at Lambeth.”

Tunsdall was a distinguished scholar, educated at Oxford, Cam-
bridge, and Padua. Erasmus bore witness to his attainments
when he said ‘‘ he was comparable to any of the ancients ;” and
Fuller tells us that ‘‘ he was one of the politest scholars of the age.”
It speaks well for the Romish bishop that so convinced a Protestant
as the author of ‘‘ Church and State” and of the ‘“‘ History of the
Worthies of England,” has only high praise for both his character
and his learning. But then Fuller, in the opinion of Coleridge,
‘““ was incomparably the most sensible, the least prejudiced great
man of an age that boasted a galaxy of great men ’’—namely, the
middle of the sixteenth century.

In the annals of the Bishops of London the truculent and relent-
less Bonner for some dozen years plays a leading part. He was
the successor, though not the immediate successor, of Tunsdall
in the See of London—but in disposition and principles he differed
widely from that excellent prelate, in whom Fuller could find no
other fault than his religion. Bonner has earned an unenviable
notoriety by his cruel persecution of the Reformers, and by his
vindictive treatment of his fallen opponent, Cranmer.

Supposed to be the natural son of a priest who was himself
illegitimate, Bonner first rose to power by attracting the attention
of Thomas Cromwell, and _ later, by playing into the hands of
Henry VIII. in the matter of the royal supremacy, and the divorce
of Katherine of Arragon. In 1529 he was Wolsey’s chaplain, and
he was with him at the time of his fall, after which, probably
through the influence of Cromwell, he was transferred to the
King’s service. Sent to Rome to further Henry’s cause, he greatly
incensed the Pope by the unmannerly violence of his denunciation
of the tyranny of the Holy See; but there seems to be no real
ground for the story that the Pontiff threatened to throw him into

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a cauldron of molten lead—a fate that it is said he only escaped
by flight. Violence also distinguished his conduct when on an
embassy to Paris, about 1538. On that occasion, owing to his
behaviour, Francis I. threatened him with a hundred strokes
from the halberd.

In 1539 he became Bishop of London, but, up to the close of
Henry’s reign, he not only failed to protest against the drastic
changes introduced by the King, but was an active agent in intro-
ducing them.

On the accession of the boy Edward, however, both he and
Gardner, Bishop of Winchester, began to see. whither these changes,
in the hands of a Protestant Council, might lead. Bonner opposed
the Act of Uniformity, and he refused to enforce the use of the new
Book of Common Prayer, nor would he consent to preach at
Paul’s Cross in support of the young King’s supremacy. For this
he cannot be blamed ; he was acting a more manly part than when
he obsequiously supported Henry VIII. in actions of which he could
not have conscientiously approved. He was deprived of his
bishopric, and was further condemned to perpetual imprisonment,
and Ridley, Bishop of Rochester, was translated to London in his
place.

But alas! too soon for the Reformers came the reversal of all
this, and Bonner’s hour of triumph! The young King died, and
his half-sister Mary ascended the throne; and Bonner, making
no difficulty about submitting again to the papal authority that he
had forsworn, took active measures to restore Roman Catholicism
in his diocese, in which he had been reinstated, and in 1555, began
that terrible persecution of heresy to which he owes his undesirable
fame. :

On the accession of Elizabeth, Bonner refused to take the oath
of supremacy, and was committed to the Marshalsea, where some
years later he died. He was interred at midnight, because, owing
to his unpopularity, the authorities feared that there would be a
disturbance of the peace were his obsequies performed in daylight.

It is said, in mitigation of his offences, that he did not go out of
his way to persecute, and “ that many of his victims were forced
upon him by the Council, which sometimes thought that he had not
been severe enough. So completely had the State dominated the
Church, that religious persecutions had become State persecutions,

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and Bonner was acting as an ecclesiastical sheriff in the most
refractory district of the realm.”

Be this as it may, his reputation for cruelty was so great that
Elizabeth, on her accession, refused to allow him to kiss her hand,
although he sat and voted in the Parliament and Convocation of
1559.

The belief that Bonner’s burly ghost—for he was a corpulent
man—haunts the gardens at Fulham and the north side of the great
quadrangle in which his private rooms had been, arose from the
popular belief that, owing to his misdeeds in life, his spirit could
find no rest in his grave. Strange to say, though he had been
interred by night, his ghost walked by day! How long the legend
held is uncertain—there may even be some living who believe
it now. Faulkner, writing a hundred years ago, gives the
story :

““In the gardens of Fulham Palace,’’ he says, “ is a dark recess ;
at the end of it stands a chair, which once belonged to Bishop
Bonner.

“‘ A certain Bishop of London, one fine morning in the month of
June, more than two hundred years after the death of the afore-
said Bonner, just as the clock of the Gothic chapel had struck six;
undertook to cut with his own hand a narrow path through,
since called ‘the Monks’ Walk.’ Just as he had begun to clear
the way, suddenly up started from the chair the ghost of Bishop
Bonner.” ;

The narrator goes on to tell us that, in a tone of bitter indigna-
tion, the ghost spoke, upbraiding the intruder, and uttering certain
verses which do not seem to me worth recording; although the
weird tale itself has some significance as being the expression of
that popular detestation in which his memory is held. Bonner’s
chair, long existing, has now disappeared; but the scene of the
visitation was an arbour down by the moat, near a small orchard,
which lies between the Home Park, and a shrubbery contiguous to
Fulham Churchyard.

If, as we have seen, a better man than Bonner, and one who was
as good a Catholic as he, had preceded him, so now, a better man,
who was an excellent Protestant, was his successor; for high pur-
pose, purity of character, and humanity, are of the man, not of
his faith.

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Iam not passing in review all the Bishops of London, but simply
singling out those whose names, for one cause or another, have
shed lustre, or brought discredit, on the famous and ancient See.
Nicholas Ridley, reformer and martyr, though only three years at
Fulham, cannot be omitted in any mention of it. A Tynedale
man, he was educated at Newcastle-on-Tyne and Cambridge.
Having taken his degree of M.A. in 1526, and making divinity
his principal study, he set out on his travels on the Continent.
He was absent three years, spending some time with the doctors
of the Sorbonne, at Paris, and the professors of the University of
Louvain. Louvain at that period was specially noted for its
theological teaching, and, with students numbering six thousand,
it was at the zenith of its fame and prosperity. The tragical fate
of this ancient seat of learning, has in these later days, drawn to it
the attention of an indignant and compassionate world. It is
interesting to remember that among the seventy thousand volumes,
and five hundred precious manuscripts in its famous and priceless
library, so wickedly and wantonly destroyed in 1914 by the brutal
soldiery of the Kaiser, not a few must have been handled and
studied by the young, Cambridge divinity graduate who, nearly
four hundred years ago, sojourned there to perfect himself in theo-
logy. On his return to Cambridge Ridley soon made his mark
as a disputant and orator, with leanings towards the Reformed
faith; and he was appointed by Cranmer to the living of Herne,
in Kent. He became Chaplain to Henry VIII. and Canon of
Canterbury. Even at that time he was accused of heretical teach-
ing, but contrived to satisfy his ecclesiastical superiors. He came
into high favour in the reign of Edward VI., was one of the compilers
of the English Prayer Book, and in 1549, on the deprivation of
Bonner, became Bishop of London. It is said that he behaved
with great kindness to two of the relatives of the dispossessed
prelate, and brought them to Fulham House to live; and if this be
true Bonner was guilty of base ingratitude. The part taken by
Ridley in the attempt to establish Lady Jane Grey on the throne,
even more than his religious views, drew upon him the vindictive
enmity of Queen Mary, and though he asked her pardon for the
former offence, he was committed to the Tower. There he wrote
a defence of his opinions, but was declared a heretic and excom-
municated. Refusing to recant, he was sent to Oxford with

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Cranmer, and Latimer, the saintly Bishop of Worcester; and there
all three were burnt at the stake in 1555. Of him it was said that
‘he was small in stature, but great in learning and divinity.”

Edmund Grindal was successively Bishop of London, Archbishop
of York, and Archbishop of Canterbury. He was a patron of learn-
ing, the friend of Burleigh and Bacon, and an ardent admirer of
Edmund Spenser, who introduced him into the “ Shepherd’s
Calendar” by the name of “ Algrande.” He enjoyed many
excellent preferments under Edward VI., until the death of that
prince and the accession of Mary, compelled him, in common with
many other divines, to flee the country. When Elizabeth suc-
ceeded her sister, Grindal returned and followed Bonner in the See
of London.

We are now approaching the golden age of gardening, and
Grindal appears to have done a good deal to improve the episcopal
demesne, for it was just about this time (1559) that the gardens of
Fulham House first began to attract attention. But even during
the reign of Bonner the Fulham vines had evidently made a certain
reputation. We find him writing :

‘““ My grapes this year are not yet ripe, but about the ende of
next weeke I hope to send some to the Queen’s Majestie.”
Presumably, therefore, Mary was fond of the fruit of the vine.
So appears to have been her sister, for Grindal was eleven years
at Fulham, during which time he seems to have been in the habit
of annually sending grapes to Elizabeth, who, although she with-
drew her favour from him after he became Archbishop, had not
done so at this time. Faulkner tells us that ‘‘ the grapes that
grew at Fulham were nowadays of such fine value, and a fruit
that the Queen stood so well affected to, and so early ripe, that the
bishop used every year to send them by one of his servants; but
the report was that at this very time the plague was at his house,
and that one nearly died of that distemper there, and three more
were sick, by which occasion both the Queen and the Court were
in danger, and well it was that no sickness happened them, for if
it had, all the blame would have been laid upon the bishop.” The
bishop, foreseeing this, vindicated himself forthwith in a letter to
Secretary Cecil. He explained that “‘ the man’s sickness was not
of the plague, and he had only been three days ‘ill in the house,”
but with sickness upon him, he had foolishly gone abroad, had

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taken cold, ‘‘ and so ended his life, but I thank God there is none
sickness in my house.”

“ Gardens,” in the language of Fuller, “ began to creep out of
Holland into England in the reign of Henry VII.” In that of
Elizabeth, the revived interest in horticulture was stimulated by
patronage in high quarters, and these influences made them-
selves particularly felt at Fulham. The reason for this is not far
to seek. John Gerarde, whose “ Herbal,”—published. in 1597, and
described by him as “the first fruit of these mine own labours,”’—
was for twenty years head-gardener, or superintendent, to Cecil
Lord Burleigh, whose celebrated gardens at Theobalds, in Hert-
fordshire, were supposed to have partly inspired Bacon’s famous
essay “ On Gardens.” Cecil was the friend of Grindal, and he and
his head-gardener probably assisted the bishop with advice con-
cerning the cultivation of the grounds attached to his residence.
One can easily conceive of a pleasant rivalry in this respect between
the master of Fulham and the owner of Theobalds. That Elizabeth
herself, when she visited the palace, was interested in the improve-
ment and growing beauty of the gardens, is pretty well established
by an episode in the life of the next Bishop of London, an episode
to which I am coming.

How Grindal, when Archbishop of Canterbury, fell under the
Queen’s displeasure, and was never visited by her after he was
translated to Lambeth, and how and wherefore he was suspended
from the performance of his archiepiscopal duties and not restored
until 1582, and how towards the end of his life he became prema-
turely old, feeble, and blind, is well known, and belongs not so much
to the story of Fulham as to that of Lambeth.

Bishop Aylmer, or Elmer, his successor in the See of London,
does not seem to have shared Grindal’s taste for horticulture ;
he appears to have somewhat neglected the gardens, and is said to
have destroyed several trees. But Strype, in his biography, says,
“he only cut down two or three decayed ones.” It is not clear
whether Faulkner refers to this when, speaking of the bishop, he
tells us that “one of the greatest troubles he ever had was an
information lodged against him for cutting down the wood belong-
ing to his See at Fulham, which he was restrained from doing by
the Queen’s order, after the matter had been investigated by the
Council. ' Wood,” in this connection, may have meant a grove,

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or thicket of growing trees, which belonged to the manor, and being
suitable timber for building purposes, was of value. It may
possibly have obstructed a view, or been otherwise in the way ;
but in touching it the bishop went beyond his province. Again,
on the other hand, it is possible that he merely cut down a few of
the trees scattered about the park and gardens, to fell which was
not quite so inexcusable. The incident in either case seems some-
what to indicate a personal concern for the beauty and integrity
of the gardens on the part of the Queen.

Aylmer had been domestic chaplain to the Marquis of Dorset,
and tutor to his children, among whom was the Lady Jane Grey.
It is this fact that chiefly makes him interesting to us. Like so
many of the Reformed clergy, he took refuge on the Continent on
the accession of Mary; but he returned in 1576, and was made
Bishop of London by Elizabeth.

His behaviour during the visitation of the plague in 1578 is
deserving of much praise; but the same cannot be said of his
treatment of both Puritan and Papist, and indeed of all whose
views differed from his own. Aylmer’s friends describe him as
being quick-tempered, and free, and blunt in speech; his enemies
declare that he was tyrannical towards inferiors, and “ virulent in
speech.” He was accused of swearing, and of the too frequent
use of. the phrase “by my faith ’’—an oath innocent enough in
our eyes. His latitudinarian views with regard to the Sabbath
gave great offence in some quarters, and he was charged with break-
ing the commandment to keep the Sabbath day holy. One
confesses to have more sympathy with the bishop than with his
sabbatarian critics, for we learn from Strype’s “‘ Life of John
Aylmer, Lord Bishop of London,” that he was blamed for playing
his favourite game of bowls on a Sunday. He said, “in excuse, that
he did it for the diversion of his mind from care, and for the pre-
servation of his health ; he further pleaded in extenuation that he
never withdrew himself from service, or the sermon, on the Lord’s
Day; that Christ, the best exponent of the Sabbath, had said,
‘the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath;’
that food might be cooked for health’s sake on the Sabbath:
why not, then, have our healthy bodily exercise on that day ?”’
And he also argued that in Geneva, and other Protestant resorts,
the people refreshed themselves after service was over, with bowls,

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walking, and other innocent recreations ; and that he only followed
what, in his travels abroad, he had seen practised.

After Aylmer’s return from exile, his career was comparatively
uneventful, and it is chiefly interesting as showing the manner of
the domestic life of a highly-placed ecclesiastic of that day. He
appears to have resided much at Fulham during his episcopal reign
of nearly thirty years, and we may associate his idiosyncrasies, his
virtues, and his failings, with the older portions of the Manor
House, as it exists at the present day. I do not know the exact
position of the bowling-green to which he was so much attached,
but it was probably the one part of the gardens that was never
neglected, and very possibly it may have been on the site of the
well-kept tennis lawn of to-day. We know pretty well how the
house itself looked, for in Aylmer’s time the quadrangle built by
Bishop Fitzjames was but fifty years old, and it has undergone
no change in style. Also, the quaint and picturesque Henry VII.
gateway of brick, separating the lawns and flower plots proper,
from the great walled fruit and vegetable garden, though it has been
restored, is unaltered. The bishop had a family of seven sons and
two or three daughters. His wife, “ Judith,” was a lady of good
family, and we are told that “as he came into his bishopric in
good circumstances, so he died very rich.””’ One would have
preferred to know that he died somewhat poor. In private life
“he was economical, though fond of magnificence,” but we can
forgive his ostentation, and even excuse his violence of speech,
when we remember his good deeds during the severe visitation of
the plague in 1578 or thereabouts. It was a visitation occurring
soon after his appointment to the See of London, and he seems
at that time to have acted with great discretion and humanity.
We are told that the sick were visited by the clergy, every possible
comfort was liberally administered, and that books containing
directions for preventing the spreading of the contagion, were
freely circulated at his expense. In all these arrangements Aylmer
was certainly in advance of his age.

His tenure of office was, on the whole, very peaceful; and he
seems to have lived the life of a great seigneur. He was wealthy,
and appears to have kept up great state, for his household consisted
of eighty persons—an establishment more suited to an archbishop

than a bishop. He preached often in the Cathedral of his diocese,
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and owing to his zeal in maintaining the discipline of the Church
of England he gained, and retained, the confidence and favour of
Elizabeth. Only on one occasion, that on which he so hastily cut
down the trees of the demesne, was he ever threatened with the with-
drawal of either, and then the Queen’s displeasure seems to have
troubled him excessively. But Elizabeth could not doubt the
Bishop’s devotion to her service, of which rather a comical proof
is recorded by Strype, who relates, as a signal instance of his courage
and loyalty, that on one occasion Aylmer had a tooth drawn in
order to encourage the Queen to submit to the same painful
operation. The incident, trifling though it is, speaks not a little
for the princess who was capable of inspiring such an act of self-
sacrifice. But, as remarked elsewhere, whatever her weaknesses,
Elizabeth won and held, the affection and confidence of her subjects.
With remarkable acumen she called to her councils, from a galaxy
of great men, exactly those best fitted to advise her; and so
supported, she brought the nation to a pitch of glory and a state of
freedom unknown before in our island’s history. Thus, notwith-
standing her absurd vanity, and some errors of policy and conduct,
she retained the esteem, as well as the love, of her people to the end
of her long reign. An autocrat indeed she was, and civilian, lay-
man, and ecclesiastic, deprecated her displeasure ; for (as we shall
see in the case of a bishop who succeeded Aylmer) it was felt that
to be out of her favour was to be out of the sun! But the service
she so imperiously demanded was cheerfully rendered, because in
the eyes of her people she stood for all that was most dear to them :
for freedom to worship as they listed, and for escape from a threat-
ened, and intolerable foreign yoke. And this explains how it was
that on her demise pans of praise mingled with the national
lamentations, and that her people’s grief and pride found expression
in various ways, notably in church monuments. It is true that
memorial stones are proverbially liars, and that too often they
extol the quite imaginary talents of mediocre persons, and the
virtues of those who were faulty in their lives. But when a powerful
ruler passes away, leaving neither kith nor kin to defend his memory
against detractors ; when his ability to make or to mar, to bless or
to ban, dies with him; when at last men dare to declare their
innermost thoughts ; when frank speech is not lése-majesté, then
may even memorial stones tell the truth !
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The Tradescent epitaph in Lambeth Churchyard was no isolated
instance ; in scores of old City churches, some still existing, others
swept away in the great fire of 1666, there were raised, on Queen
Elizabeth’s death, genuine and voluntary testimonies to her worth.
‘* Religion in its primitive sincerity restored,” to quote the monu-
ment from Blackfriars Church, which epitomized the events of
forty-five years. ‘‘ Peace thoroughly settled, Coine to the true
value refin’d, Rebellion at home extinguished, France neere ruine
by intestine mischifes relieved, Netherlands supported, Spaine’s
Armada vanquished, Ireland with Spaniards’ . expulsion and
traitors’ correction quieted, both Universities’ Revenues, by a Law
of Provision, exceedingly augmented, Finally all England
enriched, 45 years most prudently governed, Elizabeth, a Queene,
_a Conqueresse, Triumpher, the most devoted to piety, the most
happy, after 70 yeeres of her life, quietly by Death departed.”

Elsewhere another sums up the royal virtues thus :

“This, this was she, that in dispight of Death,
Lives still admir’d, ador’d Elizabeth.

‘* Spaine’s rod, Rome’s ruine,
Netherland’s reliefe,
Heaven’s gem, Earth’s joy,
World’s wonder, Nature’s chiefe.”

With quaint brevity a third epitaph informs us that :

“ She ruled England yeeres 44, and more,
And then returned to God
At the age of 70 yeeres, and somewhat od.”

And it winds up—as do all-the other memorials to Queen Elizabeth
—with a text that in the minds of her people had clearly a literal
meaning :
“T have fought a good fight,
I have kept the faith.”

Possibly the reader may say: ‘‘ And what has all this to do with

the story of Fulham Palace?’ Only this much, that it was the

expression at the time of the national feeling, and goes far to explain

the attitude of mind of Dr. Richard Fletcher, who became Bishop

of London in 1593, and whose grief at the loss of his royal mistress’s

favour is supposed to have shortened his life. He had previously
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been Bishop of Bristol and Bishop of Worcester, and as Dean of
Peterborough had attended the execution of Mary Queen of Scots at
Fotheringay Castle. For thirteen years he had been chaplain to
Queen Elizabeth, whose dislike to a married clergy was well known.
Time, no doubt, had modified her early prejudice, but she was
clearly of the opinion of St. Paul that “‘ a bishop should be the hus-
oand of one wife; ’’ and, knowing this, as he must have done,
Fletcher was courting disaster, when, shortly after his translation
to the See of London, he married for a second time. In conse-
quence, for twelve months he was banished from Court, where he
had been a constant attendant for twenty years ; and for six months
was suspended from the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions :
the period of his disgrace might have been longer but for the good
offices of friends. Nor does he seem ever to have completely re-
covered the Queen’s favour, “‘ which of all things,” says Faulkner,
“he most desired.” He died suddenly “ whilst sitting in his chair
and smoking tobacco, which was not usually taken in those days,
unless by way of physic, or to divert melancholy ; ”’ therefore we
may conclude that the unfortunate bishop was very melancholy
indeed. Unlike Aylmer, Bishop Fletcher died poor.

‘The bishop’s initials, with the date 1595, are in the window of the
hall at Fulham, for he had spent much money in restoring the
palace, and also other houses of the See. This was pleaded at his
death in support of a petition to the Queen to defray his debts,
and assist his eight children. He had repaired the palace, says
Faulkner, “ out of respect, as well to his duty and necessary use,
as to Her Majesty’s satisfaction, for he hoped one day to recover
her gracious favour, and to see Her Majesty in his house at
Fulham”... “Such,” he adds, ‘“ was Bishop Fletcher, whose
oride was rather in him than on him, as only gait and gesture
deep, not sinking to his heart, though carelessly condemned as a
proud man, far more humble than he appeared.”

The bishop’s son, John Fletcher, was the well-known dramatist
who wrote plays in collaboration with Francis Beaumont, and after
Beaumont’s death, with Jonson and Massinger. The bishop’s
aephew was that Phineas Fletcher who was the author of “ The
Purple Island.”

Queen Elizabeth appears to have been very fond of visiting the
srelates of the Reformed Church, and therefore that she ceased to

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honour Fulham Palace during the prelacy of Fletcher, was a very
significant sign of her displeasure, all the more so that she was in
the habit of very frequently coming to a house in the immediate
neighbourhood. The sensitive bishop must therefore have been
keenly conscious of the slight deliberately put by the Queen upon
her quondam chaplain and favourite; nor can we withhold our
sympathy from him and from his wife, on those numerous occasions
when they must have listened to the church bells ringing in
honour of the‘royal visits to a near, and by no means distinguished
neighbour.

Reference is elsewhere made in these pages to the custom of ring-
ing the church bells whenever the reigning sovereign paid a visit
to a subject, or passed through a district. In popish times, they
were also rung on many other occasions, and for many additional
reasons, bells being accredited with all sorts of supernatural
powers. They were baptized, anointed, exorcised, and blessed
by the bishop. Evil spirits were supposed to dislike bells, which,
it was believed, had the power to drive the devils out of the air,
calm storms and tempests, make fair weather, extinguish sudden
fires, and raise the dead. Incidentally I may mention that the
practice of ringing changes on bells is said to be peculiar to this
country, and therefore—according to Faulkner—“ Britain has been
called the ringing island.”

The parish accounts, both of Lambeth and Fulham, record
frequent payment to bell-ringers of sums varying from 4d. to 5s. 6d.
In 1603, even so much as 7s.—a large amount in those days—was
paid to the Lambeth ringers—“ being the proclamation of our noble
King.” In 1571 1s. is entered as the reward of the ringers “‘ when
the Queen’s Majestie rode about the fields.” Lysons also tells us
that when Elizabeth “‘ went through Lambeth to my Lord Cham-
berlain’s,” they received 2s. 6d.; and 5s. 4d. when she ‘ tooke
water at Lambeth and went to the Bishop of London’s,” in August,
1601. This was during the lifetime of Bishop Aylmer.

There is a tragic significance attaching to the charge of 1s. for
ringing the bells when the Queen of Scots was put to death, and to
our minds they must have been “ sweet bells jangled, out of tune,
and harsh.” But, owing to the constant plots against the Queen
of England by the friends and supporters of Mary, a large section
of the nation regarded her continued existence as a menace, not

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only to their sovereign’s life and throne, but to the security of the
Protestant religion.

On a certain day mentioned by Lysons, two-and-eight’ pence
was paid ‘‘ for the Queen’s Majestie being at Putney for vyttels
for the ringers,” and, as the beautiful bells of Fulham church rang
their merriest over and over again on similar occasions between
the years 1579 and 1603, the parish of Fulham must have been
heavily mulcted as the result of the royal favour, for during that
time Queen Elizabeth paid many visits to a certdin commoner
named Lacy, who dwelt in a house near the waterside at Putney,
in full view probably, of the windows of the bishop’s house on
the opposite bank of the Thames. We will let Lysons tell his
own story in his own words: ‘‘ It appears by several subsequent
entries that the Queen’s visits were to Mr. Lacy, of whom I have
not been able to find any account than that he was a citizen of
London, and of the Clothworkers Company. Her Majesty no
doubt derived either convenience or amusement from his ac-
quaintance, for she seems to have honoured him with her company
more frequently than any other of her subjects, and sometimes
stayed at Putney for two or three nights.” There are the bell-
ringing records of these visits long prior to Bishop Fletcher’s ap-
pointment, so that to this friendship, if we may call it such, she
was curiously constant, and one cannot help wondering wherein
lay the attraction, when one learns that she dined at Mr. Lacy’s
three times during 1596, and stayed there three days in March
of the same year. She was there again one night in 1597, two
nights in 1601, and dined there on January the 21st, 1602, shortly
before her death. It would seem that on all these occasions the
bells of Fulham Church were rung, although the Queen’s barge
must have landed her at Putney, on the Surrey side of the river.
That this mysterious Mr. Lacy, for nearly a quarter of a century,
enjoyed the favour of Elizabeth showed that she. could be as
steady in her attachments, as unforgiving in her displeasure, when
such an one as the unlucky Bishop Fletcher had incurred it.

Richard Bancroft, Chaplain to Elizabeth, who was raised to
the See of London in 1597, was honoured with visits at Fulham
both from Elizabeth and James, and was chief overseer of the latest
translation of the Bible. At a conference at Hampton Court he
acquitted himself with so;much prudence that James, in 1604,

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raised him to the See of Canterbury. ‘‘ Archbishop Whitgift
spoke most gravely, Bishop Bilson most learnedly, but Bishop
Bancroft (when out of passion) most politically.”

Dr. George Abbott, Bishop of Lichfield but translated to London
in 1610, was only one year at Fulham before he was appointed
to the See of Canterbury, therefore he can be but little associated
with Fulham and its gardens. We are told that the latter years
of his life were embittered by his grief at having accidentally killed
a keeper while hunting in a nobleman’s park in Hampshire.

Faulkner has not much of interest to tell us of Dr. John King,
who succeeded Abbott in the London diocese, though it is stated
that James I. styled him “‘ the King of Preachers.”” The calumny
of his having died in the communion of the Church of Rome has
been ably refuted.

In 1628, William Laud was translated from the See of Bath and
Wells to that of London. But, as only five years later he was
promoted to Canterbury, his history belongs less to Fulham than
to Lambeth; and the story of Lambeth, with mention of him
and his troubled reign there, has already been told. In his diary,
under date September 14th, 1633, he says: “‘ I was translated to
the Archbishopric of Canterbury—the Lord make me able,”. . . etc.
... the day before, when I first went to Lambeth, my coach
and horses and men sunk to the bottom of the Thames in the
ferry boate, which was overladen, but, I praise God for it, I lost
neither men nor horses.” Fuller in his ‘“‘ Church History ” describes
Laud as being ‘low of stature, little in bulk, cheerful in coun-
tenance.”

The gentle Bishop Juxon was the prelate who, as Bishop of
London, attended Charles I. on the scaffold, and to whom the King
addressed the mysterious word “‘ remember.” During the troublous
times that followed he was for a while imprisoned by the Parlia-
ment, but he afterwards returned to Fulham, and appears to
have lived there unmolested, until the Manor was sold to Colonel
Harvey in 1647, for the sum of £7,617 8s. 10d. Having purchased
an estate at Compton, in Gloucestershire, he then repaired thither,
and remained there undisturbed throughout the era of the Com-
monwealth. At the Restoration he became Archbishop of Canter-
bury, and, having rebuilt the great hall, as mentioned in the pre-
vious chapter, he died in 1663, at the age of eighty-one, and it

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was well said of him “‘ that even the haters of prelacy could never
hate Juxon.”

The Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford was built and endowed by
Gilbert Sheldon, who succeeded Juxon both at Fulham and at
Lambeth. So great was his munificence that it is said that he
laid out in charitable, pious, and public uses, £66,000, much of
this money being devoted to the relief of the sufferers in the time
of the plague; and a not inconsiderable sum was expended by
him on the Palace of Fulham. Sheldon’s successor, Dr. Humphrey
Henckman, was instrumental in effecting the escape of Charles II.
after the Battle of Worcester, and was rewarded after the Restora-
tion by a nomination to the See of Salisbury ; in 1663 he succeeded
Sheldon in the See of London.

From the period when Bishop Grindal left Fulham for Lambeth,
little or nothing is heard of the gardens, which, in his time, had
promised to become so famous, until we come to Henry Compton,
one of the most distinguished of the metropolitan prelates. Born
in 1632, Compton was tutor to the Princesses Mary and Anne.
He was appointed to the See of London in 1675, but popery was
then regaining ground, and the Bishop strenuously opposed it.
By so doing he incurred the enmity of the Duke of York,
afterwards James II., and on that prince’s accession to the
throne was removed from several posts that he had filled, and at
length was suspended from all spiritual functions. “He con-
tinued, however,” says Macaulay, “‘to reside in his palace and
receive his revenue.”” And good came out of evil, for he was
able to turn his attention to his favourite pursuit of gardening.
We learn that “he had a real and scientific knowledge of plants,
an attainment not usual among the great of those days, and
during his long residence at Fulham of thirty-eight years, he
gave up much time and study to their cultivation, and was
able to introduce into the garden a larger number of hardy
exotic trees and shrubs, and a greater variety of greenhouse
rarities than had ever been seen in England.” But he did more
than this—for he diffused the knowledge he had himself acquired,
and generously opened his grounds to the inspection and study
of the scientific students of horticulture and botany, and his
collections were visited by the most eminent horticulturists
and botanists of the day.

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in 1688 Compton was instrumental in bringing over the Prince
of Orange; and being “released from his suspension,” he, together
with the Earl of Dorset, conveyed the Princess Anne safely from
London to Nottingham. He was chosen by William of Orange
to perform the ceremony of the coronation, and he also enjoyed
the high esteem and intimacy of his former pupil, Queen Mary.
Yet in spite of the favour shown to him, and notwithstanding
that the see of Canterbury was twice vacant in the reign of William
III., he was never nominated to fill it, but remained Bishop of
London until he died at Fulham in 1713, at the age of eighty.
From the stand he made in defence of the rights of the Church
in the reign of James II., he was styled the ‘* Protestant Bishop.”
Before the Restoration and before taking orders, Compton had
served in the Horse Guards, and his spirited reply to King James II.
on one occasion, when the King told him he “talked more like a
colonel than a bishop,” was a reference to this time. “ His
Majesty,” he said in polite retort, “‘ did him honour in taking
notice of his having formerly drawn his sword in defence of the
constitution, and that he would do so again if he lived to see
it necessary.”

Bishop Compton is supposed to have planted the famous avenue
of elms—leading to the “ Bishop’s Park,” which a few years ago
was opened as a public recreation ground. In this avenue are
many lamentable gaps. Only last spring I watched the felling
of. one of these patriarchal trees—which had to come down for
the safety of the public—but if these really be the elms that Compton
planted, the wonder is not that so few, but that so many, remain !

The fame of the Bishop of London’s grounds was at its height
at the close of Compton’s long term of residence ; and it was well
for the garden that it was so long. Thirty-seven years is a genera-
tion and more, in the life of a man; but it is little in the life of a
tree. In this period, however, during which the good bishop had
dug and planted, and watered and pruned, many of the objects of
his tender care had time to arrive at maturity, and others were
well on the way to it. Evelyn mentions that ‘‘ he had a thousand
species of exotic plants in his stores and gardens . . . there were
few days in the year, till toward the latter end of his life, but he
was actually in his garden, ordering and directing the removal
and replacing of his plants.” But alas !—as Lysons tells us—in

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the time of his successor Robinson, who had no taste for botany
or horticulture, the gardener was allowed to dispose of the greater
part of the botanical treasures to some nurseryman at Fulham, to
permit which was a terrible act of vandalism. But, if Bishop
Robinson failed to realize his responsibilities towards the beautiful
moated garden left to his care by his predecessor, he did a good
work for the old palace itself. In 1615 he presented a petition
to the Archbishop of Canterbury, stating that the Manor House
of Fulham had grown very old and ruinous, and was much too
large for the revenues of the bishopric, and that a great part of
the building was becoming useless. Sir Christopher Wren and
Sir John Vanbrugh were called in to examine and make a report.
The result was that a number of rooms were condemned as un-
necessary, and permission was granted to pull them down. After
doing so there were still left fifty or sixty rooms in addition to
the chapel, hall, and garden. But whatever the work of demolition
may have done actually to improve the property, the restoration
cannot have been carried very far, for in 1749 Bishop Sherlock
wrote : “I find this a bad old house; I must repair a great deal,
and, I am afraid, rebuild some part.”

A touch of romance gilds the biography of Bishop Terrick, who
died in 1771, but not before he had rebuilt the river front of the
house. He had a daughter with whom Nicholas Ryder, son of
the Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, fell in love; but
Nicholas, by the terms of his father’s will, might not marry any-
one who had not a portion of ten thousand pounds, and this the
lady did not possess. To get over the difficulty the lover sent
the bride that sum of money as a wedding-gift.

A remarkable feature of the gardens is the moat before mentioned,
by which they are surrounded. It is nearly a mile long, and in
many places twenty feet wide, at high water. By a moat we now
understand a ditch filled with water, but the word, taken from
the old French mote or motte, and meaning a lump or clod of earth,
did not originally refer to the ditch itself, but to the mound of
earth or mud thrown up in excavating it, and is a curious example
of a reversal of an original meaning. Before the time of Bishop
King—he whom James I. designated ‘‘ King of Preachers ”—there
was no water in the moat except what percolated through the
river bank. It must, therefore, have been in a chronic state of

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stagnation and unwholesomeness, until Dr. King connected it with
the Thames by means of sluices.

Bishop Blomfield, whose tomb is conspicuous in Fulham church-
yard, and who came to the See in 1824, was greatly attached to
the old place, where he dwelt for twenty-eight years; he is said
to have spent thousands of pounds upon cleansing and improving
the moat, which at the present day is very picturesque, but still
undesirably muddy! Nevertheless it is easy to believe that a
hundred years ago it was ‘‘ the haunt of the kingfisher,” and well
stocked with fish, and that even in Faulkner’s time it in some places
abounded with water lilies.

As mentioned in the last chapter, Lambeth Palace suffered
severely during the period of the Parliamentary Wars. Fulham
was more fortunate ; we read that a bridge of boats was thrown
across the river by the Parliamentarians in 1642, in order to carry
Cromwell’s troops into Surrey; that the headquarters of the
army was fixed in Putney and Fulham; that the generals held
their councils in Putney Church, and that Puritan sermons were
preached therein; but through all this, the innermost tranquillity
of the Manor House was undisturbed by the outside tumult.

At the end of the avenue the steps known as ‘the Bishop’s
Steps’ led to the river, where the Bishop’s barge, manned by
many rowers, when not in use, lay at its moorings. The ferry
between Fulham and Putney went by the name of the “‘ Bishop’s
Ferry.” As in the case of Lambeth, the tolls and profits accruing
from it belonged to the manor. The pontoon-bridge above men-
tioned was of course but a temporary arrangement, and the “‘ River
of Thames ”—‘‘ noble and capacious river’ as Faulkner calls it—
remained bridgeless hereabouts, for over eighty years. Then,
largely through the efforts of Sir Robert Walpole, minister to
George II. and father of Horace Walpole, whose name was corh-
memorated in the central arch, the quaint timber bridge, with
its picturesque toll-house, its bell-cot and gates—since swept
away to make room for a substantial stone structure—was built.
The bishops received compensation in a sum of money, and the
privilege of the free use of the bridge for themselves and their
dependents; so that any servant of the Manor House claimed
freedom from the toll simply by shouting out ‘‘ Bishop.”

Faulkner tells us that in the year 1689, Ray, an eminent naturalist

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of that day, made a catalogue of the rare plants at Fulham when
the gardens were at the height of their fame and interest. In his
list are the ‘‘ Norway Maple,” the ‘‘ Ash Maple,” the “ Virginian
Flowering Maple,” the ‘‘ Strawberry Tree,” the “* Male Cypress,”
the ‘‘ Female Cypress,” the ‘‘ Manna Ash,” the “ Black Walnut
Tree,” the ‘‘ Red Horse Chestnut,” the manured or ‘‘ Stone Pine,”
the ‘‘ Virginian Sumach,” the ‘‘ Honey Locust,” the “ Cork Tree,”
the ‘‘ Evergreen Oak,” and the ‘‘ Cedar of Lebanon ”—introduced
into England by Evelyn in 1664. ‘‘ Trees of Curiosity ” was the
name given to those brought from abroad, and 131 new specimens
came to this country in the seventeenth century.

The botanists who followed Mr. Ray, wrote of precious additions
to the gardens after his day, and the eighteenth century claims the
credit of the introduction of 445 new trees and plants. It was
Bishop Porteous, the founder of Sunday Schools, who planted the
cedars at Fulham.

Faulkner also states that in the year 1751 “the late Sir
William Watson”’—who was probably the physician of that
name who died in 1787—made a survey of the now celebrated
gardens. He had previously given the Royal Society an account
of all that remained of the renowned garden of the Tradescents
at Lambeth, and he now offered them one of that “ still more
famous Botanick Garden at Fulham.” He winds up his report
with a eulogy on Henry Compton, formerly Bishop of London—
‘“‘ that excellent prelate, who, by means of a large correspondence
with the principal botanists of Europe and America, introduced
into England a greater number of plants, more especially trees
which had never been seen here, or before described by any author
—therefore his name is mentioned with the greatest encomiums by
the botanical writers of the times—to wit, Herman, Ray, and
others.”

This being so, it is melancholy to reflect that, through the culpable
indifference of Bishop Robinson, whose duty and privilege it
should have been to guard the treasures to which he had succeeded,
many of the rarer trees and shrubs in the garden, the more tender
exotics, and all the greenhouse plants, had been removed to make
way for the more ordinary produce of the kitchen-garden. It is
some consolation, however, to know that very much still remains.
at Fulham that is well worth seeing. The storms of three

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centuries have probably blown down most of the elms that were

actually planted by Bishop Compton about the year of the Revo-
lution in the avenue of approach ; and the caprice of later prelates
has no doubt considerably changed the plan of the gardens—
though this to a less extent than at Lambeth—but they are still
very beautiful; many of the trees are magnificent, whilst others
are uncommon.

But more than all at Fulham there is the human interest, and,
possibly owing to the simple domestic character-of its architecture,
nowhere, so far as I know, is this more strongly felt than here.
It is the human interest that gives to every garden, lordly or simple,
old or new—but more particularly to the old—its peculiar, haunting
charm. It is a charm distinct from that of the wilderness, the
lonely mountain side, and the restless, solitary sea, for it comes
not only from the eye’s delight in nature’s loveliness, but also from
the sense of the near neighbourhood of man, and of his controlling
mind and will. It is exhaled from the tended flowers; it is felt
as we tread the well-watered, smooth-shaven lawn ; it is discovered
in the well-swept path; and, in so far as all these are the signs
of the proximity of man, it belongs as much to the patch of soil
whereon the cotter grows his scarlet-runners and potatoes, his
Sweet Williams and his Canterbury Bells, as to the landscape-
gardens of the ducal residence. The difference is of degree, not
of kind ; because the consciousness of being in touch with humanity,
‘wherever, as in a garden, there is evidence of the industry and
design of man, is felt much more strongly when the building to
which the garden is attached, has a history of supreme importance,
as at Lambeth ; or picturesque features, added to historic interest,
as at Fulham and Holland House; or where, without any pre-
tensions to either of these, it was once the scene of the private life
of some commanding personality, or imperial intellect. For example,
a certain house at Chelsea, brown and shabby, has but little out-
wardly to recommend it, and its garden is merely a back yard,
or little better; yet both are eagerly visited by all and sundry,
for here dwelt Thomas Carlyle. And there is an old house, and
a rose-garden behind it, at Highgate, beautiful from its situation,
and because the garden is well-tended and stocked. For many
years a poet dwelt there, whose winged words had long before sped
to the very ends of the earth and will echo down the centuries.

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Merely because the author of “ Christabel” walked that garden,
and watched the sunsets over the valley from his window, both
house and garden are hallowed ground. That is the human
interest, and it is paramount at Fulham.

Therefore, although the fifteenth century quadrangle, with its
low-arched gateway and ponderous, iron-studded gates—open in the
drawing—its quaint porch, of which I have shown a pencil sketch,
its vine-clad walls and creeper-covered windows, and beautiful
ornamental brick-work, is not exactly part and parcel of the gar-
dens, yet, in order to carry out the original scheme of this book,
and to fulfil the promise of its title, which associates the garden
with the man, and man with the garden, it is necessary to introduce
it here. The porch, with the clock and Bishop Juxon’s arms above
it, and the great quadrangle itself, are not only the oldest, and
architecturally most interesting, part of the group of buildings,
and on the direct route to the gardens, but, if these ancient walls
could speak, what could they not tell us of the past ? Hither, in
all probability, to visit the bishops of the diocese—among whom,
as we have seen, were many makers of history—came, in the
summer days, the great churchmen of the contending parties of
the state what time the Church of England was in the making;
hither came the compilers of the Book of Common Prayer, and
the translators of the Bible; and, antecedently, Cardinal Wolsey,
and Thomas Cromwell, and Sir Thomas More. Hither came all
the wisest of English statesmen, from Burleigh to Pitt; Queen
Elizabeth, James I., William and Mary, and the Princess—after-
wards, Queen—Anne. Poets and authors, from Spenser to Pope,
and from Bacon to Addison. Evelyn, the diarist, who did
so much to revive and improve horticulture and to encourage
forestry. Sir Isaac Newton, and the founders and members
of the Royal Society ; Vanbrugh, and Sir Christopher Wren;
Sir William Temple, the statesman—but in this connection still
more interesting as the passionate lover of gardens—and with
him probably his secretary, Jonathan Swift. Sir Hans Sloane,
Horace Walpole, and a host of others more or less famous. Of
the visits of some of these to Fulham there is written record—
it is very probable that all the rest, and others besides,
whom it would take too long to recall, came here from time
to time

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Nor do I attempt to mention those worthies of England nearer
to, and of, our own day, men of light and leading, and of letters ;
learned divines, novelists, poet-laureates, politicians; in a word,
half the illustrious men and women of the Victorian age. They
must all have crossed the picturesque quadrangle—where even
now the fountain can toss its iridescent spray much higher than
the red-tiled roof—to reach the hospitable palace in which, from
the eleventh century to the twentieth, the Bishops of London have
welcomed the coming, and sped the parting guest.

But to return to the Gardens! I had no personal acquaintance
with them before the spring of 1915, when the compelling demands
of the most terrible war on record disturbed their tranquillity.
They are charming now, and must have been exceedingly lovely
in the summers before 1914, when all God’s peace was upon them ;
for their seclusion was complete—the encircling moat cutting them
off from the noisy world of Fulham as entirely as a high stone
wall would have done—although, indeed, one of the surprises in
most of the larger London gardens, is their strange repose, their
singular aloofness from the turmoil outside.

Here and there in the Fulham grounds, as elsewhere, it was
even then obvious that the great strife had called away to the
colours, all the younger men among the gardeners, and that the
staff had been necessarily reduced—though apparently not to the
same extent as in some still more extensive grounds of which I
know, where one boy and sundry elderly men, attempted to do
the work of thirteen, active under-gardeners. At Fulham the
War had transformed the once beautiful park and warren—which
are separated from the flower gardens only by a low wire fence—
into a vast drilling ground. The oaks and the elms, during all
their long existence, had never looked upon a stranger and sadder
sight, for the bridge of boats from Fulham to Putney in Cromwell’s
day was far less significant of suffering. Nevertheless the park,
when I saw it, with the figures of men and horses moving among
the trees, was not unpicturesque ; for khaki is, to use a painter’s
adjective, a ‘‘ retiring”? colour, blending better with the various
greens of nature than scarlet used to do.

Often, when proceeding to my work in the mornings, I
paused for a moment to watch the eternal marchings and

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-ecountermarchings, and to note the various stages of practice and
éfficiency—when infantry and artillery were engaged on different
parts of the ground—in the mysterious evolutions that, to the un-
initiated, appear so purposeless.

But alas! Where once—in years that now seem so very, very
long ago—the cows must have ruminated among the ‘buttercups,
‘or where the deep clover grass in early June turned to that wonder-
ful warm tint that heralds the hay-making season—the turf has
disappeared, and the ground is brown and bare; it has been trampled
under foot by hundreds of men, torn up by the hoofs of the horses,
seamed and scored by the wheels of gun-carriages, and the dividing
“wire fence is broken down in many places by the troops who
leant upon it, using it as a resting-place. Yet where I sat at work,
farther on. in the interior of the grounds, the distant sounds and
sights of war.could not intimidate. or frighten the thrushes ; they
‘sang as blithely, answering each other across the garden, as though
no- such dire ealamity.as war had ever existed: behind me, from
‘the fine old fifteenth-century tower of Fulham Church, the hours
and quarters were chimed out, as regularly and musically as ever
they had been in the piping times of peace. And by degrees, as
I worked, the hush of high, warm noon would steal over. every-
thing, and for a while I heard only the murmurous voices of
the summer, those manifold sounds of insect life that one’s ear
is not attuned to catch at other times. Thus soothed and engrossed
—for nature is all absorbing, and brooks no rival when one is study-
ing her—it was possible to forget, for a space, the black pall of
sorrow and wickedness that man’s own hand had drawn across
the beautiful world—till, all too soon, the distant call of the bugle
in the home park, and, down the avenue, the “‘ tramp, tramp”
of a company of soldiers following a military band, recalled me to
the consciousness that England was at war, and all that that meant !

Passing the modern flower-garden close to the house, under the
pointed windows of what was once, I believe, the chapel—where
there are bedded-out plants, and the gay and strongly-contrasting
geraniums and calceolarias so dear to many excellent gardeners’
hearts—and following a gravel path bounded on the left by
the park and the wire fence before mentioned—one passes on the
right a beautifully-kept stretch of velvet grass, with the tennis lawn
beyond it, some cedars, and other non-deciduous trees—and_ arrives

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at length at a turn in the walk where attention is arrested by a
magnificent tree of extraordinary girth, size, and shape—a tree
that almost seems to block further progress. It dominates this
part of the gardens, stretching its giant arms benevolently right
‘and left; on the one hand almost to where the soldiers drilled, on
‘the other to the ferneries and greenhouses. It is truly a patriarchal
and beautiful tree—and daily I surveyed it in admiration, and,
ignorant though I am on such subjects, even I ought to have known
it by the large five-lobed and silky leaves, resembling those of the
sycamore, and by its gracefully-pendulous seed-pods, hanging low
from the branches much as tinsel balls do on a Christmas tree.
But I had noted no peeling of its bark, and misled by its unusual
‘size and freshness, I did not recognize it, and therefore one day
I asked the head-gardener for information, and the surprise was
as great.as the snub, when he replied, ‘‘ Only a London Plane !”
‘Well! ifthis be so, among all the rare and splendid trees, indigenous
‘and otherwise, in the Bishop of London’s garden, none lives in
ty memory as does that magnificent specimen of the commonest
metropolitan tree !

We turn from it sharply to the right, and leave on our left a
side-walk, where rows of gorgeous tulips flaunt their brilliant
cup-like flowers ; tall, erect, triumphant specimens of the gardener’s
science all of them are; showing every tint from deepest prune
—almost black—to flame-colour and pure white, and these last
‘are dazzling when sun shines through the petals. Were we to
follow this path we should arrive at a part of the domain left,
deliberately, more or less wild—and at the rockeries and shrub-
beries, beyond which, where the path twists and turns, is a little
foot-bridge over the moat, that here is very dusky and mysterious,
and overhung with trees. On the further side of the bridge is a
door, which closes with a spring, not to be opened from without, a
door that leads straight into the grassy churchyard of Fulham,
where “‘ heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap’; and where
many of the Bishops of London lie buried. The churchyard is
a short cut to the town.

But we do not follow that path, for the choicest bits of the old
garden are yet to show. We pass instead through an iron gate-
way, and find ourselves in the ‘‘ walled garden,” a kitchen and
fruit garden of immense acreage. It abounds in fruit, and in

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vegetables of all kinds—from the humble potato to the stately,
graceful asparagus. But its chief attractiveness lies in the her-
baceous borders, which, in full summer-time, are filled with old-
fashioned and sweet-smelling flowers. Of some of these I do not
know so much as the common English name, although they may
be found in every cottage garden—but among the rest are many
that, there is every reason to think, have not changed since garden-
ing began: they were to our ancestors what they are to us. And
is there not something curiously stimulating and delightful in the
fancy—which is not indeed fancy, but fact—that Chaucer, Shake-
speare and Bacon, and all the flower-lovers since their days—
plucked and smelt these very flowers, or their exact counterparts ?
The cowslip was yellow, the wild rose was flushed with pink, in
medieval times as now: and when Spenser wrote of the “rose
engrained in pure scarlet dye,” and of the “ primrose greene,” depend
upon it he meant to describe that on whieh he looked—namely, a
red rose, and a yellow primrose: because words, in the course of
a century or two, may alter in both sound and sense ; but not so
the natural objects that they essay to paint for us. Nor do the
perfumes of Nature change. The violet and the lavender, the wild
thyme and the southernwood, are neither more nor less sweet at
the present day, than they were four hundred years ago. “On
May day,” in Stowe’s quaint language, ‘‘ every man except impedi-
ment would walke into the sweete woods, there to rejoice their
spirits with the beauty and flavour of sweet Flowers,”’ and these
were the field flowers that are with us still, When Herrick’s
Corinna, that ‘‘ sweet slug-a-bed,’’ went ‘‘ a-maying”’ with her
friends, they sniffed the. same delicious flower-incense that we
inhale whenever the ‘‘ thorn is white with blossom.”’ The thought
seems to me to bridge the centuries, and to bring us nearer to Bacon
and Shakespeare and to their contemporaries—for here, in this
old English garden, are no double or treble flowers unknown to
Bacon. Green carnations and blue roses, ‘‘ they are but toyes,”
he would have said. Look for them in the more modern borders
nearer the house: if they exist at all depend upon it they are
there. But here the flowers are Perdita’s own; and, like happy
but unruly children, they are not to be strictly kept in bounds in
summer. They escape and wander sometimes into the neigh-
bouring territory of the strawberry, the gooseberry, and the lettuce.
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Welled Garden

The Flower Walk in the

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FULHAM PALACE

But it is m spring that this kitchen garden is at its loveliest ;
for then the young apple, and pear, and plum trees, in long per-
spective on either side of the cinder walk, are in blossom. They
do not all flower at once, and they have few leaves in early April ;
but their white and red blend deliciously with the delicately-
tinted hyacinth, the daffodil, and the narcissus, and, a little
later, with the wallflower and the white iris; this last is very
abundant and much in evidence here, growing in bushy clumps.
The pale spring flowers, better behaved than their summer sisters,
do not straggle over the borders, but hold themselves upright
within their legitimate limits, which are marked out by frontier
lines of ancient box. This is ever-green box, of course; dark in
winter, but now—“‘ in the sweet of the year,” bright with tender
young leaves.

The path itself, though only a “ cinder walk,” assumes in the
‘sunshine an indescribably delicate and beautiful colour—something
between lilac and peach-blossom in tint—while the short, smooth,
‘dry tufts of ‘ bent”? grass, that push themselves and lift them-
selves up everywhere between the minute cinders, turn to pale
gold as they catch the light ; for that is the way in -which Nature
always treats her colour schemes ; to avoid monotony she carefully
embroiders them with something else.

The eye follows the walk up to the old brick boundary wall at
its farther end; above this a magnificent evergreen-oak tells as
a precious touch of dark, enhancing by contrast the pallid delicacy
of the lovely vernal hues of earth and sky.

Though this scarcely shows in the drawing, the wall is
intersected by a second cinder path, which ends on the right in
a pergola-arch, bare in spring, but in blazing August, overhung
with a thick growth of the large purple clematis; through
this, looking back, there is a charming vista. Passing under it
we turn to the left, ‘and, keeping the glass-houses, with the vineries,
on the right, enter what is perhaps the prettiest, as it is certainly
the most old-English and interesting, corner of the Manor-House
demesne. It is an ancient garden within a garden, not an unusual
arrangement in old-fashioned pleasure-grounds ; it is a bit, stolen
as it were, from the kitchen garden, and separated from it on two
sides by a truly magnificent wisteria. This must be of patriarchal
age, for its gnarled and knotted stem is very strong and thick,

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and its twisted branches, which in summer are closely covered
with foliage, have embraced one another, laced and interlaced,
until it has become a‘tangle of greenery and timber, reminding one
of the fairy hedge that grew round the Palace of the Sleeping
Beauty. And as the kiss of the Prince awakened the Princess—
so will the kiss of the sun in due season recall to life and unfold
the sleeping buds of the wisteria, hanging them like violet tassels
among its branches.

The piece of ground it encloses is almost triangular in shape,
for the wisteria hedge sweeps round till it almost meets the old
wall and the vinery, on our right. It is cut up into scores of small
‘“‘ knots” or flower-beds, each with its own particular low fence
of immemorial box, intersected by little winding cinder-walks,
so narrow that only one person at a time can walk there. This
is the true old-English flower-garden, the equivalent to the French
parterre.

Opposite to us, and the proper entrance to this lovely old corner,
is a fine Tudor gateway. It is of brick, coeval with the Fitzjames
-quadrangle, and bears the Fitzjames arms above it. It is as
picturesque a bit of old English building, on a small scale, as one
might hope to see, near London, and out of Hampton Court.

The little garden is primarily a rose-garden, although a few late
irises of a shade approaching mauve—a more refined variety of
the earlier and common purple flag—are prominently introduced.
It was strange to see irises and roses in juxtaposition, and
flowering in the same month—but in this garden, and probably
in others, that year, the seasons met each other, and April and
May clasped hands with June. The bishop’s head-gardener himself
remarked to me that: ‘‘ This year everything has come up to-
gether!” So lovely it was in consequence—Nature with immense
prodigality pouring out all her wealth and beauty at one and the
same time, that by slightly altering the words of the old madrigal,
one might apply them to this garden, and say :

‘* When first I saw its face I resolved
To honour and renown it.”

And to this end I had meant to spend most loving labour on it.
Alas! April, May, and June, were lovely months, then “ followed
the deluge,” and very literally so; the rose beds were swept by

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FULHAM PALACE

storms of rain, and the red, white, and pink petals were everywhere
scattered on the sodden ground. Outdoor work was entirely
stopped, and when by the middle of August it was possible to
resume it, the glory of that garden had departed! That sweet
oasis amid the kitchen-garden’s produce—so fresh and so brilliant
in the early summer—ere the harvest-moon had risen, resembled
the face of a beauty all passée and forlorn.

Yet the flowers at Fulham are always choice and glorious, and
one cannot take leave of the Bishop of London’s garden without
offering a tribute of sincere admiration to the presiding spirit
among the gardeners, who, short-handed owing to the war, had
yet contrived to preserve so much of their ancient beauty, by skill,
personal care, and indefatigable zeal.

Of Fulham Bishop Blomfield said—and he knew the place,
for nearly thirty years—that it is ‘‘ a home dearly loved, so close
upon the restless world, yet itself a haunt of ancient peace.” And
with this I leave it.

CHAPTER IV
SION

T seems to have been usual in England in the days of our
[ Plantagenet. and Lancastrian kings, for each one, on his
accession, to found monasteries and convents for the repose

of his soul, and of the souls of his predecessors.

Henry V., who perhaps did not read his own title very clear,
conscious of his follies in the past, began his reign by turning over
a new leaf, and he followed the custom above mentioned, when
he founded the religious house, or houses, of Sion in Middlesex.

Shakespeare makes him say :

oe eas SS and I have built
Two chantries, where the sad and solemn priests
Sing still for Richard’s soul.”

One of these was for monks, the other for nuns, of the order of
St. Bridget, a Swedish offshoot of the Augustines.

The charter of the monastery, signed by the King, ran thus:
“*To celebrate divine service for ever, for our estate while we live,
and for our soul when we shall have departed this life, and for
the souls of our most dear lord and father Henry, late King of
England, and Mary, his late wife, our most dear mother ; also for
the souls of John, late duke of Lancaster, our Grandfather; and
of Blanche, his late wife, and of other of our progenitors, and of
all the faithfull departed.”

The ‘“ Monastery of St. Saviour and St. Bridget,” as it was
called, consisted of eighty-five “ Religious,” the number com-
memorating the seventy-two disciples and thirteen apostles. There

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were sixty Sisters, and twenty-five professed Brothers; thirteen
of whom were priests.

The monks and nuns lived entirely apart, but the chapels were
under one roof, with twin choirs, and were connected by a grille
in which was a gate allowing of the entrance and departure of the
priests who said Mass in the chapel of the Sisters, and who carried
on the order of divine service almost unceasingly, so that the
sound of prayer and praise arising from the choirs, was rarely, if
ever, silent.

Henry V. presented to the Community the whole of his manor
of Isleworth, and Henry VI. still further enriched it by valuable
gifts of lands lying in many English counties. Its members,
finding themselves cramped for room in the original buildings at
Twickenham, soon after obtained leave of the King to remove.
They chose a beautiful situation on the Middlesex bank of the
river on the exact site of the present Sion House.

For a century and a quarter the monastery prospered exceed-
ingly ; and we are told that the nunnery “ abode at the head of
all the Convents for women in England, in learning, riches and
piety.” It had been by the advice of Chicherley, Archbishop of
Canterbury, builder of the so-called ‘‘ Lollard Tower ’’ at Lambeth,
that the Victor of Agincourt founded it; and it seems always to
have had some connection with All Souls College, Oxford, of
which Chicherley himself was founder, and which he had dedicated
to the memory of the Lancastrian Princes who had fallen in the
war with France.

In 1539, under Henry VIII., the “Daughters of Sion,” as they
were called, were turned out of their peaceful river-side home,
and cast adrift on the world. The convent and estates reverted
to the King, and the nuns then began a weary quest for another
home in foreign lands.

The story of the wanderings of these unfortunate ladies, all,
it would appear, of gentle birth, is touching. Like the dove of
the ark they could find no rest for the soles of their feet either in
the Low Countries, or in France, and they finally settled at Lisbon,
where, in the seventeenth century, their nunnery was destroyed
by fire. By the aid of the charitable, however, they ultimately
rebuilt it, but the new building was again destroyed in 1755, this
time by the great earthquake of Lisbon. Once more it was rebuilt ;

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but the convent being requisitioned for a British hospital in the
Peninsular War, the Sisters, now greatly reduced in number,
according to one account, made their way back to England in
1810. But another authority states that a quarter of a century
ago, they were still at Lisbon, retaining their English nationality,.
and the keys of their former house. About a hundred and fifty
years ago they were visited at Lisbon by the then Duke of Northum-
berland, the owner of Sion House, to whom they told the story of.
having carried their keys about with them through all their wan-
derings and vicissitudes—in the hope of eventually returning to
their old home. ‘“‘ But,” quietly remarked his Grace, “ the locks
have all been altered since then.”” Edward Walford, in “ Greater
London,” is responsible for this story, and for the statement that,
the Sion of Lisbon remains the real and legitimate representative
of the Sion of Isleworth.

As everybody knows, Henry VIII. took drastic measures to
establish his supremacy when the convents were suppressed.
For some cause or other Sion seems to have specially incurred.
the displeasure of the King, and it was one of the earliest of the.
wealthier monasteries to be suppressed.

One Thomas Bedell, writing to Secretary Cromwell on the subject
of the Isleworth community, and submission to the royal authority,
says that he finds the “‘ lady Abbas and susters as conformable
in everything as might be devised ’’—also the Father Confessor,
* and a certain ‘father Cursone,’’ by whose influence and good
example he hopes “ that the residue shall shortly be brought to
good conformite. And if not, there be two of the brethren must
be weded out, whiche be somewhat sediciose, and have laboured.
busily to infect their fellowes with obstinacy against the King’s
said title.”

The irreconcilables appear to have been two of the brotherhood,
named Whitford and Litell, and Bedell, in a second letter, tells
how, when the Queen’s Almoner and other influential divines,
failed by argument to convert them, he himself ‘‘ handled Whit-
ford in the garden bothe with faire words and with foule,” but
apparently unsuccessfully, for he adds: ‘‘ But he hath a brazen
forehead, which shameth at nothing.”

Sion, with its ample revenues and large estates in almost every
part of England, being one of the wealthiest of the six hundred

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SION

monasteries and two thousand chapels and chantries suppressed by
Henry VIII., was far too valuable a prize to be lightly given away
when once the Abbey-breaker was in possession. He retained it
in his own hands until his death ; and there his frail and unhappy
fifth queen, Katherine Howard, was imprisoned for some time,
prior to her trial and execution ; there also the King’s own body
rested for a night, on its way from London to burial at Windsor.
The young king, Edward VI., on his accession, presented the
demesne, with its conventual buildings, to his uncle, the ‘‘ Pro-
tector,” Edward, Duke of Somerset, who built the present house
on the exact site of the renowned Monastery, which he seems first
to have nearly razed to the ground. The palatial mansion that
he erected, still stands, with little external alteration; but the
interior has been almost entirely changed. It is surprising that
there is little that is ancient in the general outward aspect, and
even in the immediate surroundings, of Sion. The river has
prevented all encroachments on its seclusion on the east side ;
and although suburban London has advanced almost to the
northern and eastern limits of the protecting walls of the park,
it is so secluded that it is difficult to believe, on emerging from the
long, dirty, narrow High Street of the ugly township of Brentford—
until one suddenly comes upon the beautiful Adam’s gateway, which
is the principal entrance—that between the high road and the
river, lies an estate of many acres, with a house of imposing
dimensions, the historic interest of which exceeds that of Holland
House, for it began at a much earlier period of English history.
This historic interest is not confined to Sion itself, and incident-
ally I should mention that Turnham Green, a mile east of Sion,
and Acton, or Oaktown, in its near neighbourhood, were the scenes
of stirring events in the Parliamentary Wars, and hideous and
unromantic as Brentford appears, it has had by no means an un-
eventful history. Here, in 1016, Edmund Ironside is said by some
authorities to have defeated the Danes, and in 1588, the closing
year of Mary Tudor’s reign, six persons were burnt for holding,
and propagating, Protestant opinions. Here also, more than half
a century later, Prince Rupert routed two regiments of the Parlia-
mentary Army, compelling the Parliament, in order to prevent
King Charles from pressing onwards to London, to throw up
fortifications, and to call out the Trained Bands, under the Earl
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of Essex; they encamped on Turnham Green, thus obliging the
King to withdraw to Kingston-on-Thames.

The old posting and coaching road to the west and south-west
of England, passes through Brentford ; and since, even as late as
the end of the eighteenth century, Horace Walpole, at Twickenham,
described the dangerous condition of the highways round about,
and the Lord Mayor of London, in 1777, in his coach and four, was
stopped on Turnham Green and robbed by a single highwayman,
it is conceivable that many an episode—picturesque and dramatic
enough when we read of it now, but most uncomfortable, and often
tragic, to the actors therein—may have disturbed the quiet of Sion
during the five hundred years of its history. For, five hundred
stormy centuries have indeed elapsed, since that day in February,
1416, when Harry the King, laid, in person, the dedication stone
of that first monastery of the Bridgetines at Twickenham, which
they so soon after left for Isleworth ; and three hundred and seventy
years have now passed over Sion itself, since Protector Somerset
began his rebuilding operations there, and yet it does not look old !
Viewed from the opposite bank of the Thames, whence details
are blurred or even lost sight of, it is indeed difficult to realize that
it is an ancient house at all! This is partly owing to the clean,
new effect of the Bath Stone, with which it is faced, and which is
innocent of ivy or Virginian creeper. But truth to say, time has
dealt lightly with the old home of the Percys, who have themselves
done much to preserve it. The devastating tide of our tumultuous
modern existence has swept past Sion, leaving it strangely silent
and solitary, except on the occasional visits of its noble owner ;
leaving its white walls, its green lawns, and its avenues wonderfully
unsmirched, although they are so comparatively near the smoke
of London, and the Metropolitan boundary. ,

Protected on its east side by the river, from which, owing to
formidable defences, no trespasser can land, it is safeguarded else-
where, and effectually concealed from vulgar curiosity, by broad
intervening spaces of park-land, by its lovely gardens, and by what
Wordsworth calls :

‘* A brotherhood of venerable trees.”’

Venerable they undoubtedly are, but only comparatively so;
they are not nearly as ancient as the house, though there is in the
98

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SION

grounds a cedar of Lebanon of such mighty girth that it almost
looks as if it might have been contemporary with it, if cedars
had been known in England when the Lord Protector made
his unfortunate building venture. But it is generally agreed that
Evelyn introduced the cedar to England. He mentions in his
“* Sylva,” published in 1664, that he had received “‘ cones and seeds
from the mountains of Lebanon.” The Sion cedars were probably
planted about 1670.

With regard to the cypresses which still gusand at Sion, Dr.
Turner, physician to Edward VI. and to his uncle, the Lord Pro-
tector, who ‘dedicated his work ‘‘ The Names of Herbes,” to the
Duke, and dated it from Sion—refers to them as then growing there
plenteously. And Gerarde, in his “‘ Herball,” published in 1597,
remarks of the cypress, that there “ are trees of it at Sion, a place
neare London.” But of still greater historical interest are the
Sion mulberry trees; for they include what is reputed to be the
oldest mulberry tree in England, said to have been introduced from
Persia in 1548. However this may be, and‘however greatly old
gardens such as those of Sion may have changed in the course of
their history, little or no change has taken place in the manner of
growth of their trees. We may be pretty sure that Tudor elms
and beeches, and Tudor cypresses and oaks, looked to our ancestors
much as their descendants do to us. Ancient or otherwise, they
bore the normal aspect of their descendants of like age to-day, and
in all probability they were planted, or have planted themselves,
very near the spot in which their ancestors flourished ; for does not
the baby acorn always lie close to the mother oak ?

The great attraction of Sion, however, apart from its historical
associations and the romantic history of its owners, is not the trees,
magnificent as they are, nor the beautiful gardens and unsurpassed
conservatories : these are rivalled elsewhere. It is its situation on
the bank of the Thames, the stream which, while it irrigates the
park and grounds by means of its tributaries—feeding on the way a
beautiful miniature lake—must always, even in monastic days,
when the surrounding land was nearly open country, have given
to it peculiar distinction and charm. It certainly does so now.
From no point does the stately house look so well as from the river ;
and standing on the towing-path by the river-gate of the Royal
Gardens of Kew, one gets an excellent view of the east front of the

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« al residence, which is the only one it vouchsafes to show to a
.egitimately interested—as opposed to a merely inquisitive—public.
The prospect on a fine summer’s day, or on a sunny autumn one,
when the oaks, and sycamores, and beeches, are turning to red and
gold, is enchanting. The sweeping curve of the stream that here
takes a considerable bend towards Twickenham, includes the whole
of that portion of the grounds and park that slopes to the water’s
edge, and shuts out all but a hint of the tall factory chimneys and
wharves of Brentford. There are happily no villas, pseudo-
Gothic, or pseudo-Queen Anne, to intrude an insistent modernity
into the gentle beauty of the scene ; no bridges—triumphs, no doubt,
of engineering science, but matter-of-fact products of yesterday
only ; no traffic, beyond an occasional white or red-funneled steam-
boat, going up to Richmond, or down to London, with the tide—
nothing, in a word, to distract one’s dream of the past, if one be
in the mood to indulge in it. It is true that there is the towing-
path itself; but there have been towing-paths, surely, from time
immemorial, and a sad day it will be for London when its familiar
barges, though now they are propelled by steam, have become as
much part of a bygone age as the red, blue, and yellow omnibuses
of less than a dozen years ago. How picturesque those omnibuses
were we never knew till we had lost them !

Lower down the river, at the Tower, at London Bridge, at Green-
wich, or Westminster, where all is lively and busy, it is impossible
to invoke the mood of reverie necessary to the reconstruction of
the past. Even at Chelsea and Cheyne Walk itself, it is difficult
to do so, for, from medizvalism to modernism, from that same past
as we conceive it to have been, to the actual, living present, is a
cry too far for the most vivid imagination to compass, even though
it may have been fed by years of archeological and historical
study ; and this is because we are obsessed by the reality, some-
times in itself as beautiful as any dream.

Up here, however, on the towing-path, facing that old, yet
strangely new-looking palace of the Percys, ‘all in the blue, un-
clouded weather,” when the surface of the river, oily and smooth,
either reflects the quiet temper of the sky, or, ruffled by a gentle
breeze, dances and sparkles in the sunshine; when the far-away
cloud of smoke over London is very faint indeed, one can realize
a little how Sion must have looked, three, four, or even five

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centuries ago. Father Thames himself helps.the retrospection, for
_ here, on the whole, he has not greatly changed. A great deal
muddier, as to complexion, a little greyer and duller as to locks and
beard—for such we may designate the trees and grasses about his
banks—all this he has become ; and his quiet backwaters, with the
clear brown pools wherein fish loved to lurk, have gorie for ever.
Mud is more in evidence; it is no longer hidden by reeds and
rushes, nor even by the pollard willows of the Eyots which here and
there, as at Chiswick and Kew, cut the stream in two. The wild
flowers are sparser, the vegetation less verdant ; but the swans still
nest upon its banks. And one must remember that a tidal river,
which—always running, may be said to have solved the secret of
perpetual motion, yet never stops to tell it to us—is, even in respect
of this everlasting movement, in one sense, always the same.
Father Thames has grown older, but his character has not changed,
and he is as subject to moods now as in the far-off days when the
young Lord Guildford Dudley and his child-wife, a pair of happy
lovers then, with no foreboding of the fate before them, spent their
honeymoon weeks at Sion—which was at that period in the pos-
session of Lord Guildford’s father, who was John Dudley, Earl of
Warwick, and for a short time, Duke of Northumberland.

And because in the reach of the river that stretches from Isle-
worth to Twickenham, there is, nowadays, comparatively little
’ traffic, one is seldom rudely awakened from retrospective musings ;~
from the vision of the time when, though the shipping of the
Thames was insignificant compared with what it is at present,
the river was London’s great highway, alike for pleasure and for
business ; when the King’s state barge, and my Lord Protector’s,
and my Lord of Northumberland’s, with many oars, plied constantly
between Whitehall Stairs and Sion—and the stream was alive with
small craft, insignificant in tonnage, but picturesque beyond
compare.

For reliable information regarding Sion, I have been very much
indebted to two clear and able articles by the late Colonel Eustace
Balfour, which appeared some years ago in the Magazine of Art,
and which are invaluable aids to an appreciation of the ancient
family seat of the Northumberland family. The author’s wide
architectural experience and taste, and his own close connection
with the House of Percy, rendered him peculiarly well-qualified to

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write sympathetically.on the subject. He supposes that the church
of the former monastery, with its twin choirs for monks and nuns,
stood on part of the ground now occupied by the present house,
which is fundamentally the same as that erected by the Pro-
tector Somerset on the actual site of the conventual buildings.
The fact that the quadrangular form was retained, and that a fine
specimen of fifteenth century architecture, a doorway evidently
once belonging to an important portion of those buildings, was
incorporated into the hall of the later structure, gives colour to the
hypothesis. The identity of the site of the existing house with
that of the monastery, is further established by the fact that in
Mary Tudor’s reign it was mentioned that two sides of the latter
had been pulled down, from which it is inferred that the Protector
had. only carried out partial alterations in it, and had not entirely
rebuilt it.

The interior of the quadrangle is occupied by a flower-garden
about eighty feet square. A radical change in the external appear-
ance of the house must have been effected when, somewhere about
1800, the walls were faced with Bath stone. The building is three
stories high, and the roof has an embattled parapet, at each angle
of which is a square embattled tower, and though owing to the
excellence of its proportions it has much dignity, it is plain almost
to ugliness, save on the east side facing the river, where a colonnade,
or arcade, occupying the whole space between the towers, gives
variety and some beauty. This arcade, or cloister, according to
Colonel Balfour, is, not improbably, the work of Inigo Jones, since
it bears much of the character of his designs.

On the demolition of Northumberland House, Strand, the famous
lion that had so long surmounted that mansion, was removed
to Sion, where it occupies a conspicuous position on a raised
pedestal on the roof, in the very centre of the river front. There
is a tradition that when it mounted guard over Charing Cross, it
at one time stood with its head towards St. James’s Palace and
Carlton House—but that after some act of discourtesy shown to its
noble owner, the loyal animal literally turned tail, and stood with
its back to royalty, facing thenceforth the Lord Mayor and Alder-
men of London, a position it retains to the present day at Sion.

With the interior of the house this book has not much to do.
It was reconstructed and redecorated by the brothers Adam,

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the famous eighteenth-century architects, and is a fine monument
to their genius, particularly to that of Robert Adam, who, says
Colonel Balfour, ‘‘ drew his inspiration straight from Italy, where he
studied for several years. He succeeded in adapting with great
elasticity and considerable originality the later Roman style to
English uses. His plan had included a central dome over the
quadrangle, and a fine entrance and staircase in the north side, as
well as a beautiful bridge in the grounds.” These plans were
never carried out. But the elegant gateway on the Isleworth and
Brentford Road—which is so familiar to passengers on the Hampton
Court trams—was completed, and remains as a_ characteristic
example of Adam’s work. “It certainly possesses,” says Colonel
Balfour, “‘ all the delicate qualities for which Adam was remark-
able, the fine mouldings, the chaste composition and the slight
relief of the severe but well-cut ornament. We must never seek
in Adam’s work the boldness of great projection. He belonged to
the school of reaction against the fashion of Rococo, with its huge
undercut twists and scrolls, and its heavy cornices. But in dealing
with his masses Adam was never weak, and he clearly acted on the
principle of subordinating ornament to proportion.” . . . With all
this I am in cordial agreement, and the gateway, as Colonel Balfour
says, ‘“‘ forms a very dignified and fitting entrance to the flat but
finely timbered park, which stretches, with its broad avenues,
between the public road and the river.” .

Many historical associations cluster around the walls of Sion
House—and they are chiefly tragic ones. The Protector Somerset
did not long remain in the enjoyment of his beautiful estate—
indeed, in one way his possession of it contributed to his undoing ;
because his great building-works at Sion and elsewhere were
brought up against him in his attainder. By the machinations of
his enemies he was found guilty, not of treason, but of felony, and
was executed in 1552, and in the following year Sion was bestowed
upon his arch-enemy, John Dudley, quondam Earl of Warwick,
who had already contrived to secure the vast estates of the Karl-
dom of Northumberland, then in abeyance, owing to the death,
in 1537, of the last Earl without children, and the attainder of his
brother, Sir Thomas Percy.

Dudley not only received the estates, but a dukedom with them,
and thus it will be seen that the first holder of the title of Duke of

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Northumberland was not a Percy at all, though the Percys had
previously been Earls of Northumberland for one hundred and sixty
years.

It may be interesting in this connection to quote from an old
number of the Quarterly Review concerning the history of this
famous English family, by which it will be seen that for several
centuries tragedy dogged their footsteps. “‘ Their ancestor,
Jocelaine de Louvaine, a younger son of the ancient Princes of
Brabant, and brother of Adelina, second consort of our Henry L,
married, in 1122, Agnes de Percy, the heiress of a great northern
baron, seated at Topcliffe and Spoffard, County of York, on condi-
tion that the male posterity should bear the name of Percy. Their
son, Henry, was great-grandfather of Henry, Lord Percy, sum-
moned to Parliament in 1299, whose great-grandson Henry, fourth
Lord Perey, was created Earl of Northumberland in 1877, at the
coronation of Richard II. He was slain at Bramham Moor in
1408. His son, Henry, Lord Percy (‘ Hotspur’), had already
fallen at Shrewsbury in 1408. Henry, second Earl, the son of
Hotspur, was slain at the Battle of St. Albans, in 1455. His son
Henry, third Earl, was slain at the battle of Towton in 1461.
Henry, fourth Earl, was murdered by an insurrectionary mob at
Thirske, in Yorkshire, in 1480. Henry, fifth Earl, died a natural
death in 1527, but his second son, Sir Thomas Percy, was executed
in 1587 for his concern in Ask’s rebellion. Henry, sixth Earl, the
first lover of Queen Anne Boleyn, died in 1587 issueless, and the
honours were suspended for twenty years by the attainder of his
brother, Sir Thomas Percy, in 1537, during which time the family
had the mortification to see the dukedom of Northumberland
conferred on John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. But this nobleman
being attainted in 1553, the Earldom was restored to Thomas
Percy, the son of the attainted Sir Thomas, who became the
seventh Earl of Northumberland. He was eventually beheaded
in August, 1572. His brother, Henry Percy, was allowed, in right
of the new entail, to succeed as eighth Earl of Northumberland.
In 1585 this Earl, still blind to his family interests, entered into the
intrigues in favour of Mary Queen of Scots, and, being committed
to the Tower, committed suicide 21st June.”

To return to John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, whose
vaulting ambition, as is well known, over-leapt itself, and worked

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his final overthrow. Having married his fourth son, Lord Guildford
Dudley, to the Lady Jane Grey, upon whom the youthful King
Edward—weakened by ill-health and influenced by Northumber-
land—passing over his sisters Mary and Elizabeth—had settled the
succession—he succeeded in persuading her, against her inclination
and her better judgment, to accept the crown. She dnd her
youthful bridegroom were living at Sion—which had then newly
passed into her father-in-law’s hands—when the demise of the young
King occurred. Thence she went in semi-state, by water, to the
Tower, the usual residence of the monarchs of England on their
accession, there to be proclaimed Queen in due form. Sion, in all
its long history, has never witnessed a more sorrowful scene, for
whether the sun shone, or the rain beat, on the banks of the Thames
that day, it saw the first act in a tragedy, the catastrophe of which
was not far distant, when, controlled by the will of her formidable
father-in-law, urged even by her boy-consort—himself but a puppet
in Northumberland’s hands—the pathetic figure of the unwilling
Queen stepped into the gaily-painted barge that was to carry her
to her doom.

As in the case of the last owner, Somerset, Dudley did not long
enjoy possession. He paid the penalty of his ambition on the
scaffold, and two of his chief supporters also suffered. The Lady
Jane and her husband were condemned to die, and, after a delay
that had almost seemed to promise a pardon, they were executed.
Queen Mary retained the estate—which by the attainder of the
Duke of Northumberland now reverted to the crown—in her own
hands, until 1557, when she recalled the ‘“‘ Daughters of Sion.”
She did her best to reinstate them in their old home, re-endowing
them with the manor and demesne of Isleworth and other
property ; but Queen Elizabeth again suppressed them, and kept
possession of the house and lands until her death, in 1603, when
they were bestowed, with the Manor of Isleworth, on Henry
Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland, in the possession of whose
family they have ever since remained. He expended large sums
on the improvement of the mansion, but soon fell on evil days ; for
he was accused and convicted by the Star Chamber, it is thought
unjustly, of complicity in the Gunpowder Plot, deprived of all his
offices, condemned to imprisonment for life in the Tower of London,
and to pay a fine of £30,000. His offer to restore Sion to the King

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in liquidation of the fine, all his other estates being entailed, was
refused ; but he was ultimately released on payment of £11,000.

The tenth Earl repaired the buildings, and it is possible that
Inigo Jones may have been the architect employed ; if this was the
case he did not materially alter the structure, and the cloister on the
east front alone suggests his work. The House of Commons in
1646 made the Earl of Northumberland the guardian of the children
of Charles I., and it was from Sion that they were taken to St.
James’s Palace for an affecting farewell interview with their
unfortunate father before his execution.

Charles II. sought refuge here when the plague was raging in
London—a doubtful asylum, since Brentford, at its very gates,
seems to have been the reverse of immune; for in August, 1665,
Mr. Pepys mentions in his ‘‘ Diary ”’ that ‘‘ the plague was very bad
round Brentford.” A month later he writes that one of his water-
men “‘ fell sick as soon as he landed me in London, when I had been
all night upon the water, and I believe he did get his infection that
day at Brentford, and is now dead of the plague.”

Under date a month earlier, John Evelyn makes the following
entry :

_ “To London and so to Syon, where his Majesty sat at Council
during the Contagion (Great Plague). When business was over, I
viewed that seat, belonging to the Earle of Northumberland, built
out of an old Nunnerie of stone, and faire enough, but more cele-
brated for its garden than it deserves; yet there is excellent wall
fruite, and a pretty fountaine; nothing else extraordinary.”

When the Lady Elizabeth Percy, heiress to all of the Percy
estates, who had already been twice a widow, wedded the Duke
of Somerset before she was sixteen years old, she carried Sion again
into the Somerset family, but it only remained during two genera-
tions in the possession of the Seymours; for Lady Elizabeth’s
grand-daughter, who was also an heiress, married Sir Hugh Smith-
son, belonging to an old family in the north of England. He had
already Percy blood in his veins, and he was afterwards created
first Duke of Northumberland in the present line.

It was this nobleman who employed Adam to carry out the
extensive alterations in the interior at Sion House, and projected
external work, that, owing to unexplained circumstances, was
never executed. This is scarcely to be regretted, because the

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mansion as it stands now is, externally, what it has been for
generations. Had it been otherwise, the fascinating chain of
historical associations would inevitably have been broken—and
Colonel Balfour might have been unable to say, as he does say :

‘Plain as is the whole exterior, it has about it a quiet dignity
which well befits the dwelling of an English gentleman. The quality
of repose has almost ceased to be sought for in modern architecture,
and we seem now to lack the courage of simplicity. It is there-
fore with a sense of peaceful satisfaction that our eyes turn away
from the more troubled and tumbled facades of modern edifices
to such old-fashioned houses as Syon, which still possess something
of a monastic calm.”

These words were written over thirty years ago, but the “‘ monastic
calm,” the air of detachment from the outside haunts of men,
lingers about the place still; and the quality that most strikes
a visitor is the. absolute quiet and aloofness of Sion. It speaks,
as the writer above quoted, has said, “‘ of the palmy days of the
classical revival of the eighteenth century, but its classical character
is touched to some extent with medievalism. . . . The romance
of the Gothic period, outliving the structure in which it was ex-
pressed, has impressed upon this particular work of Adam an
unique quality.” . . . Of course the reference here is to the in-
terior, which alone bears traces of Adam; but the idea expressed
applies to some extent to the grounds outside, where romance
also lingers ; and this because imagination, working under certain

“conditions and in certain moods, is easily led back to the past in
the actual scene of events that were picturesque, and of episodes
that were poignant, all the more that the river, the silent
highway to all these events, the silent witness to all these episodes,
remains unchanged, or nearly so!

What the gardens were like in the years when the “ Daughters
of Sion ” lived there one does not know, but the Protector Somerset
seems to have been at considerable pains to lay them out. He had
a botanical garden here, superintended by the celebrated Dr.
William Turner, author of the first ‘‘ English Herbal,” and often
spoken of as the “ father of British botany.”” Turner was Dean of
Wells and physician to Edward VI. He was also Somerset’s
physician, and though his principal work, the “Herbal,” was not
published until the year before the attainder and death of the

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Protector, it is highly probable that he had all along been his
adviser as to the designing and planting of the grounds at Isle-
worth. According to a map extant a few years ago, there were
large walled gardens on the east and west sides; the wall was con-
tinued along the south side, and in the angle where the walls
met was a high triangular terrace, doubtless erected for the enjoy-
ment of the fine river views thence obtainable, but which, when
the unfortunate Lord Protector was attainted for high treason,
was declared by his enemies to be a fortification. A mound of
irregular shape on the south-east side of the house, now planted
with cedars, is by some people supposed to mark the site of this
platform or terrace.

Queen Anne, when Princess of Denmark, made Sion her
temporary residence, and it is probable that the fashions in garden-
planning and floriculture prevailing under William and Mary,
and to a much later period, were for a time followed here, as at
Hampton Court. They were fashions against which, as we know,
Addison inveighed, and that Pope ridiculed when he wrote :

Dara wear ean BB each Alley hath a brother,
And half the garden just repeats the other.”

But whether or not London and Wise, gardeners, as mentioned
in an earlier chapter, to William III. and to Queen Anne, had
anything to do with the gardens at Sion, does not appear. A print
by H. Bush, dated 1737, and reproduced in Walford’s ‘“‘ Greater
London,” certainly looks as though they had. The pictured
garden is stiff enough to have rejoiced the heart of William of
Orange—and probably also of George II., who, because its long,
narrow street reminded him of his native Hanover, is said to have
been so fond of Brentford that his coachman had orders to drive
slowly when he passed through the High Street, so that he might
enjoy its beauties. Bush’s print shows a large garden between
the house and the river, bounded on the east by a wall with a
water-gate midway, and on the north and south by high hedges,
probably of yew. The wall is carried on diagonally in such a
fashion as to enclose a second garden, triangular in shape, and
intersected geometrically, in true Dutch fashion, with formal
walks.

Colonel Balfour thought that these walls and hedges may quite

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possibly represent the laying out of the grounds by Protector
Somerset, but, be this as it may, the whole was swept away by
‘“‘ Capability ’ Brown, probably about the time when Adam
made the alterations inside the house.

The estate altogether, as it appears at present to one privileged
for a time to wander-over it and sketch, is undoubtedly beautiful
—particularly when one remembers its nearness to London. Owing,
no doubt, to the neighbourhood of the river, and the artificial
waters fed by it, it is astonishingly verdant, and the grounds are
well kept; but there is an entire and rather singular absence of
life about Sion. No doubt it is animated enough when the Duke of
Northumberland is in residence ; at other times it is a little lone-
some, the great house shows no sign of activity; and sequestered
and charming as the grounds are, one misses the peacocks and
the water-fowl, and even the bold grey rabbits that scud across
the lawns at Chiswick House—soon to be described—in places
where, of course, they have no business to be!

Therefore one welcomes, as the only relief from the immobility
of the scene, the gentle movements of the cattle on the green
sward lying between the flower gardens and the river, and hails
the appearance, even in the distance, of gardeners or woodmen
—and I jumped up eagerly from my work one sunshiny day in
September, 1914, when one of the former, with considerable excite-
ment, called my attention to the then unusual sight of a vast cigar-
shaped airship, flying so low that it appeared to be little above the
dome of the conservatory. There were three or four men in it,
clearly seen, and it flew the British ensign at its stern, as any ship
at sea might do; but its ocean, the air, was very calm and still,
and the sky serenely blue. It was an incident charged with
undue excitement and importance, because it happened at the
very outbreak of war, when the attributes and powers of Zeppelins
and airships were comparatively unknown. As a rule one may
walk for an hour at Sion, or paint undisturbedly, with nothing
whatever to remind one that the dirtiest hamlet in Middlesex
is at its very gates, and that the trams to Hampton Court pass
them every few minutes.

I do not know with what authority a writer, quoted by Walford,
suggested that Capability Brown’s work at Sion, was in its turn
also “‘ swept away.” He says, “ the extensive pleasure-grounds

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skirting the Thames, from the middle of Brentford to Isleworth
Ferry, with the once notable gardens, had. received little attention
since the early days of Capability Brown, when the late Duke of
Northumberland caused designs to be prepared for remodelling
the whole of the grounds, twenty-five acres in extent.”

Colonel Balfour, who had exceptional opportunities for obtaining
accurate information on all such points, speaks of no such efface-
ment, which would have been an act of sheer vandalism, for, in
their own way, the gardens of Kent and his successor, Capability
Brown, are classic. On the contrary, he remarks: ‘‘ Of its kind,
Capability Brown’s landscape gardening is here most successful.”

There is nothing in the Sion grounds as they now appear, as
far as my amateur knowledge goes, to suggest that they were not
planned in the second half of the eighteenth century, though,
no doubt, many interesting trees and shrubs have been added,
and the magnificent range of plant-houses, four hundred feet long,
can scarcely belong to that period, although they have a charmingly
old-fashioned air. Here again I have been unable to glean definite
information, but probably the construction of these fine con-
servatories, with the substitution of metallic framework for the
old-time wood-framed roofs and sides, were the principal features
in the great improvements referred to by Walford’s anonymous
authority. ‘‘ They consist,’’ he says, ‘‘ of nine divisions, and are
so arranged that each can be kept at its own independent tem-
perature, suitable to the health and beauty of its plants;. yet
the doors can, upon any special occasion, be thrown open, giving
the various climates of the world, with their various inhabitants.”’
They are raised on a terrace two or three feet above the garden
level, and built in the form of a crescent, a crystal dome, sixty-
five feet high, rising from the centre. The terrace is punctuated,
as one might say, at regular intervals by tall and massive stone
flower vases. These vases are said to be the work of Grinling
Gibbons, and their heavy, florid style and debased ornament,
better suited to wood than stone, is little in harmony with the
chaste and restrained decoration, the severe and elegant archi-
tecture of the Adam entrance-gate before referred to.

During the absences of the noble owner, the flowering plants are
now removed from the conservatories, which have, in consequence,
at such times, a rather forlorn and bare aspect, notwithstanding

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SION : Looking toward the River Thames Page 110

SION

the beauty of the glossy dark leaves of camellias out of bloom,
of orange trees, tall palms, and ferns. Conservatories, whatever
their architectural dignity—and those at Sion have much—demand
colour ; to obtain which, at all seasons, is surely the raison d’étre
of a greenhouse. However, though, in the interior, colour may
sometimes be lacking at Sion, outside, in September, there is
veritably a feast of it!

Standing at the extreme end of the terrace, by the door of the
near conservatory, the angle of which in my drawing unfortunately
cuts off from view the curved line of the crescent-shaped houses
and the central dome, one looks across beds of delicately-tinted
flowers to the opposite and corresponding greenhouse, every
available inch of which is covered with Virginia creeper, which, in
September, changes rapidly from a warm green to scarlet, and
finally to blood-red. It compensates by its glorious hues for the
gradual weakening, as summer wanes, of the blaze of rose and pink,
touched here and there with white, and occasionally with a splash
of pure vermilion—used with much reticence at Sion—but which,
when present, strikes the final note of a colour-scheme of wonderful
beauty.

I may return ere long to the subject of colour in gardens—to
both the abuse and timid avoidance of scarlet, the untutored
eye welcoming contrasts, but ignoring harmonies.

The terrace is a vantage ground. Thence the eye is led gradu-
ally onward, down the broad walk between the beds of pink
geranium and purple heliotrope, and less familiar plants, which
blend admirably ; past the far end of the conservatory, with its
mantle of creeper just described; past cyprus, and cedar, and
Scottish fir, the dark foliage of all three contrasting with the
brighter greens of the deciduous trees, already painted with patches
of yellow ; on, right on, beyond all this to the open space of sky,
and stretch of quiet park, where cattle are grazing, to where the
glint of sunshine on a white sail, the occasional glimpse of the
red funnel of a steamboat, the distant objects moving on the farther
bank at the point at which the gardens of Kew descend to the
towing path, sufficiently indicate the position of the invisible
channel of the river.

Turn a little to the right, keeping now the Gibbons vase upon
your left, and a wider view of the flower-garden presents

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itself. Here is the parterre of the eighteenth century landscape-
gardener—a decorative, if formal, arrangement of flower-plots,
with walks of bright green turf intervening—at least so it is at
Sion; at Holland House and Fulham Palace these plots are
separated by foot-wide gravel paths, edged by high, thick borders
of ancient box; but here, as there, they are intersected by one or
two broad, straight gravel walks running from end to end. In
the centre is a fountain, and a basin filled with water-lilies.

The man, whosoever he was—whether Capability Brown or
another—who first imagined, and then laid out this beautiful
garden, was an artist. He knew the enormous value in every
picture of contrast ; and nothing more admirable in this respect
can be conceived than the opposition of these masses of brilliant
and well-harmonized flowers in the parterre, with the belt of rich,
dark evergreen-trees above and beyond the well-contrived alpine
rock-garden that shuts in this part of the grounds.

It has always seemed to me that the man who plants even a single
tree does a good work and an unselfish one : he plants for posterity,
not for himself; he is laying up a store of perennial beauty for
‘a world as yet unborn. The tree’s maturity he himself will never
see, nay, nor scarcely will his children see it ; for the life of a tree
is commensurate with the lives of generations of men. He accepts
the fact and does not murmur, for in his simple way he is a prophet ;
he has a vision of beauty, and his oak, or his elm, may -help to
realize it; or, more probably, he has a vision of utility, and,
just as from the oaks that Evelyn planted were built the ships
in which Nelson fought, he is content with the knowledge that the
timber of his tree will be required for purposes innumerable, when-
he himself has gone the way of all flesh. It is an act of faith and
of patriotism, not unworthy of comparison—though the self-
sacrifice and the risks are immeasurably less—with the faith in
the future, the devotion to ends that he may not live to see con-
summated, of the civilian who voluntarily enters the ranks of an
army, offering his life to his country—to England, to France, to
Belgium, in order that, though he die, she may continue to live.*

It is the spirit of the old-time builder. Someone who dreamt
a cathedral, and then planned it; who saw the work well begun
and then, silently passed. The cathedral took three, four, even

* This was written at the beginning of the great war, long before conscription was thought of.
112

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lbs [ho
ahs VO Tarr,

SION

five hundred years to build; generation after generation helped
to evolve the idea of that first builder, whose very name probably
has passed into oblivion! The sculptor, and the carver in oak,
and the designer of stained glass, each in turn threw himself self-
lessly into the work, raising for others the carved columns, the
curious gargoyles; decorating the facade of the great building
with the sculptured figures of saint and martyr, carving the oaken
screen, the stalls and the pulpit, filling the tall windows with jewelled
glass—and all this unostentatiously, each one doing, without fuss
or sense of special merit, his appointed task—each man literally
‘* doing his bit,” and doing it well, because he loved it! They had
faith in God, those old artists, and their labour was part of their
religion, and therefore do “ their works live after them,” though
they themselves have long been dust, and many are forgotten.

It follows that if a man who planted a single tree—that giant
cedar near the north side of Sion, for instance, which has ‘ had.
a past’’—so a gardener told me—was blown down in a certain:
memorable snow-storm twenty or thirty years ago, and then:
replanted, and still survives, his great arms propped up with iron:
supports—if such a man well merits our gratitude—for truly the
tree is beautiful !—if the memory of such deserves posterity’s
blessing, how great is posterity’s debt to him who planted many
hundreds of trees, the Beeches of Burnham, the oaks of Windsor
and Richmond, the trees of all sorts and climates at Kew, and
the no less magnificent specimens at Sion itself. Kindly permitted
for a time to wander over Sion, I offer my gratitude both to the
owner and to the landscape-gardener, whosoever he was, that laid
out these pleasure-grounds. Like the cathedral builder, he too
dreamt this garden; laboriously he dug and delved, and pruned
and watered, and every sapling he planted, with due regard to
its proper place in the whole scheme, was one step onwards towards
the realization of his dream. He illustrated in his own person
two, at least, of the Christian virtues : charity and faith ; for what is
charity but unselfishness, love ? and in a degree his was an unselfish
act. And what is faith but—and this might well be the landscape-

gardener’s motto—“ the substance of things hoped for, the evidence
of things not seen.”

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CHAPTER V
THE CHELSEA “‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”

N the opening chapter of this book reference is made to the
universal cultivation of simples, or medicinal herbs, by
the English country dames and damsels of old, and also to

the fact that in many a convent garden in this country the plants
used in the healing art were grown by the monks, who largely
helped to keep alive the science of horticulture during the dark
ages.

By degrees, in the sixteenth century, books on the subject began
to appear. As already stated, the first Englishman to compile
a herbal was William Turner, M.D., Fellow of Pembroke Hall,
Cambridge, Dean of Wells, botanist and physician to Edward VI.
and the Protector Somerset.

Learning Greek as he did from Nicholas Ridley, and hearing
Hugh Latimer preach, it is not surprising that Turner should have
so soon identified himself with the reforming party in the Church.
For preaching without a licence he was for a time imprisoned, and
when released, travelled on the Continent, interesting himself
deeply in the study of botany, and writing religious works, that
were forbidden by proclamation to appear in England. He came
into favour at court on the accession of Edward VI., and though
deprived of his office during Mary’s reign, so that he again sought
refuge abroad, he was for some years Dean of Wells, till finally,
he was suspended for nonconformity in 1564.

‘‘ Being,” he tells us, ‘‘ so much vexed and occupied with preach-
ing and the study of divinity, he had but small leisure to write
herballes.”” Yet,’’ said his contemporary, Dr. Bullen, “ his book

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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”’

of herbes will always grow green, and never wither, so long as
Discorides is held in mind among these mortal wights.’”’ The work
appeared in two parts; the first being published in 1551—part
the second, ten or twelve years later. According to the practice
in those days, the title set forth in prolix detail the contents of
the book, and the author describes it as ‘“‘a new Herbale—
wherein are conteyned the names of herbes in Greke, Latin,
Englishe, Duche, and Frenche, and in the apothecaries and
herbaries latin, with the properties, degrees and natural place of
the same, gathered and made by William Turner, Physician to the
Duke of Somerset.”

The second part included “ divers confutationes of no small
errours that men of no small learning have committed in the in-
treatinge of herbes of late years.”’ These two parts, to which were
added the names of herbs found “ after the old writer’s tyme,”
were reprinted, and dedicated to “the surgeon’s company of
London and all practitioners of surgery throughout England,” and
were dated from Wells in 1564, the year of Turner’s final expulsion
from his deanery. An edition in the British Museum, dated from
his “‘ house at London the 5th day of Marche, 1568,” four months
only before his death, has a long and fulsome dedication to Queen
Elizabeth (‘‘your most excellent sublimitie,’ he calls her), in
which he extravagantly praises her Latin. Turner is described as
‘““a racy writer, a keen controversialist, and a man of undoubted
learning.” He was a sound and eager botanist. Before his time,
as he himself says, botany was so much neglected that, when
collecting plants for the skeleton of his work, he could not find a
physician capable of telling him the names, in Greek, Latin, or
English, of any of them.

Turner cannot claim the credit of having founded the first
medicinal herb garden in England; that distinction belongs to
John Gerarde, who also, some thirty years after Turner’s death,
published an admirably illustrated ‘“‘ Herbal or Historie of Plants,”’
but Turner, who was superintendent of the Duke of Somerset’s
new garden at Sion (of which an account has been given already),
had ample opportunity to encourage the growth, and test the
virtues, of all the simples with which he was acquainted, and to
cultivate many uncommon specimens. Owing to the unsettled
circumstances of Turner’s life and the diversity of his pursuits,

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his medical knowledge, though it brought him high patronage,
could not possibly have been founded on leisurely observation,
and personal practice. Therefore—classical scholar as he was—
it is not surprising that in his herbal, which is certainly a monu-
ment to his industry and patience, he rests his faith in the virtues
of certain plants, on the stated experience of the ancients, and
constantly quotes Discorides, who wrote on the Materia Medica
in the first and second centuries.

John Gerarde, before mentioned, a surgeon and citizen of
London, and gardener to Lord Burleigh, did the same, and
their two herbals make curious reading. We find that in the
sixteenth century strawberries were more esteemed for medicinal
properties than as fruit to be eaten. They “ quench thirst and
are good for a cholerick stomack,” writes Turner. “ There is a
juice pressed out of strawberries, which by continuance of tyme
encreaseth in strength and that is a present remedie against the
sores and wheales of the face.”

Gerarde remarks that ‘“‘ the leaves boiled in manner of a pultis,
taketh away the burning heat in wounds, a decoction thereof
strengtheneth the gums, fastneth the teeth,” etc. “ The distilled
water ”’ of strawberries “ drunke with white wine is good against
the passion of the hart—raiseth the spirits and maketh the hart
merrie.”” And it is also “‘ reported to scower the face and take
away spots, and to make the face faire and smooth,” thus recalling
the poet’s refrain that ‘“‘ strawberry leaves make maidens fair.”
Gerarde, like Turner, tells us that ‘strawberries quench thirst,
and alaie the inflammation and heate of the stomacke,” but adds
that “‘ the nourishment they yield is little, thinne, and waiterish.”
Roses, medicinally used, “strengthen the hart, and helpe the
trembling and beating thereof. They are put into all kinds of
counter poysons and other like mediemes, whether they be to
be outwardly applied or inwardly taken.’’ He quotes Pliny to
prove that ‘‘ the roote of a wilde Rose is a singular remedie (found
out by oracle) against the bite of a mad dog.”

Hydrophobia was apparently a common disease, therefore many
are its suggested cures. ‘‘ Horehound stamped ”’ (7.e., mixed or
crushed) “ with salt and applied, cureth the bite of a mad dog
as Discorides writeth.” But, that one dog’s meat is another dog’s
poison, and that salt is not good for sane dogs, we have the ancient.

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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”

ce

physician’s witness—for “if you have a little dog and wish to
keep it small—you may give it daisies stamped with new butter
unsalted :”’ and we learn that “ daisies do mitigate all kinde of
paines, but especially of the joints, and goute,” if they are mixed
in the same way with unsalted butter.

‘“‘Snapdragon,” says Gerarde, “ according to Discorides, is the
herbe that, being hanged about one, preserveth a man from being
bewitched, and that maketh a man gratious in the sight of the
people.” Faith can remove mountains: and if such nostrums did
no good, they very often did no harm.

The character of the herbal literature did not greatly change
during the next half-century, and more. In 1664 a certain Robert
Turner, calling himself ‘‘ Botanologia Studiosus,’’ published the
‘‘ British Physician,’ with a title even more detailed and verbose
than his namesake’s and predecessor’s; it set forth ‘‘ the nature
and vertues of English plants, exactly describing such plants as
grow naturally in the land with their. several names, Greek, Latin,
and English, natures, places where they flourish and are most
proper to be gathered ; their degree of temperature, applications
and vertues, physical and astrological uses, treated of; each plant
appropriated to the several diseases they cure and directions for
their medicinal use, throughout the whole body of man; _ being
most special helps for sudden accidents, acute and chronick dis-
temper. By means of which people may gather their own physick
under every hedge, or in their own gardens, which may be most
conducing to their health; so that observing the directions in
this book, they may become their own physicians, for what climate
soever is subject to any particular disease, in the same place there
grows a cure.”

The punctuation of Turner’s long title is so erratic that, on
reading it, one is, as it were, breathless before reaching the
end.

Ten years after this work appeared one William Langham
brought out a herbal with a pretty name, ‘‘ The Garden of Health,”
but it was apparently of the same nature as ‘“‘ The British Phy-
sician,” and proves that though Evelyn’s various works on horti-
culture—and notably his “‘ Sylva or a Discourse on Forest Trees ”
—had awakened in some quarters an intelligent interest in horti-
culture and kindred sciences, the ordinary herbalist of the

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seventeenth century had seldom a soul above his physic, com-
pounded of herbs to be ‘‘ found under every hedge” and “ grown
in every garden.” The larger aims of forestry concerned him
but little; and it would appear that during the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries popular interest in plants and trees centred
in the cultivation of those vegetables and fruits, to which I have
made earlier reference.

Fortunately for posterity, and for botany in its relation to
medical science, this indifference was not universal. We have
seen Sir William Temple—almost as good a horticulturist as he
was a statesman—regardless of the superior claims of patriotism,
devoting his great gifts and his valuable time, in his voluntary:
retirement from political life, to the culture of oranges and melons ;
and John Evelyn, the famous diarist, introducing “‘ trees of curi-
osity ”’ to this country and not resting until he had induced the
great landowners to plant new oaks and elms in the place of those
ruthlessly sacrificed during the civil wars; and now we shall find
that about four years after Evelyn had introduced the cedar to
England, was founded the garden that is the subject of this
chapter.

As previously mentioned, the earliest botanic garden in England
was that of John Gerarde in Holborn. The catalogue of plants he
published in 1596 mentions numerous varieties of the same species, as
having been grown there. The next, in point of time, was that of a
man equally celebrated, and already referred to more than once—
John Tradescent, gardener to Charles I. He established at Lambeth
a garden for exotic plants, and, as we already know, he was a good
botanist and collector, in other branches of natural history. In
1749, Mr. Watson, afterwards Sir William Watson, spoken of in
the chapters on Fulham Palace, visited the Tradescent garden
and found the house empty and ruinous, and the garden totally
neglected ; but though a wilderness, ‘‘ it still showed traces of
its founder.”

Both the Gerarde and Tradescent gardens were highly com-
mendable private enterprises, but the opportunities of their owners
were necessarily limited.

A Botanic garden endowed by the Earl of Derby had been
founded at Oxford in 1652, but the honour of establishing in Lon-
don the first of its kind supported by a public body, belongs to.

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THE CHELSEA ‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”’

the Society of Apothecaries. The Society itself was still very
young, having been incorporated in 1617, in the reign of James I.
It had from a very early period of its existence taken a lively interest
in botany, and so long back as 1632 we find its members making
annual botanical excursions, known as ‘“ herbalizings,’”’ into the
country round London. In founding, in the year 1670, a garden
for the better pursuit of botanical study, the aims of the apothe-
caries, seem to have been threefold: firstly, the advancement of
botany in its relation to medicine ; secondly, the classification, for
the benefit of their own students, of the multitudinous forms that
constitute the vegetable kingdom, by means of specimens of the
groups of plants spread over the surface of the globe, collected
and arranged systematically for educational purposes : and thirdly,
the introduction, with a view to cultivation, of foreign trees,
vegetables, and plants. The young society, having recently re-
built their hall destroyed in the great fire of 1666, had few funds
at their disposal for the purposes they had at heart; but having
the will, they found the way. The matter is a little obscure, but
it would almost appear that the apothecaries already had a lease
of the land upon which they proposed to make this garden; for
a writer in 1693 says, ‘‘ The ground upon which the Chelsea Gar-
den is now situated was originally taken by the Apothecaries
Society as a convenient place upon which to build a barge-house
for the ornamental barge that the Society (like the other City com-
panies) then possessed.”

In quoting the above in 1878, Field and Simple, writing the
“Memoirs of the Botanic Garden at Chelsea,’’ remark that ‘‘ it
appears that Charles Cheyne, Esq., by his indenture of lease bearing
date August 29, 1678, did demise and grant unto the Master, Wardens
and Society of the Art and mystery of apothecaries of the City
of London and their successors and assigns, the piece and parcel
of ground and premises therein mentioned to hold from Michaelmas
then ensuing, until the full term of sixty years at the yearly rent
of £5.” There is some discrepancy in the dates, which, however,
is not of great importance to us, but it is interesting to know how
such favourite localities as Cheyne Row, and Cheyne Walk, came
by their names.

Certain public-spirited members of the Society of Apothecaries
now offered at their own expense—but hoping that other

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

contributors might come forward—to build a wall round the garden
on condition that the court of assistants of the Society of Apothe-
caries, who undertook the management of the scheme, should
agree to pay 2/— annually for ever, towards the cost of the
‘ herborizings.” The proposal was accepted, and the members of
the laboratory staff contributed £50 towards building the wall,
in return for which they were to be allowed a piece of ground in
the garden for herbs. This stipulation shows that, in its first
inception at any rate, the Chelsea plot was not primarily intended
for the cultivation of medicinal plants.

The services of Piggott, the first gardener, were discontinued
in December, 1677, and a certain Richard Pratt was appointed |
at a salary—liberal for those days—of £30 per annum. Directions
were given that the following year the garden should be planted
with the best fruit trees, and the promise to the laboratory staff,
carried out by a good crop of medicinal herbs. In 1680 we find
one Mr. Watts, who had been a contributor to the erection of the
wall, appointed head-gardener, his remuneration being £50 per
annum. There was also an allowance for two labourers.

Shortly after this, at the lower end of the ground near the river,
a greenhouse was constructed, costing £138. Watts then pro-
ceeded to Holland to arrange an exchange of plants with the pro-
fessor of botany at the University of Leyden, who had previously
visited the Chelsea garden—a garden that had thus in a single
decade assumed importance in the world of botanical science.

It was about this time that the four famous cedars which appear
so picturesquely in the old prints of the garden, were planted,
being at the time only three feet high. Unfortunately they no
longer exist; the two northern ones, having decayed, were cut
down about 1770, together with some limes and elms, and various
other trees considered to be injurious to the growth of the plants
for which the garden was designed. Henry Field, writing in
1878, mentions that the last survivor of the famous group was
then moribund. The timber from the two felled trees was sold
for £23 9s. 8d.

In 1685 Mr. Evelyn writes in his diary :

“IT went to see Mr. Watts, keeper of the apothecaries’ garden
of simples at Chelsea, where there is a collection of innumerable
varieties of that sort—particularly, besides many rare annuals, the

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The ‘ Physicke’’ Garden: Gateway in Swan Walk, Chelsea. [To face p. 120.

THE CHELSEA ‘“‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”

tree bearing Jesuits’ bark which had done such wonders in agues.
What was very ingenious was the subterranean heat, conveyed
by a stove under the conservatory, all vaulted with brick, so that
he has the doors and windows open in the hardest frosts; ex-
cluding only the snow.”

So far Mr. Watts appears to have done well, but six years
later we find him getting into disgrace, and the Vice-President
of the Society of Antiquaries—as appears from an _ original
manuscript afterwards published in one of twelve volumes of
the ‘“Archeologia”’—says ‘the Chelsea Physick Garden has
great variety of plants both in and out of the greenhouses: the
perennial green hedges, and rows of different coloured herbs are
very pretty, and so are the banks set with shades of herbs in the
Irish stitch way ; but many plants in the garden were not in so
good order as might be expected ; after I had been there, I learned
that Mr. Watts, the keeper of it, was blamed for his neglect and
would be removed.”

Poor Mr. Watts—whether dismissed or not, he sinned in intro-
ducing, in the seventeenth century, what reads very much like that
modern abomination, a ribbon border.

Throughout its history the lessees of the garden seem to have
experienced difficulties in meeting the expenses of the upkeep, and
various plans were tried to enable them to do so. In 1697 the
lease had been extended, but soon after, the Society of Apothe-
caries, finding that in its corporate capacity it could not support
the cost of the garden, adopted the expedient of making certain
members voluntarily responsible for it; this was in 1707, but six
years later the Trustees reported that, owing to the difficulty of
getting in subscriptions, they would be unable to continue its
maintenance beyond the present term of seven years.

It is in 1714 that we find the first mention of Dr. Sloan, after-
wards Sir Hans Sloan, in connection with the garden.

He was at this time Lord of the Manor of Chelsea, having pur-
chased it two years earlier from William, Lord Cheyne.

Sir Hans Sloan was born in Ireland in 1660 of Scottish parentage.
A delicate youth, he came to London to study medicine and
the allied sciences, particularly chemistry and botany. At the
age of twenty-three he went to Paris to work under distinguished
professors, afterwards studying in the university of Montpellier,

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and travelling through Languedoc collecting plants. Soon after
his return to London he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society,
and two years later a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
Sloan had long wished to visit the tropics, and when, in 1687, the
Duke of Albemarle was appointed governor of Jamaica, Sloan
accompanied him as physician. The premature death of the
Duke cut short his visit, but not before he had made large collec-
tions of plants in the West Indies; and although only fifteen
months in Jamaica, he contrived to collect an enormous number
of specimens. In 1694, Dr. Sloan was appointed physician to
Christ’s Hospital, an office he retained for fourteen years; and
shortly after, he married the wealthy daughter of a London alder-
man. Of four children born to him and her, two daughters alone
survived their parents. They married into the aristocratic families
of Stanley and Cadogan; their names, and Sir Hans Sloan’s, are
perpetuated in several well-known streets and squares in the
manor of Chelsea. Sloan was the first of his profession to receive
hereditary honours, George I. conferring a baronetcy on him in
1716, and afterwards making him physician to the Forces. He
was principal physician to George II., and he succeeded the illus-
trious Sir Isaac Newton as President of the Royal Society, holding
office to the age of eighty. He was also President of the Royal
College of Physicians. Honours indeed crowded upon this dis-
tinguished man. His exhaustive Latin catalogue of the plants
of Jamaica, and the two folio volumes he published later, must
have involved great labour and expense; but, otherwise, his own
contributions to science were not remarkable. He was, for that
day, a good physician, with an extensive practice among the
upper classes; and from his youth, when his tastes and industry
brought him into touch with Robert Boyle, one of the founders
of the Royal Society, and with Ray, the naturalist, elsewhere
mentioned in this book, he was up to advanced age, an indefatigable
collector in the realm of natural science. So early as 1701, his own
collections were enriched by the inherited cabinet of William Courten,
another collector, and when, at the age of eighty, he removed
from Bloomsbury, and retired from active work to the enjoyment
of his estate at Chelsea, his treasures were of unique value. He
spent the closing years of his life in entertaining scientific men
and studying his collections, to which no doubt he added, so that
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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”’

when he died, at the age of ninety-two, his museum contained two
hundred volumes of dried plants, and 30,600 specimens of other
objects of natural history, besides a library of 50,000 volumes,
and. 8,566 manuscripts. All this he bequeathed to the nation
on condition that Parliament should pay his executors £20,000,
which he estimated as the fourth of its value.

It was a munificent offer, and an Act was passed accepting it,
by which the vast collection, added to the books and manuscripts
of. Sir Robert Cotton, before purchased, became the nucleus of the
national treasure-house. It was. established—either by accident
or design—in Sloan’s old neighbourhood, Bloomsbury, and was
first opened to the public in 1759, six years after his death. It
is now famous all the world over as the British Museum.

It was to Sir Hans Sloan that, finding it impossible to support
unaided the upkeep of their garden, the Society of Apothecaries
now appealed for help. A deputation waited upon him to ascertain
his sentiments towards it. These sentiments, though there was
no immediate result from the interview, were probably benevolent,
for it seems to have paved the way for the liberal settlement of
the question a few years later. This was in 1722, when a deed
of conveyance of the garden at Chelsea from Sir Hans Sloan to the
Society of Apothecaries, was laid before the court of assistants,
approved by them, and ordered to be sealed. The “ release is
made between the Hon. Sir Hans Sloan, Bart., President of the
Royal College of Physicians on one part, and the master, wardens,
and Society of the art and mystery of apothecaries of the City
of London on the other part.” It recites the original lease from
Lord Cheyne, and also the great expense incurred by the society
in laying out and supporting the Physic Garden ever since that
lease was granted, and goes on to say, “‘ to the end that the said
garden may at all times hereafter be continued as a Physicke
Garden, and for the better encouraging and enabling the said
Society to support the charge thereof, for the manifestation of
the power, wisdom, and glory of God in the works of the creation,
and that their apprentices and others may better distinguish good
and useful plants from those that bear resemblance to them and
yet are hurtful and other the like good purposes; the said Sir
Hans Sloan grants to the Master, Warden, and Society and their
successors, all that piece and parcel of arable and pasture land,

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

situated at Chelsea in the county of Middlesex” . . . “‘ containing
3 acres, 1 rood, and 85 perches, with the greenhouse, stoves,
barge-houses, and other creations thereon, to have and to hold
the same for ever, paying to Sir Hans Sloan and his heirs and
assigns the yearly rent of £5, and rendering yearly to the President
and Council and Fellows of the Royal Society of London 50 speci-
mens of distinct plants, well dried and preserved, which grew
in their garden the same year, with their names or reputed names,
and those presented in each year to be specifically different from
those of every former year until the number of 2,000 shall have
been delivered.”

If the Society failed to fulfil any of the above conditions—
or should attempt to use the ground for any other purpose than
a Physic Garden—the deed empowered Sir Hans Sloan or his
representatives, to enter the garden and hold it for the benefit
of the Royal Society—which, in that case, was to be subject to
the same conditions as to rent and delivery of the specimens,
as the Apothecaries; only the specimens and the rent were to
be delivered by the new custodians to the President and Council
of the Faculty of Physic in London.

To the non-legal mind all this is very confusing, but it would
appear that, failing the Society of Apothecaries, the Royal Society,
of which Sloan was then either Secretary or Vice-President,
should accept the same responsibilities towards the garden—for
the benefit eventually of the Royal College of Physicians, of which
Sir Hans Sloan was even then President. Soon after, the College
of Physicians presented the Apothecaries Society with £100 for
the use of the garden, and for some time we hear no more of finan-
cial difficulties ; on the contrary, six years later an order was given
to build a wharf on the river side of the garden at the cost of
£1,000, the money being borrowed on sufficient security. In
1732 a scheme was set on foot to erect a greenhouse wherein the
various temperatures of the world should as nearly as possible be
imitated, so that plants might enjoy an approximation to their
native climes. The building cost £1,891 16s., and in it we find
the germ of the idea that led to the erection of the great hot-houses
of Sion and Kew. In the same year, a year of astonishing activity
on the part of the Society ; it sent out at its own expense to Georgia
to collect trees and plants, in order to make experiments in raising

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THE CHELSEA ‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”’

the same in England, and it also erected a statue to Sir Hans
Sloan, by a German sculptor—one Michael Rysbrach. This,
when finished, at the cost of £280, was placed in front of the new
hot-house, but was subsequently removed to its present position
at the junction of several of the principal walks. It is a dignified
presentment of a distinguished man, but, unfortunately, only a
distant view of it appears in my drawing. The Latin inscription
on the pedestal sets forth that the Society of Pharmacopedists
“being sensible how necessary this branch of science is to the
faithful discharging of the duty of their profession, with grateful
hearts, and general consent, ordered this statue to be erected in
the year of our Lord 1733; that their successors and Posterity
may never forget their common Benefactor. Placed here in the
year 1787, Sir Benjamin Rawlins, Knight, master.” The names
of the wardens are also appended.

The year that saw the erection of the Statue to Sir Hans Sloan
was made additionally memorable in the annals of the Physic
Garden by the visit to it of the great Swedish botanist, Carl von
Linné, better known as Linneus. Before his time botany was
a chaotic assemblage of facts; he left it a definite science. His
lectures at the university of Upsala afterwards drew men from
all parts of the world ; the normal number of Students there was
500, but whilst Linnzus occupied the chair of Botany, it rose
to 1,500.

At the period of his arrival in England the illustrious Swede was
barely thirty years of age, and although as yet comparatively little
known out of his own country, he brought with him such warm
recommendations from scientists in Holland to Sir Hans Sloan
and others, that it is curious that the great man of Chelsea received
him coldly. However, at the Physic Garden he had a better
reception; Philip Miller, F.R.S., considered the first botanical
gardener of his time, who was in authority there for forty-eight
years, had apparently more discernment than his patron, and
more quickly recognized budding genius. Linneus writes in
his diary: ‘‘‘ Miller of Chelsea’ permitted me to collect many
plants in the garden and gave me several dried specimens collected
in South America.”

Thus the fame of the Chelsea garden was now so great that it
had sufficed to draw Linneus thither. He only visited two botanic

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gardens in this country—that of Oxford, under Professor Dillenius,
and that at Chelsea. To those in control at Chelsea he often
refers in very commendatory terms; and commendation from
Linnzus was well worth having, for his researches and writings
effected a scientific revolution in all the botanic gardens of the
educated world.

But Sir Hans Sloan, if lacking in discrimination in the matter
of Linnzus, was not wanting in generosity towards the garden,
which he had sought by his gift to place on a self-supporting and
firm footing.

I do not know for certain, but I feel sure that he visited it, not
only periodically and of necessity, in his official capacity as head
of two learned societies to which the garden had obligations—
but privately, and at odd times, much as he might have visited
a pet protégé or a child for whose welfare he was concerned. I
think that he often came, accompanied by a daughter ; occasionally
by way of the river-gate and the wharf, but more frequently,
after driving over from his residence in Bloomsbury, entering by
the curious old gateway in Swan Lane—the same that, with its
formidable portcullis-sort of arrangement over the gate, and its
caged bell, appears in the sketch, and which is so quaintly
reminiscent of his day. Through this gateway everyone visiting
the garden, even now, has no choice but to enter. The
bell swings, and its sonorous iron tongue speaking of olden
times, we have a vision of a handsome but heavy coach waiting
outside ; of a coachman, portly and rubicund, seated majestically
on the box, and of a gorgeous lackey who lets down the steps
for the stately old gentleman with ponderous wig and long coat,
whose representation in stone we see on yonder statue, and the
elegant young lady whose silken gown is looped up over a hoop
of such immense dimensions that with difficulty she squeezes
through the door of the coach. The whalebone or steel cages
worn by women were so large in the reign of the second George,
that the architects of the day began to curve the balustrades of
their staircases outwards, in order to allow of the passage of their
fair wearers.

The garden is a pleasant spot even now, when it is overlooked
from two sides. What must it have been in days when the swift
river washed its walls ; when, sitting in the cedar shade, one might

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have watched the brown-sailed barges and the gay pleasure-boats
pass up and down ? Nor was Sir Hans Sloan the only distinguished
man to come there; many others, eminent in various walks of
life, have sat, and rested, and chatted, beneath the cedars, and
watched old Father Thames go by. Evelyn could not have done
so, for he visited the garden when the cedars were only two years
old, but that they interested him we may be sure, for, as elsewhere
stated, he introduced the tree to this country.

Tradition says that Dean Swift came here, and in all proba-
bility he did, and perhaps pencilled a note to Stella beneath the
spreading branches, with the sunlit river sparkling before his
eyes, for the garden was over fifty years old when the Dean of
St. Patrick’s published his ‘* Gulliver’s Travels.” Here, in any case,
came generations of students, the learned botanists, and doctors
of medicine, and surgeon-apothecaries, of the future. They were
all apprentices of the Apothecaries’ Society; industrious some,
and idle others, according to the manner of apprentices to Art,
Science, or commercial pursuits, from time immemorial. And
among the head-gardeners (later styled ‘‘ curators’’), and the
Professors, and Demonstrators, whose duty it was to lecture to
the apprentices, were many known to fame, and others who were
unknown, only because the science of horticulture is not so generally
attractive as it well might be. Sir Joseph Banks, the naturalist,
founder of the Royal Institution, who was a liberal benefactor
to the garden, is said to have begun his botanical studies there,
under the auspices of the venerable Philip Miller, F.R.S., before
mentioned, who, besides being for forty-eight years gardener to
the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, was also a member of
the Botanic Society of Florence.

Born in 1691, Miller left a name highly distinguished among
horticulturalists. His great work was ‘‘ The Gardener’s Dictionary,”
and it set forth the best methods then known of improving the
kitchen, fruit, or flower garden, and the nursery. The hope of
acclimatizing the vine had not in his time been abandoned, for
Miller’s book gives instructions for the management of a vineyard,
and for making and preserving the wine according to the practice
of experienced wine-growers in the several wine countries of
Europe ; and it also gave directions for the cultivation of all sorts
of timber trees. Miller was not the only officer of the garden who

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grew, grey in its service. Mr. Thomas Wheeler filled the post of
Prefectus Horti and Botanical Demonstrator at Chelsea, for forty-
two years, and for the best part of half a century demonstrated in
the open air in the summer months, to the members of the Society
and to its students. But of him and his son I shall have more to say.

In 1753, just after the death of Sir Hans Sloan, the expenses
of the garden, which for some years had been £200 and £220
per annum, began again to be heavily felt; and to the regular
upkeep had now to be added a considerable sum for repairs. An
appeal for help to the new President of the Royal Society was made
without result. It seems strange that Sir Hans Sloan, so liberal
to the garden in the past, should have made no provision whatever
for it in his will. The Society, however, bravely struggled on
independently, and in 1771, with the consent of the conservators
of the Thames for the City of London, in order to recover ground
that had once belonged to them, the apothecaries embanked the
garden towards the river, at the cost of £400. Their efforts indeed
throughout its history, both in their corporate capacity, and as
individual members, are deserving of all praise. We read of one
‘* honorary ’’ demonstrator presenting forty tons of old stones from
the Tower of London to raise a rockery for the cultivation of plants
requiring a particular soil; and of the gift by Joseph, afterwards
Sir Joseph, Banks, of a large quantity of lava from Iceland; this
was followed later by the presentation by him of three hundred
different kinds of seeds, collected in his voyage round the world
with Captain Cook in 1768. Besides all this, public-spirited
outsiders were willing to help an enterprise that, for the sake of
science, was making such a gallant fight for existence. In 1787
we find a handsome gift of loam arriving from Sion, the Duke of
Northumberland’s estate at Isleworth; and one wonders whether
the ‘‘ seven loads of black mould ” that came about the same time
from Wimbledon, ‘‘ with the approval of Earl Spencer,’’ may not
have been sent at the suggestion of Georgiana Spencer, the beautiful
Duchess of Devonshire, whom we shall meet with at Chiswick
House. I have dealt with the famous grounds of Sion and Chiswick
House in other chapters ; and independent of one another, for the
most part, as are the different gardens described in this boo , it
is rather interesting to find that there are connecting links between
most of them.

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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN *

For all the aid they received the apothecaries made ample returns,.
and the claims the outside public made upon them are much in:
evidence when we arrive at the nineteenth century.

It was about 1815 that the Horticultural Society of London
begged the use of a part of the garden in order to promote the
cultivation of foreign vegetables used for food and condiments ;
and a plot near the river was assigned to them.

In 1829 an effort was made to render the garden more useful
to the medical profession at large than it had hitherto been;
it was thrown open for study more often, and not only to the
apprentices of the apothecaries, but also to all professors and.
students in medicine, chemistry, botany, and materia medica..
The Demonstrator’s salary was raised, so that lectures and de-
monstrations might be more frequently given, and prizes and
medals were offered for success in the examinations. The happy
result was that from every medical school in London, students
flocked, either on foot or in boats, to the Chelsea Garden: and a
course of study there became part of the recognized medical curri-
culum, so that in 1862 there were five hundred applications for
admission.

In the course of instruction, demonstrations and, up to 1833,
herbalizings also, occupied a very large part. The Society’s
demonstrations took place not less than once in every summer
month ; they began at nine in the morning; the medical plants
were arranged in systematic order in a certain part of the garden,
and like a clinical lecturer in a hospital, the Demonstrator passed
from bed to bed—followed and surrounded by his pupils, to whom
he pointed out the plants, explaining their uses in medicine,
their botanical character, and their place in the Linnaeian
classification.

But all these advantages were offered to the male sex only;
it was not until 1877 that the Apothecaries’ Society gave even a
modicum of encouragement to women. The Court of Assistants
then resolved to offer prizes for proficiency in botany to the female
sex; and they were to be competed for in the same manner as
those given to men. But Field and Simple, in recording this
munificence, take care to explain that by this resolution “ it was
not at all intended to promote the assumption by ladies of medical
titles, or to sanction the adoption of the medical profession by

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females, but to merely encourage them in the acquisition of
botanical knowledge.”

This makes curious reading at the present day. By what leaps
and bounds have we advanced since that resolution was so grudg-
ingly passed! We are not informed whether or not women were
admitted to the lectures and to the demonstrations in the garden ;
they might have been with perfect propriety, for it was one of
the duties of the Demonstrator to preserve due “ decorum”
~ among the students. Anyway, it is clear that without such
admission the Apothecaries were simply offering a gift with one
hand, and withholding it with the other.

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century the neighbourhood
of London was so rich in indigenous vegetation that the botanical
parties on the occasion of the herborizing excursions, had not to
go far afield; but sometimes they did so go, for a certain Mr.
Johnson (whose identity I have not been able to establish, but
who may possibly have been that Thomas Johnson, botanist,
who edited Gerarde’s ‘‘ Herbalia ’”’ in 1633) describes his adventures
on two such occasions. Travelling in those days was slow and
risky ; the botanists went to Reading, Bath, Bristol, and the Isle
of Wight, and home by Portsmouth and Guildford. The Latin
and English names of the plants they collected are given, and the
natural features of the landscape described. Johnson records
with much gratitude the hospitality offered to the party.

On a similar occasion, later on, the apothecaries explored Wales ;
their course being by way of Chester, Flint, Carnarvon and Anglesey.
Some of the plants were gathered on the heights of Snowdon at
much personal risk to the collectors. At Chester a learned doctor
of divinity joined them; he had been badly entertained at a
certain inn at Stockport, and on leaving he expressed his resent-
ment by writing some Latin verses on the walls of his bedroom,
of which Field and Simple give the English translation :

“Tf, Traveller ! you seek for quiet,
An easy couch, a wholesome dict,
A landlord with a smiling mien,
A chambermaid whose face is clean,
At Stockport you will never stay,
But turn your steps another way.
But if in filth your soul delights,
At Stockport you may pass some pleasant nights.”
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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”’

Whether the guest would have escaped with a whole skin, had
the host understood Latin, we shall never know. The verses

remind one of some that were written by a visitor in the guest
book of a North Welsh inn:

“‘ With your head in a fog
And your feet in a bog,
That is the way to Festiniog.”

About 1835 Mr. J. L. Wheeler, who was for thirteen years Pro-
fessor of Botany at the Physic Garden, “‘ having succeeded to a
fortune,” retired. He became Master of the Society of Apothecaries,
and died in 1872, at a ripe old age. His post was then filled by a
very distinguished man, reputed to be one of the greatest botanists
in Europe.

This was Dr. Lindley, who, born in 1799, at the age of twenty
became assistant-librarian to Sir Joseph Banks; and in 1836,
was appointed Prefectus Horti, and Professor of Botany at Chelsea,
He was one of those fortunate beings who could boast that until
past fifty, he never knew what it was to be tired in body or mind.

Ten years after this a limb from one of the cedars was blown
off and converted into chairs for the use of the authorities. A
single chair had already been fashioned from branches blown down
in 1812.

About this time William Anderson, the first head gardener to
the Apothecaries to be styled “ Curator,” died at the age of eighty,
and was buried between Philip Miller, also an octogenarian, and
Sir Hans Sloan, who had lived to nearly ninety-three.

In 1862, owing to the combined effects of time, weather, and
neglect, the valuable herbaria in the sheds at Chelsea were discovered
to be decaying, and it was found necessary to remove them to the
British Museum. Perhaps this roused the Society to the necessity
for exertions, for the following year the Court of Assistants voted
£500 to defray the expense of altering and improving the garden
—in order to make it as complete a repertory of medical botany as
possible. New plants were introduced, and new hot-houses con-
structed for the protection of the more tender species, the culti-
vation of which had hitherto, from lack of means, been neglected.

Seven years later the executive of the garden was served with
a notice from the Metropolitan Board of Works that must have

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been somewhat startling. It was to the effect that the Embank-
ment with which we are now so familiar, was to be constructed on
the southern bank of the Thames, involving unavoidable encroach-
ments on their Physic Garden—and consequent loss of immediate
access to the river, and the right to a portion of the foreshore, since
a road was to intervene between the river and the garden. As
compensation, however, the Board of Works endowed the Society
with certain rights, and paid a large sum of money for the erection
of a handsome wall, railing, and gateway, on the river side.

Among the members of the Apothecaries’ Society in the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries, were many distinguished by their
scientific attainments, and we are assured that ‘“‘ all of them were
good citizens and honorable men,” and, according to the standard
of those earlier days, “‘ efficient practitioners of the healing art.”
The Curators, Demonstrators of Plants, and Professors of Botany
at the Physic Garden were, with rare exceptions, men of culture,
and the Society encouraged, and even enforced, the study of Latin
among its pupils. Latin had been for centuries, and particularly
after the revival of learning, the ordinary means of communica-
tion between educated men; when it ceased to be thus generally
used, several modern tongues became necessary, where before, one
dead one had sufficed. Linnzus himself, ‘“‘ whose acquirements
in the whole range of science were no less than gigantic,” although
a great traveller, and one who had resided three years in Holland,
understood only Latin and Swedish, and because few people were
familiar with his native language, his letters to foreigners, and
most of his books, were in Latin. It is therefore not surprising
that all the quotations met with in the history of the garden,
are in the Latin tongue, and that the early members of the
Ayothecaries’ Society were for the most part well acquainted
with it.

So many of those holding office at the garden were distinguished
in botany and the allied sciences, that it is almost invidious to
particularize, but James Sherard, a member of the governing
committee of the garden, deserves mention. He withdrew from
the Society of Apothecaries in 1732, when, having received a
diploma of medicine, he began to practise as a physician, but his
name is perpetuated in a genus of plants known as ‘ Sherardea”
—of the natural order of the Rubiacez, a species of which is

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commonly met with in our cornfields, and Field quotes from the
“London Encyclopedia of Plants,” which speaks of it as “‘a little
insignificant weed by no means worthy to be associated with the
memory of so celebrated a man.” His garden at Eltham, in Kent,
became famous. James Sherard’s elder brother, William, also
a distinguished botanist, endowed the professorship of botany at
Oxford, but presented all his books on botany and natural history,
and all his drawings and dried plants, to the Library of the Physic
Garden at Chelsea.

William Curtis, who founded the Botanical Magazine, that
on his death was continued by Dr. Sims, and ultimately by Sir
William Hooker, merits special notice. He was born in 1746,
and was the son of a tanner of Alton, in Hampshire, who was a
member of the Society of Friends. Apprenticed to his grand-
father, an apothecary in the same town, chance made him acquainted
with an ostler from the Crown Inn, named Lagg. This man, by
careful study of the writings of Gerarde, the author of the Herbal
earlier spoken of, and of Parkinson, the herbalist, had b come
possessed of a considerable knowledge of plants, and he inspired
young Curtis with the ambition to become a botanist. Coming to
London, Curtis by and by succeeded to the apothecary’s practice
of a member of the Society of Friends, but his passion for botany
absorbed too much of his time to allow him to practise extensively.
Having been previously elected a member of the Apothecaries’
Society, he was, in 1773, appointed Demonstrator at Chelsea.
Four years later he began a great work, in which he had intended
to treat of every plant growing within ten miles of London ; but
the sale was so limited that Curtis abandoned’the project. On the
other hand the success of the Botanical Magazine was speedily
assured.

It was in 1820 that Thomas Wheeler resigned the Demonstrator-
ship of Botany, and the office of Prefectus Horti, which he had
held for forty-two years. He was born in 1754, and educated
at St. Paul’s School, celebrated even then for its classical teaching.
His virtues and his eccentricities have kept his memory green in
the annals of the Apothecaries’ Society. The members of that
body were certainly not prone to change, as they were to longevity,
and when Mr. Wheeler gave up active and “regular duties, he still
continued to accompany the™Herborizing excursions until they

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were abandoned in 1834, He died at ninety-four, leaving behind
him the reputation of a distinguished botanist, enthusiastically
attached to the doctrine of Linneus.

Many are the stories told of his childlike simplicity of character
and his benevolence, and also of his oddities. In early life he had
enrolled himself in the volunteer military forces—which on a
certain occasion when rioting was anticipated, were called out
in readiness to quell the disturbance, should it take place. ‘‘ If
I had been ordered to fire upon the people,” he said, “‘ I should
certainly have done so, offering up at the same time a prayer that
my bullet might not take effect.”

On one of the Herborizings on the banks of the Thames, he
witnessed a boat accident, when a number of boys were capsized.
Though assured by everybody that the entire party was saved,
he was not satisfied, for he saw the boat floating bottom upper-
most, and he shouted, ‘‘ Turn up the boat for heaven’s sake!”

This was done and a lad of fourteen was discovered insensible
under the thwarts.

Wheeler carried indifference to appearance, and simplicity in
dress, to extremes: but there was no affectation in this, and he
seems to have been quite unconscious of the eccentricity of his
‘appearance, although on one occasion a friend remarked to him:
“Ah, Diogenes! thy pride peeps out of every button of: thy
coat !”

The surgery at St. Thomas’s Hospital went by the name of
“the Shop.” On a certain occasion the old professor was sitting
in this room with a number of students, who were joking and
bantering him, and each other, and he, on his part, was impressing
upon them the folly of superfiuities in dress. A youth, who later
on rose to eminence in his profession, said with assumed gravity :
“Well, but, Mr. Wheeler, how can you support such a doctrine
when you yourself wear such a superfluity as this ?”’ and he lifted
up the small pig-tail which the professor wore. The old man,
‘* taken aback,” confessed that it was ‘‘ superfluous.” ‘* Yes, my
dear sir, you are right, we are too prone to preach one thing, and
practise another ; cut it off, sir, pray cut it off!” and Laurence—
‘for such was his name,” forthwith performed the amputation.
On another occasion Wheeler was driving in an open carriage with
James Lowe Wheeler, and Hurlock, a well-known member of the

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Apothecaries’ Society, who himself told the story. He described
the appearance of Thomas Wheeler ; how he sat on the box beside
the driver in the best of spirits, his hat off, his thin, light hair
blowing about his face, and his large spectacles on his nose, alter-
nately laughing and chatting with the coachman, and diving into
his hat with his huge pocket-knife, to separate and examine a
bundle of wild plants. Such a figure naturally attracted attention
along the road, and, stopping at a turnpike gate, the party
was rather surprised by the evident interest and eagerness of the
toll-keeper, as he scratched his head, and, pointing to Mr. Wheeler,
exclaimed in his blunt Kentish dialect: ‘‘So ye ha’ got him at
last !’? This was incomprehensible to all until they arrived at
a small inn close to the parish of Barming, where they read a
placard offering a reward for an escaped lunatic.

With the death of Thomas Wheeler a notable figure was removed
from the old Chelsea garden, and since that time popular concern
for its fortunes has not been stimulated, as in his day, by anecdotes
of its later professors and curators.

Up to 1899 the Apothecaries still retained possession, and under
their control I imagine that the arrangement for the growing of
plants, described by Field and Simple in 1878, still obtained. Any-
one at that period entering the garden by the gate in Swan Lane,
and proceeding down the gravel walk facing it, till he reached the
point at which another path crosses it at right angles, a point marked
by the statue of Sir Hans Sloan, would have found the ground on
his right given up to the culture of medicinal herbs, and that
on his left hand, to hardy herbaceous plants arranged according
to their natural orders.

At the present day a casual observer might suppose this place
still adhered to, but it is not so; the plants, it is true, are still
arranged according to their natural orders, but no simples what-
ever are grown here now, for the garden is no longer under the
Apothecaries’ management. It retains nevertheless something of
its unique character among the gardens of the metropolis; even
without the four famous cedars that once upon a time must have
given it great distinction—and although the Thames that formerly
washed its northern wall (and on the occasion of a very high
tide in 1774 rose fifteen inches within it) is now separated from
it by the width of the Embankment. The flower beds are

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extended oblongs, and are all parallel with the river, each one being
separated from its neighbour by a rather wide turf walk, as shown
in the illustration. This arrangement, if formal, is effective ; but
it was probably made entirely for convenience in the days when
the Demonstrator, surrounded by a troop of students, moved from
plot to plot, pausing at each to discourse and explain. Here are
to be seen, among many beautiful growing things such as are
found in most gardens that boast herbaceous borders, a few un-
familiar, even uncanny-looking plants, survivals of the fittest
perhaps among the medicinal herbs of former days; and the eye
is quick to note that this sunny, cultivated corner—measuring,
I believe, about four acres—is not altogether a normal garden.
There are no trees of great importance except a magnificent and
gigantic Ilex, or Evergreen Oak, of which Field and Simple, writing

nearly forty years ago, make particular mention. It is a tree that

now in a green and lusty old age, extends its giant arms farther
afield than in its youth—while one huge limb stretches its lazy
length unbroken upon the ground itself. There are few flowers
to speak of—by which I mean that here nothing blossoms con-
spicuously, nothing makes a floral show. There are no gay
parterres, or gaudy ribbon borders; one feels instinctively that
the plants are grown less for their blooms than for their uses, and
that they themselves are intrinsically interesting to the students,
whether they blossom and look beautiful, or not. At the lower
end of the garden, near the Ilex, is the water-garden, consisting
of some extremely picturesque ponds or pools, rich in aquatic
vegetation. But in spite of the lack of gorgeous colouring, per-
haps in consequence of the absence of luxuriant foliage, the garden
is essentially sunshiny ; it is always full of the cheerful daylight :
one receives on entering, and one carries away, an impression of
sunlight even on a cloudy day. It is a charming oasis in the
midst of much brick and mortar; but though it is nearly two
hundred and fifty years of age, one could not describe it as old-
fashioned, or old-English ; it has too much of space and air about
it to be Jacobean ; too little of formality—though in a sense it is
formal—to be Dutch ; nor are there present any of the clever devices
by which the eighteenth century gardener simulated spaciousness,
and made three acres appear to be twenty. Of the old green-
houses the tanks alone remain; they may be seen in the garden.
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THE CHELSEA ‘‘ PHYSICKE GARDEN ”

One has only to examine the ancient grey wall on the Swan walk,
or west side, of the garden, and to compare it with the smooth
red brick of the houses, and the southern wall, to realize how much
of charm has been lost by the demolition and rebuilding on the
’ game site, of the former lecture-hall and Curator’s dwelling in 1900.
They were probably out of date, inconvenient, and falling into
decay—and originally no more beautiful in design than the present
buildings; but the mellowing hand of time can always throw
a veil over ugliness, and every venerable brick and stone must
have told its story, and age and use had doubtless dignified them..
Hence I regret that they no longer exist to give point to the story
of the ancient garden which I have so feebly told.

In 1899 the garden passed from the Apothecaries’ into other
hands. The Charity Commissioners of England and Wales,
and the Trustees of the London Parochial Charities, were ap-
pointed its trustees in place of the Apothecaries’ Society, which,
considering that the garden was no longer suitable for botanic
purposes owing to the deleterious effect of London smoke and the
impoverished state of the soil, desired to give it up. Provision
was then made for its management by a committee appointed
by the Trustees of the garden, the Treasury, the Lord President
of the Council, the Technical Educational Board of the London
County Council, the Royal Society of Apothecaries, the Royal
College of Physicians, the Pharmaceutical Society, the senate of
the University of London, and the representatives of Sir Hans
Sloan.

Under this new management and the care of Mr. Hales, its
learned curator, formerly of Kew, whose work at Chelsea is a labour
of love, and with sufficient funds to carry it on, the famous old
garden flourishes, and has taken on a new lease of life, amply
justifying the finding of the committee in 1899, that there was
still room for such a garden.

At the present time there are signs of revived interest in that
department of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of
simples, and even the press urges that our native medicinal plants
and herbs might well supply some of the drugs in constant use,
that have greatly increased in price since the world war cut off
the foreign supply. Therefore, though it should be remembered
that the word “ Physic ” was here originally employed in its wider

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scientific sense as pertaining to Nature and natural objects, and
that the first object of the apothecaries in founding the garden
was the study of botany in its relation to medicine, and not the
cultivation of the actual plants to be converted into drugs for the
pharmacopceia, yet, from an ignorant outsider’s point of view, it
seems a pity that the spot that for nearly 230 years was honourably
—though not exclusively—associated with one important branch
of the study of medicine, should now ignore that branch altogether,
instead of leading the van in the useful movement for its revival.

188

CHAPTER VI
MARLBOROUGH HOUSE

O long ago that, according to Stowe, “‘ it was before the time
of man’s memory ’—there was founded on the pleasant
land lying to the west of what was formerly the village of

Charing, a hospital for fourteen deserving maidens, all lepers. It
was attached to a religious house dedicated to S. James the Less,
Bishop of Jerusalem. ‘‘ Divers citizens of London,” says the
ancient chronicler, ‘‘ gave six-and-fifty rents thereto,” and later on
we learn that “‘ sundry devout men of London” gave to the hospital
four hides of land in the fields of Westminster. These and other
grants in Charlcote (now Chalk Farm), Hampstead, and Hendon,
were confirmed to it by Edward I., who also endowed it with the
benefits and privileges of a six days’ fair to commence on the eve
of S. James. Thus originated the May-Fair, that, up to the reign
of George II., was afterwards held regularly in the Piccadilly
meadows ; a fair that has bequeathed its name to the fashionable
London locality that occupies the ground upon which it was held.

The inmates of the convent and hospital, remained in peaceful
possession till Henry VIII. cast his covetous eyes upon their fertile
acreage. He seized the land to turn it into a nursery for deer, and
an appendage to the Tiltyard at Whitehall, giving in exchange
for it some ground in Suffolk; he pensioned off the sisterhood,
casting adrift the unhappy lepers and pulling down the hospital
and convent, and building in their place the Palace of S. James.
The old gate-house and turrets constructed of brick that once
was red, and erected in the very year of Henry’s marriage with
Anne Boleyn—still face us, when, at the present day we look down

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St. James’s Street, and it is believed that they occupy the exact
site of the ancient leper hospital. To the deer-park the King
added an extensive chase, to make which he enclosed some miles
of land to the north and north-west, and by royal proclamation
forbade any of his subjects to hunt or hawk in it.

Throughout the reigns of Charles II. and James II., we find
King and courtiers still established at Whitehall; nevertheless
St. James’s Palace by degrees, became the centre of English Court
and diplomatic life, and on the marriage of Charles he granted
to his queen, Catherine of Braganza, by letters patent under the
Great Seal, a ninety-nine years’ lease of the ground upon which
Sir Christopher Wren afterwards erected Marlborough House.
The chapel which had been provided for Queen Henrietta Maria,
was restored for the use of the Portuguese princess, who brought
to England in her train, certain Capuchin monks for whom lodgings
were found near the chapel, the place becoming known as “ The
Friary.”’ Cloisters were built round a green court, in which per-
sons belonging to the Queen’s religious establishment might be
interred with the Romish ceremonial.

Edward Walford in ‘‘ Old and New London,” mentions an old
plan of St. James’s Palace printed in 1689, that shows a burial-
ground exactly opposite the Queen’s Chapel. The spot was not im-
probably selected because it was the supposed site of the burial-place
of the old religious house, and therefore already consecrated ground ;
but it does not appear that any one of the friars was actually
interred there. The only human remains ever found therein were
those discovered in a stone coffin, of a date long anterior to the
Stuart kings.

Pepys describes his visit to the Queen’s Chapel at the Friary.
His diary is a rich mine from which to dig data for the topography,
as well as the modes and manners, of the period immediately pre-
ceding the foundation of Marlborough House.

Birdcage Walk, according to Walford, was so called because the
aviaries of Charles II. (who was fond of birds as well as of little
dogs) were ranged in order along the road which then, as now,
forms the southern boundary of St. James’s Park; but the “‘ Mall ”
of those days was not the broad roadway that—stretching from
Buckingham Palace to the Admiralty Arch—now goes by that
name. “The Mall” of the Pepys period seems to have been a

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little farther north, and in position was almost identical with the
present Pall Mall, a street that, as most people know, received its
name from the once fashionable game of “ Pell Mell,” played in
St. James’s Park with mailes or mallets. The sport consisted in
striking a ball through an iron hoop or ring suspended from a bar
at the top of a pole, and in striking it from a considerable distance.

The Mall in those days made a stately approach to the Royal
Palace of St. James; and what is now clubland was, in the time
of Pepys, a long road shaded by elms, of which, he says, there were
one hundred and fifty. The houses, few and far between, and
standing on the south side only, were “‘ fair mansions enclosed
with gardens.’’ In one of these mansions dwelt Nell Gwynne,
and her garden had a mount, or mound, or raised terrace, over-
looking St. James’s Park. The north side of the Mall, according
to Walford, was entirely open; one or two haystacks might be
seen on the spot where now stands the Junior Carlton Club, and a
thick grove of trees occupied the site of Marlborough House.
“The Mall’ was the resort of fashion in the seventeenth and part
of the eighteenth centuries, and during the reign of Queen Anne
was thronged daily with gaily-dressed people in chariots, on foot,
and in Sedan chairs. Men, as well as women, used these carrying-
chairs, and in 1706, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, came
to the levee at St. James’s Palace in one of them; hoping, by so
doing, to escape the attentions and acclamations of the multitude
after his victory at Ramillies. Huis successful campaign in France
had made Marlborough the idol of the nation, and Queen and
Parliament had showered honours and gifts upon the all-con-
quering general. But his successes abroad did not prevent his
influence being undermined by party intrigues at home, and even
before the battle of Oudenarde in 1708, the star of Marlborough,
and of his handsome and imperious wife, was already rapidly
on the wane, while Queen Anne’s love for Sarah Jennings was fast
turning to aversion.

Things, however, were not quite so bad in 1709, at least not
openly so. The master of Blenheim required also a mansion in
town, and on the 18th of April, 1709, the supplement to the London
Gazette announced that he was to obtain it. ‘‘ Her Majesty having
been pleased to grant to His Grace the Duke of Marlborough
the Friary next St. James’ Palace in which lately dwelt the

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Countess du Roy, the same is pulling down in order to rebuild
the house for His Grace ; and about a third of the garden lately
in the occupation of the Right Honourable Henry Boyle, Her
Majesty’s principal Secretary of State, is marked out in order to be
annexed to the house of His Grace the Duke of Marlborough.”

The lease, granted for a period of fifty years, was obtained on
easy terms, but the Duke was abroad ; he was (to use a now familiar
phrase) ‘‘ somewhere in France,”’ engrossed in the business of war.
The business of building a house and settling into it, had, perforce,
to be managed entirely by the Duchess, who showed her wisdom
in employing Sir Christopher Wren as the architect, although he
was then verging on eighty years of age.

She herself laid the foundation stone on Tuesday, May 24th,
1709 (O.S.), ‘“‘a fine warm day’ we are told. The stone was
inscribed, ‘‘ Laid by her Grace the Duchess of Marlborough, May ye
24th—June ye 4th, 1709.” The use of both the old and new style
of chronology, was unusual, for though the new style had been
accepted on the Continent, it was not adopted in this country
until 1752.

The Marlboroughs were thrifty people—history has called them
parsimonious, but in using Dutch bricks for Marlborough House
as they are said to have done, they were not blameworthy. Dutch
bricks were redder, smaller, and also cheaper, than English ones.
They were probably brought over as ballast, from Holland, in the
picturesque “ bluff-bowed”’ and high-sterned transports plying
between Deptford and Holland. Mr. Arthur Beavan, the author
of ‘‘ Marlborough House and its Occupants,” points out that
the names of these vessels—Elephant, Expedition and so on,
are to be seen again and again in the records of the transport
office in 1709, and that they might very well have conveyed
““a cargo of the raw material for the house then building in
Pall Mall.”

However this may have been, “the third of the garden lately
jn the occupation of the Right Honourable Henry Boyle” was
by no means sufficient to content Her Grace of Marlborough.
Therefore she obtained, under the Great Seal, a second lease,
which cancelled the first, and gave into her possession a plot of
ground about two acres in extent, next to the Friary and known
as ‘the Royal Garden.”

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It was probably to this garden that Charles II. was proceeding
with Evelyn—the lover of gardens—when, walking through St.
James’s Park, he scandalized his companion by stopping to talk
with Nell Gwynne, on which occasion the diarist both saw and
heard a very familiar discourse “ between the King and ‘ Mrs.
Nelly’ as they called an impudent comedian ;”’ she looking out
of her garden from a terrace at the top of the wall; the monarch
standing on “‘ the green walk beneath it.”

Since it seems certain that not only the “ Royal Garden” but
Nell Gwynne’s garden also, was incorporated in the grounds of
Marlborough’s new mansion, I think that there can be but little
doubt that “the terrace’ above mentioned by Evelyn, formed
the nucleus of the present one—gay now in summer with a border
of fe herbaceous plants—which runs the entire length of the
south—or park side—of Queen Alexandra’s garden. It ends in a
spacious summer-house, a summer-house that has little side win-
dows overlooking the Mall, and that is comfortably furnished
with lounge chairs, but which I am informed, is not much fre-
quented by the royal inmates of the mansion.

But to go back to a period even earlier than Nell Gwynne’s, and
before the Friary on the site of which the house is built, existed. It
is interesting to recall that on a winter’s morning in 1649, Charles I.
passed the spot on his way to the scaffold at Whitehall, after an
affecting parting with his children, who had been brought from
the Duke of Northumberland’s at Sion, Isleworth, as mentioned
in the chapter on Sion, to bid him farewell. He crossed St. James’s
Park from his lodging in the palace, on foot, and is said to have
pointed out on the way, to those with him, a tree that his brother,
the late Prince Henry, had planted. At that period St. James’s
Park was a private park belonging to the royal palace, and the
general public would not be freely admitted; thus neither the
merry monarch’s gossip with Nell Gwynne, or his father’s sad
passage to his doom, would be observed by curious eyes. Though,
strictly speaking, the parks are royal property, they belong to
the people in the sense that possession is nine points of the law;
and it is to the credit of Sir Robert Walpole, the otherwise corrupt
minister of George II., that St. James’s Park has been preserved
to the nation. Queen Caroline of Anspach proposed to turn it
into a garden for the palace, and “she asked my father,” says

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Horace Walpole, ‘“ what the alteration might possibly cost ”—
“only three crowns,” was the significant, pertinent, and witty
answer; the Queen took the hint, and nothing more came of
the suggestion.

According to Mr. Arthur Beavan, the cost of laying out the
ground for the Duchess of Marlborough’s garden was about £500,
the labourers being paid 1s. 8d. per day. Many magnificent trees
were felled in the process.

The mansion, a one-storied one, was completed and occupied
by the Duke and Duchess by midsummer, 1711.

Defoe, in his “ Journey through England in 1722,’ remarks
that “‘‘the palace of the Duke of Marlborough is in every way
answerable to the grandeur of its master. . . . It is situated at
the west end of the King’s garden on the Park side, and fronts the
park, but with no other prospect but that view.”

And if there is but little to be seen from the house, neither is
it possible to get a view of it, except from the Mall. In former
times it was concealed on two sides by chestnut trees; it is now
closely built up on the north and east by houses, and in its situation
is still as sequestered as though it were miles in the country. Marl-
borough House lacks an entrance befitting the rank and dignity
of those who dwell there, befitting also its own native stateliness
and beauty. On the side of Pall Mall it may be said to have no
frontage, and the handsome courtyard entered from a side road
of which the gates are in Pall Mall, and the dignified proportions
of the red brick facade, are lost. This cannot have been Sir
Christopher Wren’s intention when he designed this noble residence
for one who was perhaps the greatest military genius this country
has produced; and this gives colour to the story that ‘“ Queen
Sarah” had intended to possess herself of certain obstructive
houses in Pall Mall on purpose to demolish them and secure a
proper approach, but, that before she could do so, Sir Robert
Walpole stepped in and effected their purchase in order to frustrate
her schemes. Beautiful, grasping, and haughty, and possessed
of by no means inconsiderable political talents, her importance
enhanced by her husband’s military glory, and’moreover for ten
years the virtual ruler of Queen Anne, she had naturally many
enemies, and her political friends were probably the persons most
jealous of her enormous influence. When the Tories came into

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power, she became practically head of the opposition, yet there
seems to have been no love lost between her and Sir Robert Walpole,
notwithstanding that like herself, he was a Whig.

In a letter to the Duchess dated October, 1710, relating to
the construction of the house, Sir Christopher Wren says—“ the
rooms will take about 12,000 tiles, and the chimneys about 2,200 ; ”
and in one of her own letters preserved at Blenheim, Her Grace
says that Marlborough House had cost herself and the Duke close
on £50,000. In plan it is almost a square: it contains 106 rooms,
inclusive of the domestic offices, and a noble saloon occupies the
centre. The conservatory now covering the steps leading to the
garden did not exist in 1710.

Sarah survived the Duke twenty-two years, dying in 1744.
Although sixty-two at the time of his death, she had many offers
of marriage, for besides being a woman of wit, with the remains
of great beauty, she was immensely rich; but she refused them
all, saying “that the widow of Marlborough shall never become
the wife of another man.’ Her devotion to and pride in her
husband were indeed the best traits in her character.

After the death of the Duchess certain alterations were made in
the house. Charles, the third Duke, removed the balustrade with
which Wren had crowned the first story—and added a second
story, insignificant in design; and George, the fourth Duke,
built a large riding-school where now stand the royal stables.
After this the structure remained practically unaltered until Albert
Edward, Prince of Wales, afterwards King Edward VII., took
possession on his marriage in 1863. A print of *‘ Prior Court ”’—
as Marlborough House was formerly called—taken in 1710, shows
that except in altitude, the garden front of the house has been
but little altered. The building in its original form had perhaps
more of symmetry and lightness—and from its low elevation
might almost have been designed for a country, rather than a town
residence ; but though it may have lost something in elegance, it
has gained in dignity. As it stands—as may be seen in the frontis-
piece to this book—it is a stately, red-brick edifice, its proportions
massive yet not inharmonious, its colour enriched and softened by
time ; a fitting residence either for the eldest son of the sovereign,
or for a beloved, and venerated, and admired Queen-Mother.

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My drawing shows the broad gravel walk, that, running from
east to west parallel with the terrace, is an effective feature of
the garden. At its western extremity we catch a picturesque
glimpse, though it is a side one only, of the old Palace of St. James.

When the lease of the estate to the Duke of Marlborough, lapsed,
the property reverted to the Crown.

In 1817 the house was assigned as a town residence for the
Princess Charlotte and her consort Prince Leopold; but before
the arrangements could be completed, the premature death of
the beloved heiress to the throne, threw the whole nation into
mourning. Prince Leopold, however, made Marlborough House
his home for some years. So also did Queen Adelaide, widow of
William IV., upon whom it was settled by Act of Parliament.
She dwelt there until her death in 1849.

After this the place was used for a time as a school of Art, a
library and a museum, under the auspices, says Walford, of ‘ the
department of practical Art ;”’ the Vernon collection of pictures
was temporarily housed there.

These events, however, occurring between the death of the
Duchess of Marlborough and 1863—count but little; they are
merely episodes, accidents of no historic moment; but with 1863
a new era opens, and the old brick mansion in Pall Mall, designed
by Wren, with the garden laid out under the direction of Sarah
Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, is at the present day associated
less with the victor of Blenheim and Malplaquet, than with our
late sovereign, Edward VII., who as Prince of Wales made it his
London home during forty years. And this is because there are
some people, well-educated, and even highly-instructed in special
branches of culture, whose interest in general history is com-
paratively slight ; and they do not pause to conjecture the probable
origin of the name of a street or dwelling—suggestive though these
may be. Others there are who deem that a great soldier—though
he may have won splendid victories, stands in history on a lower
pedestal than the prince, or statesman, whose tact and gentleness,
foresight and wisdom—whilst preserving the nation’s honour—
has saved it from the horrors of a devastating and sanguinary
war.

“Never draw me without just cause,

Or sheath me without honour,”’
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is the motto inscribed on an old sword in Warwick Castle, and I
like it well; for surely unless it be drawn from pure motives of
patriotism unsullied by ambition—in support of treaty obligations,
or in defence of the defenceless—it were better not drawn at all.
John Churchill’s fame has suffered a partial eclipse, obscured by
that of soldiers as great as he—and its lustre was dimmed even
in his lifetime by his avarice. Yet that Blenheim was indeed ‘a
famous victory ” we all agree.

* But what good came of it at last ? quoth little Peterkin.”

Little or none, and “‘ Edward the Peacemaker ”’ remains a prouder
title than “‘ Marlborough the Conqueror.”

Therefore forgetting for a time the great Duke and his Duchess,
forgetting Queen Adelaide, and Prince Leopold, and their con-
nection with Marlborough House, we will concentrate our atten-
tion on the more recent history of the place, associated as it is with
our late King.

“ This is a little garden, and the Queen uses it a great deal,”
wrote to me General Sir Dighton Probyn in a courteous note
when, with Her Majesty Queen Alexandra’s gracious permission,
he made the necessary arrangements for me to draw it.

And no doubt, regarded as the pleasure-ground of a royal resi-
dence, and since in this world we bring most things to the test
of comparison, it is small; yet the space covered by Marlborough
House and its garden, is nearly four acres and three-quarters,
though much of this is occupied by courtyard and carriage drive.
The actual dimensions according to Mr. Beavan, are 542 feet
east and west, and 364 north and south. It is rectangular in shape,
and can be scanned in its entirety at once, there being no cunning
devices by which it is made to appear larger than it really is:
there are no walks, shut in by yew and cypress, and screened by
evergreen. oak ; walks which twist, and turn, and double back, as
at Chiswick House and elsewhere. And just as there has been
no attempt at landscape gardening, so also are there no signs of
the still earlier topiary work, of which Duchess Sarah probably
saw rather too much in the reign of Dutch William.

I believe the garden to be substantially the same as it was in
the days of Queen Anne and the Georges, and that such changes
as have been made have not materially altered its general appear-

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ance. However, there are certainly some points of difference, the
greatest, of course, being in the presence of trees which have been
planted and grown up in the place of those felled by Sarah’s order ;
they make the garden shadier than in her time. If any survive of
those she spared, their trunks are now dingy with London smoke,
so that their twigs and branches are all relieved as touches of pure
black, whether against the sweet new green of their spring foliage,
or the prevailing dull russet of the early metropolitan “ fall.”
Another change arises from the defection of the singing birds ;
the place is no longer vocal with their songs as it was two hundred
years ago, for, if less than a century earlier than now, nightingales
sang, as they are said to have done, in the grounds of Carlton
House, which was, so to speak, next door, then they also sang in
the garden of which I am writing ; and if the rooks, as we are told,
had a settlement in the Carlton House gardens, we may be sure
they sometimes visited the lawn at Marlborough House to fend
for breakfast, cawing as loudly for a good fat worm, as little Tommy
Tucker sang sweetly for ‘‘ white bread and butter.” But alas!
the traffic of St. James’s Street has scared away the nightingales,
and as for the rooks, they have either been made into pies this
many a year, or they migrated for good and all when Carlton House
was demolished in 1827.

It is chiefly in the matter of flowers that the twentieth-century
garden is better off than the eighteenth. In cultivated areas the
smile of Flora is more radiant, the embroidery on her robe more
vivid and varied, than of yore ; the sweet pea, the dahlia, an end-
less variety of roses, geraniums, and chrysanthemums—the tall
Japanese lilies, the rhododendrons, and scores of other flowering
shrubs; all of which abound in Queen Alexandra’s flower-garden
to-day, were unknown in the days of Queen Anne. However, with
the long list of blossoming plants which even Bacon knew, all of
which he says in his famous essay flourish ‘‘in the climate of
London,” and with the. offspring of Dutch William’s parterres to
fall back upon, I have no doubt but that London and Wise, and
other fashionable horticulturists of the eighteenth century, con-
trived to make almost as brave a show as does the gardener of
to-day.

But notwithstanding the fact that few changes can have taken
place in the garden, I found that when, according to my habit, I

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tried to repeople it with the men and women of long ago, I
could not do so. Partly because a garden should be associated
with summer—with hot sunshine and leafy shade, dewy mornings,
glowing noons, and calm, delicious evenings spent out of doors.
People do not promenade for pleasure in gardens, on bleak days, or
when rain threatens. Eden itself under such conditions would
have ceased to be Paradise.

Or ever I saw Marlborough House the summer of 1915 had
departed, leaving behind it a reputation as regards weather, nearly
as evil as that of 1916, though it is only those whose play, or work
as does my own, demands steady sunshine, who can realize how
very bad the meteorological records of both years have been.

It was early September, yet autumn had set in. The leaves
of the noble trees upon the lawn were falling sooner than is usual
in normal years; and they were brown and faded, and in far from
agreeable contrast with ‘the vivid, emerald-green sward on which
they lay—for, kept verdant by the heavy rains, the lawns looked
curiously cold, and phenomenally green. There were rapidly-
widening gaps in the foliage, and sundry patches of bright sky
were visible where but a fortnight earlier there had been no break.
A day soon followed of alternate sun and clouds, when gusts of
wind blew off the drier leaves in showers, tossing them mischie-
vously to and fro, sending them whirling in the air, and dancing
gleefully on the gravel walks like the giant, upright drops of
thunder-rain upon the pavement, that, when we were children,
watching from a window, we called ‘‘ pennies.”

That week Queen Alexandra’s gardeners had need of patience.
for the task of brushing them up was scarcely ended ere it had to
begin all over again !

Thus it came about that when at Marlborough House I failed
to visualize the eighteenth century mentally. I had no thought
of the ducal pair who had planned the gardens, in days when both
were still handsome, and very, very rich, though elderly, and
declining in the Royal favour. I ought not to have forgotten them,
for the Churchills belonged to the place, and the place to the
Churchills ; and in their day a brave company must at times have
gathered there. Up and down, up and down, the broad walk
(the walk which appears in the frontispiece) have paced in summer
days, the brightest luminaries of a very brilliant literary era—

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the age of Queen Anne. Joseph Addison, then in the prime of his
manhood, though not yet of his literary fame, was doubtless often
there—for he had written to order, after Blenheim, a eulogy on the
victor said to be excellent of its kind; distinguished by more of
truth, and less of bombast and flattery, than is common in such
effusions—and he was for a time Secretary of State under Sunder-
land, Marlborough’s son-in-law.

With Addison may sometimes have come his friend, Dick Steele,
who about the date when the Duke and Duchess went to Pall
Mall, issued the first number of The Tatler—soon to be followed by
the more famous Spectator.

And others there were, more or less famous, in that motley
crowd of hooped and powdered dames, and splendid gentlemen ;
who laughed, and flirted, and talked scandal, and discussed high
politics, and took snuff, in that pretty garden in the early days of
the eighteenth century. At a distance from Marlborough House
one may recall them, but on the spot one chiefly remembers that
hither King Edward VII., when Prince of Wales, first brought his
bride, the ‘‘ sea-King’s daughter from over the seas,” who took the
hearts of London, and afterwards of the whole country, by storm ;
and that here he resided during the greater part of his life—and
that here our present King was born. I should think that to
those who knew King Edward best, the garden must be pervaded
with a sense of his presence. One interesting corner is a dog’s
burial-place, and here among many canine pets of the Royal pair
—each little grave distinguished by a separate head-stone—lies
Cesar, the faithful animal which half London saw following the
cortége, on the day of his master’s funeral.

The Prince dwelt chiefly at Marlborough House when in
England ; but he travelled much, and country life, and sport,
and in particular his estate at Sandringham, had great attractions
for his leisure. Yet from the fact that Queen Victoria had practi-
cally abandoned London, Marlborough House became from the
period of his marriage to his accession to the throne, the chief seat
of his activities.

As after years abundantly proved, Edward VII. was born with
the instincts, and many of the special gifts, of a diplomat ; though
the opportunity to use them was denied him until he began to
reign.

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MARLBOROUGH HOUSE

However, he played the only réle left to him to perfection. He
became the recognized ruler of society—the leader of the world of
fashion, and the Queen’s accredited representative at the cere-
monial opening of public buildings, the laying of foundation stones,
and so forth.

He performed all these often tedious duties with exceptional
grace and bonhomie, always saying and doing the right thing at
the right moment; and pleasing everyone concerned by his
geniality, charm of manner, and accessibility, also by his intelligent
interest and quickness of observation. But to a man of the
Prince’s parts and ambition, the position, with its strictly limited
prerogatives, could not have been satisfactory.

These pages, however, are not the place in which to comment
on the anomaly, that, for a generation, debarred the heir to the
throne from all knowledge of passing events and their possible
trend, except through channels equally open to the humblest of
his future subjects.

But whatever Queen Victoria’s reasons may have been, the
Prince’s tact and discretion never failed him. He accepted the
situation with as good a grace as possible, contenting himself with
cultivating, on his own initiative, the most friendly relations with
foreign ambassadors, and winning golden opinions in continental
countries, particularly in France; thus laying the foundation of
the great work of his life, the famous entente, which has had such
far-reaching results.

In July, 1870, Delane, the famous editor of the Times, happened
to be dining at Marlborough House when he received the first
intimation of the outbreak of war between France and Germany.
There could be no question as to the feelings of his Royal host on
the occasion, for, from the time when in 1855, as a mere boy, the
Prince had first visited France, he had cherished a warm regard for
the country and its people. The sympathies of his mother were
on the opposite side, and the relations between the Queen and her
heir, must therefore, have been often strained. But they were
never severed; nor was there any cessation of intercourse, nor
active hostility on either side, as had been the case with two previous
Princes of Wales ; Albert Edward’s tact and good temper smoothed
over the rough places; and on the celebration of the Prince and
Princess’s silver wedding in 1888, the day after the death of the

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old Emperor of Germany, the Queen dined at Marlborough House,
and actually permitted the suspension of the Court mourning for
the occasion. Three months later her favourite grandson—the
now notorious Kaiser William, became Emperor in succession to
his father Frederick.

It is said that the nephew’s social charm is as great as was the
uncle’s; and one authority states that no personal or political ,
rivalry existed between them, that “ there was no estrangement,”
and that “the ill-feeling disappeared when they met.”

This may be so, but in the light of subsequent events it is difficult
to believe it, impossible not to attribute sinister and selfish motives
for the German Emperor’s professed friendship, and formerly very
frequent visits.*

There could have been no ties of opinion and sympathy to bind
the two together, for France was still bleeding from the wounds
that Germany had inflicted on her; and we are told that King
Edward, at Biarritz, at Cannes, and in Paris, had long before
“‘ emphatically declared in all circles his love for France, his hope
of a perpetual peace between her and England, and his dread of
another Franco-German War.” Nor did he qualify such senti-
ments when he travelled in Germany. ‘‘ He loved France,” said
Gambetta, “ 4 la fois gaiment et sérieusement,” and his dream was
of an-Anglo-French entente.

In Germany “ There’s such divinity doth hedge a king ” that to
dare to criticize the Emperor in the smallest particular is lése
majesté, a crime severely punishable.

The Kaiser is ‘‘ The All Highest,”’ and regards himself as God’s
vicegerent upon earth. Because he is “ over-lord,’’ he does not
acknowledge the rights of small states, nor their just claim to self-
determination, but works to bring the whole world under his sway.
To this end he has waged ruthless war, bringing bereavement, and
untold misery, on half the families of Europe.

There was, it is true, the tie of blood, but beyond that I fail to
see what common interest or purpose could unite him to the gracious,
kindly Prince; condescending without appearing to condescend,

* This sentence is not strong enough. It was written in 1916, before the Gerard and
Lichnowsky revelation, and before the publication of the ‘ Willy-Nicky”’ correspondence
had betrayed to the world the worthlessness of the Kaiser’s professions of friendship even
for his kinsmen. I think there can be now no doubt but that the uncle read the nephew’s
nature clearly, and gauged his capacity for evil and his boundless ambition, and that the
“estrangement,” though not open, was real.

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MARLBOROUGH HOUSE

easy of access, yet maintaining his dignity as the constitutional
monarch of a democratic race.

Ruling as he did over an empire already wider than Czsar’s,
he had no ambition to extend it. Secure in the affection of the
majority of his subjects, King Edward could afford to be indifferent
to what the disloyal might say. Fearless of personal danger,
as various episodes in his life prove him to have been, he yet
abhorred and dreaded war and its attendant horrors, and the chief
aim of his career was to avert it.

To the first Prince of Wales’ famous motto “ I serve’ he might
well have added the words, “‘ Peace and conciliation,” for in very
deed they were his watchwords. And in brief, he was in the truest
and best sense, “‘ An English gentleman.”

153

CHAPTER VII
CHISWICK HOUSE

HOPE the reader will forgive me if I begin my chapter on
Chiswick House with a page of personal retrospection; the
more so that it describes a garden that, though neither cele-

brated itself, nor the garden of a celebrity, had not a little to do
with my first introduction to the famous Palladian villa of the Duke
of Devonshire, concerning which it is my business to write.

The happiest childhood is one that is spent in a garden. Of
this I am convinced. When I was a very little girl I lived with
my parents, who had come from the north, in a somewhat cld-
fashioned house near the river Thames, a house that stood by
itself in a delightful garden, shut in on every side by high walls,
on the top of which wallflowers and snapdragons grew. There
was a favourite corner on these walls, so overgrown with yellow
stonecrop that it formed, in the angle, a broad and softly-cushioned
seat. Up to this, by means of the gardener’s ladder, I have many
times climbed, like Cowper’s cat, ‘‘ to sit and think,” to read a
fairy-tale, or “‘do my lessons ;” but still more often, I fear, to
watch, with other children, the friendly nuns who were our neigh-
bours. For there was a convent garden on the other side of the
wall, concerning which, as we could not see very much of it, we
were frankly curious. The good sisters did not appear to resent
our observation, which indeed was very intermittent ; for in June,
a white-heart cherry-tree, trained against the wall, and laden with
fruit, became vastly more interesting than the convent; and in
August the mulberries were ripe, and diverted our attention from
the nuns. This, at least, was so on week days. On fine Sunday

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afternoons, in summer-time, regularly at five o’clock, there was a
service of some sort or other in the grounds. We always supposed
that there was a graveyard there; and, during many years, we
children never failed to rush upstairs the instant we caught the
strain of a certain processional hymn, to watch from our top windows
the glint of lighted candles among the trees, and catch glimpses
of veiled figures, white and black, and slowly-moving banners.
I do not know the music to which the nuns walked, but I remember
it well, and if I could hear that same tuneful hymn again, in any
place, and in any circumstances, it would bring the whole scene
back to me. So strong are the impressions of childhood, and so
powerful the association of ideas and memory with music !

The nuns were good neighbours: One day one of my brothers,
to our great consternation, fell over the wall on to a bed of soft
cabbages. They picked him up, treated him kindly, and sent
him home by the road; and the next morning they came to the
base of the wall and handed up, on a long stick, a beautiful moth
for ‘“‘ the little boy who had fallen over.”

Our garden was much more ancient than the house, having
once formed part of the demesne of a large mansion, said to have
been long ago destroyed by fire. It abounded in fruit ; old goose-
berry bushes, raspberries, and currants, black, white, and red.
There was one spot near the strawberry-beds where the rosy stalks
of the rhubarb held up their giant leaves like plates, in order, as
it were, to catch, or break the fall of, the yellow apricots that
dropped from a tree above them, quite beyond our reach. Such
windfalls were windfalls indeed !

The garden was rich in fruit-trees of various kinds, particularly
in apple-trees, all twisted and knotted, and gnarled with age ;
but still yielding fruit plentifully. The flavour of some of these
apples, no Newtown Pippin, or Blenheim Orange of the present
day, can approach.

April, in our garden, was a reminder of a snowy January; only
the snow did not completely cover the grass, and on the trees it
was dashed here and there with rose and pink. The old Ribstone
Pippin that faced the drawing-room windows was covered with
bloom, and was in itself the very incarnation of the spirit of Spring.

On the right-hand corner of the lawn a Russet stood sentinel
over the flower-beds. Near it a plum tree, past bearing fruit, wept

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tears of amber gum. Opposite to these were a Codlin, a large and
ancient thorn (rose-red all over in May), and an acacia, certainly
the largest I have ever seen; ‘‘as high as the ’cacia”’ being our
nursery standard of comparison, where height was in question.
Close to the house was a Golden Pippin, which made a practice
of dropping its smooth and yellowing apples on the dewy grass in
the early morning, a tempting bait to the child who was the earliest
bird among us. He or she needed to rise betimes, for soon the old
gardener would arrive, and pick them up before whetting his
scythe to mow the lawn. How well I remember the sunshiny
mornings when one awoke to the pleasant sound of the sharpening
of the scythe, and to the “ swish! ’’ of the long sweep of it over the
grass; no patent lawn-mower ever invaded our paradise in those
days !

In the far corner of the garden, hard by the nunnery wall, was
a very ancient mulberry-tree. According to tradition it was one
of many planted in this corner of Middlesex by order either of
Queen Elizabeth or James I., both monarchs having wished to
encourage the silk industry in England. History says their attempt
was a failure; but ours was a success! My brothers and sisters
and I all kept silk-worms; and very busy we were, every summer,
with our improvised winding-machines, reeling off the shining,
flossy silk from the cocoons ; whilst half the children of the hamlet
came begging at our gates for the daily dole of mulberry leaves to
feed their curious grey pets.

There was a bowling-green at the back of the house; at the
front a straight, stone-paved walk led up from the gate to the front
door-steps, and on each side of it, like sentries on guard, stood a
tall, dark tree, either cypress or fir; at this distance of time I am
not sure which; nor could I swear to anything concerning them,
except that they were coniferous, or cone-bearing trees.

The flowers in our garden were all of the old-fashioned sort.
There were no ‘“ Standards,” but everything grew on bushes ;
“York and Lancaster’ roses, striped red and white; sweet-
scented blush-roses, moss-roses (seldom seen nowadays); and
enormous pink cabbage-roses, in which it was delicious to bury
one’s nose and inhale a long draught of unrivalled fragrance.

How it all comes back to me, bit by bit, little by little! I did
not think I could recall it, until I tried. I remember particularly

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the handsome scarlet Japonica, beneath the dining-room window
(the lovely waxen flowers of which I early essayed to paint) ;
and over one of the two windows of the kitchen, trailed a yellow
jessamine. A doorway led into the stable yard, that was separated
from the garden by an old fence, that, as years glided by, bent more
and more beneath the weight of some patriarchal ivy. Hard by
grew a flowering currant-bush, the first shrub in our garden to
bloom in early Spring, and give a welcome signal of the departure
of Winter. .

At one side of the garden there was a plantation of box trees,
very dense and thick, and—since box is an extremely slow-growing
plant—undoubtedly of great antiquity. They were about ten or
twelve feet high, and must therefore have been in the garden at a
period even anterior to the destruction by fire of the first mansion
on the estate. In our youthful imagination this little thicket,
although in reality but a few yards square, was a deep, dark,
mysterious wood—almost an enchanted forest, and the scene of
various singular and dangerous adventures, that, however tragic,
generally ended happily ; in these we, of course, invariably played
the leading parts. The events that took place in that forest were
so wildly improbable, that only the fertile and illogical brain of
childhood, could have conceived them. They were first suggested,
no doubt, by fairy tales. How potent such suggestions can be,
few grown-ups remember or realize; but to us, happy boys and
girls as we were, they stood for much; they left us open to belief
in the possibility of real adventures to be met with outside the
boundaries of our own beloved garden, and as time passed on
inspired us with the desire to prosecute them actively.

I myself was fed on fairy tales, and I still possess a copy of
Hans Christian Andersen, a birthday gift from an uncle, bearing
on the fly-leaf the inscription :

‘* With the sincere and earnest hope that these little
tales may get firmly fixed in her little head.”

And the wish was verified! But I delighted also in the “ Arabian
Nights,” in Grimm, and the delectable stories of the Countess
d’Aulnoy, the latter, a volume beautifully illustrated, by, if I
remember rightly, Sir John Gilbert.

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My brothers’ romance took an active form; they were embued
with a fine spirit of adventure, and some of the escapades into which
it led them—egged on frequently by a boyish love of mischief—
would make entertaining reading, but would be out of place here.

How and when the rumour first reached us of a beautiful garden
in our neighbourhood, and of its wonderful entrance gates, or why
we were convinced that its gates were golden, I do not exactly
remember. It is all so very, very long ago. But some of us had
heard of the Garden of the Hesperides, and of the golden apples
therein, guarded by a dreadful dragon with a hundred heads, and
we communicated the wondrous fable to the others. Possibly,
also, the Florentine Ghiberti’s “‘ Gates of Paradise ’’ may have been
mentioned before us, and we caught at the word “ Paradise.”
‘* Paradise ?”’ we reflected. ‘‘ That is heaven; Jerusalem the
golden,”’ described in the Book of the Revelation, which in itself
was to us but a glorified and very mystical fairy-tale, telling of a
place where everything glittered with gold and precious stones—
just as it does in fairyland. Moreover, “ Paradise’ was the
Garden of Eden—the happy garden that men lost. And might
it not be up to us to regain it? I think it was by some such
process of reasoning, and by that quaint commingling of ideas to
which even grown-up people are unconsciously prone, that we
arrived at the conclusion that the garden we had heard of was a
sort of enchanted Eden, and that its gates were gates of gold.

Not one of us, I am sure, believed that in it was a dragon, as
in the classical story, or a serpent, as in Eden; though the boys
would fain have done so, in order to give scope for valorous deeds,
if ever they reached it. But more or less we all believed that
golden apples might grow in that garden; for had we not at home
pippins called “ golden ”’ by courtesy, and in humble imitation of
the Hesperidian reality ?

Perhaps I have dwelt too long on all this, and on that happy
garden of my childhood that I have been describing—but it was
necessary to explain how it happened that, though we knew nothing
of the Duke of Devonshire, and had never heard of his famous
Palladian Villa, yet, when vague reports concerning the beautiful
gates of a garden even more enchanting and wonderful than our
own, reached us from time to time, and when we heard them
continually as we slowly grew older—too slowly in those days—we

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pondered the matter, and with all the picturesque accretions and
variations that the vivid fancy of youth chose to add, we discussed
them in family conclave.

Immediately the spirit of adventure rife in the boys, met the
spirit of romance uppermost in the girls; and finally, without
consulting our elders, or even telling them of our dreams, we
resolved to make a real pilgrimage, in order to verify the truth of
the rumours, and the accuracy of our own imaginings.

When I think of it now, I remember that we did not even know
in what direction the garden lay, and whether the golden gates
were in the Moon, or in Middlesex. We asked nobody, for we had
youth’s self-confidence, and if any well-meaning person had
voluntarily told us that what we were seeking was actually within
a mile or two of our own garden, it would not have shaken our
faith in our distant objective, for we should not have believed
him! We never doubted that sooner or later we should arrive
at our goal. For Ghiberti’s famous bronze gates before referred to,
the gates of the Baptistery at Florence, were not more real and
beautiful in the eyes of Michael Angelo, when he pronounced them
“worthy to be the gates of Paradise,”’ than, to our vivid fancy, was
the undiscovered entrance to the mysterious undiscovered country
we sought.

Therefore, on several consecutive holiday afternoons, when, on
the principle that there is safety in numbers, we were left to our
own devices, we sallied forth, a joyous band of brothers, sisters, and
school-mates, in search of the wonderful gates, and the Paradise
to which they, like Ghiberti’s, were the fitting portal. But we never
found them, for they lay close to home; and in our wanderings
we had overshot the mark, and passed them by; and when at
last, after four futile attempts—made all “‘ on our own,” we con-
descended to ask the way—the way to the “Golden Gates ”—
no one had ever heard of them !

And well might it be so, for the gates were the gates of Chiswick
House, and they were not golden at all! but of wrought-iron,
gilded. They are beautiful, nevertheless, and have an interesting
history. Originally they were the gates of Heathfield House,
Turnham Green, which, after changing hands more than once,
was purchased by George Elliot, Lord Heathfield, the defender of
Gibraltar, who died there in 1790.

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When Heathfield House was sold, in 1837, the gates were bought
by the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who set them up at Chiswick
House, where for sixty years they formed the principal entrance
to the lovely grounds of the famous Villa, built by the Earl of
Burlington, about 1730 to 1735.

In 1897 the gates, and their handsome piers, were transplanted
to the Duke of Devonshire’s residence in Piccadilly, where they
still form one of the chief ornaments of that famous thoroughfare.

The removal, I believe, gave great dissatisfaction to the in-
habitants of Chiswick, who had taken considerable pride in the
beauty of the gates which stood at the bottom of what is now
known as Duke’s Avenue.

When the old Jacobean mansion that preceded the existing
Chiswick House, came into the possession of Richard Boyle, third
Earl of Burlington—a nobleman notable for his patronage of art
and artists, and his large building undertakings,—it had already
had a chequered history. Many people more or less famous and
infamous, had made it a place of residence ; indeed the rapidity
with which it changed hands was remarkable.

The Wardour family, to whom it originally belonged, sold it to
that Robert Carre, made successively Earl of Rochester and
Earl of Somerset, whose supposed share in the murder of his
greatest friend, Sir Thomas Overbury, a poet, was one of
the lurid sensations of the reign of James I. In the memor-
able trial that followed the crash of discovery, the details
of the whole horrible conspiracy were unmasked. The
Countess admitted her guilt; her four chief accomplices were
hanged, but, extraordinary to relate, the two principal offenders
were pardoned. A short imprisonment, and the forfeiture of their
estates, was their very inadequate punishment. A pension sufficient
for their. needs was granted to them, and in 1624 an entry in the
‘* State Papers domestic ”’ states ‘‘ that the Earl of Somerset is
pardoned, and has taken a house at Chiswick, but promises not to
go near Court.”” This was the original Chiswick House. It was said
of the guilty pair that though they lived in one and the same build-
ing, it was “only in an alternation of sullenness and chiding
. . . they were a mutual torment in their old age as they had
been a mutual snare in their youth, until they sank unregretted
and unhonoured into the grave.”

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Somerset made some futile attempts to regain favour with the
King—by gifts of fruit from the Chiswick garden—* peaches con-
ceivably good, and all that was left of his plums ;’’ and he said that
if His Majesty would supply him with a good gardener, he would
send him yearly a tribute of the produce of his garden.

‘Thus we get a favourable report of the famous grounds of Chiswick
House, as early as 1631. The disgraced Countess-died the following
year. The child of this unfortunate marriage, the Lady Anne, was
betrothed to a son of the Earl of Bedford, who, not unnaturally,
appears to have objected somewhat to the match, and Somerset, to
endow her with £12,000, had to sell or mortgage his Chiswick pro-
perty, with all his plate and household belongings. Her son was the
famous Lord William Russell, who in 1683 perished on the scaffold.

In 1664 Chiswick House and its contents were granted by
Charles II. to his son, the Duke of Monmouth ; a transaction that
cost the King £6,000. Four years later the Duke parted with it
to Lord Gerard of Brandon, in exchange for an appointment as
Captain of the King’s Life Guard and £4,000. Lord Gerard sold
the house to Sir Edward Seymour, Speaker of the House of Commons,
who, in his turn—in 1682 or thereabouts—disposed of it to the
first Karl of Burlington.

Richard Boyle, the third earl, was a famous building nobleman,
and patron of art and letters. During his travels in Italy, from
which he returned in 1716, he had made it his business, as it was
also his pleasure, to collect pictures and statuary, and had greatly
admired the works of Palladio.

The villa that so much attracted the young Earl that he ultimately
made it the model for the house that he built on his Chiswick
estate, was the Villa at Vicenza, designed by Palladio for the
Marquis Capra. The architect whom Burlington employed to
carry out his ideas was William Kent, who claimed to be painter,
architect, and landscape gardener. Horace Walpole in his ‘‘ Anec-
dotes of Painting,” styles Kent “‘ the father of modern gardening,”
and certainly the mark Kent left upon the gardening of the eigh-
teenth century is so definite, that no apology need be made for
dwelling at some length upon his history.

Born in 1685, in Yorkshire, and apprenticed to a coach-maker,
Kent soon came to London fired with the ambition to become
a painter. London in those days, over sixty years before the

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foundation of the Royal Academy, offered no facilities at all for the
serious study of art, nor does Kent’s real talent seem to have lain
in the direction of portraiture, historical, or religious painting,
the branches that he elected to follow, for apparently he had but
little success in any of them. He must, however, have shown
some earlier promise, for friends came forward and sent him to
study in Italy, and he is credited with having won the Pope’s
annual prize for a painting, in 1713. Luckily for him, and for the
line of art that he ultimately made his own, he met Lord Burlington
in Rome, and with him returned to England in 1719. From that
time forward until his death in 1748, he seems to have made his
home entirely with the Earl, although he had several Court appoint-
ments, and many commissions, bringing him in an income of
£600 per annum.

Kent, as before stated, tried his hand at many branches of art,
including sculpture and architecture, as well as painting. Horace
Walpole, who had excellent opportunities for judging his capabilities
as a painter, pronounced him to be in that capacity below medio-
crity, and there is a statue of Shakespeare by him in West-
minster Abbey, that shows that, as a sculptor, also he was not
above it. But the late Phené Spiers, F.R.I.B.A., F.S.A., speaking
with professional authority, says: ‘‘ Judging by his architectural
work at Chiswick alone, he was certainly an architect of no mean
capacity ; the design for the front of the villa, shows that he
possessed a good sense of proportion, and an accurate knowledge
of the Corinthian order, which he employed for the portico; in
the double staircases of the north and south fronts, he displays
considerable originality, whilst in the scheme of his plan and the
decorative design of the interior, he certainly equals, if he does
not surpass, the work of his distinguished predecessor Palladio.”
This is high praise, but it is not undeserved. “Working as he did
at Chiswick, immediately under the eye of Lord Burlington, he
must have thrown himself enthusiastically into the scheme, and
have been in perfect accord with his patron, to achieve there so
successful a result. The directing taste, however, as well as the
first inception of the whole, was Burlington’s, for he was justly
surnamed the “‘ architect Earl.”” Kent was merely the instrument
whose function it was to translate his patron’s ideas into the correct
language of architecture, according to the recognized rules of

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its grammar. These rules he can only have studied in Italy, under
the guidance of Lord Burlington, who, passionately enamoured of the
Palladian, or later Renaissance style, desired above all things to popu-
larize it in this country. To this end he trained Kent in his own
views, and collected and published at his own expense all the draw-
ings by Palladio, Inigo Jones, and others, that he could get hold of.

Lord Burlington’s building plans had time to mature between
the date of his introduction to Kent and the erection of the Chiswick
Villa. During that period he expended time and money in re-
constructing Burlington House, Piccadilly. When at last, about
1730, he began to carry out his cherished schemes at Chiswick,
he did not start by the total demolition of the original Jacobean
mansion, but retained a part of it as a residence. Had comfort
and convenience been his first consideration, the earl would have
contented himself with restoring, and perhaps enlarging it, to
receive his collections; but the Italian villa was, at the outset,
intended for a museum in which to enshrine and display the precious
works of art that he had lovingly collected ; and devoted as he
was to the style of the late Renaissance, he determined to satisfy
his own taste by following it in the construction of the new build-
ing. The result was that Gay’s line in his “ Trivia,” on ‘‘ How
to walk the Streets of London ”’

‘“* Beauty within, without proportion reigns ”—

was equally applicable to Chiswick House and to Burlington
House. The central portion of the villa, for which the Earl was
responsible—comprising the portico and principal saloon, are,
indeed, of splendid ‘‘ proportion,” and they remain in their pristine
condition ; fortunately the two wings since added by the architect
Wyatt, are completely in harmony with it. The house was origin-
ally built more to be looked at than to be lived in; therefore the
famous gibe of Lord Hervey, Vice-Chamberlain to George IL.,
to the effect that “the Earl of Burlington had built a house too
small to live in, and too great to hang on one’s watch-chain ”—
a witticism suggested by the eighteenth century beau’s fob and
heavy seals, lost its point. The laugh was on the side of the Earl,
not of the courtier, when a member of a distinguished party of
visitors to the villa in 1732, reported that “‘ both within and without
it is a fine bijou, and much beyond anything I have seen in my life.”
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Lord Burlington’s severer and finer taste must have restrained
his lieutenant’s tendency to the baroque and rococo in art; for
Kent’s extravagances and limitations, are much in evidence in
some of the rooms he decorated at Kensington Palace. Fortunately
for Chiswick House, the ceilings and cornices there are apparently
by a less heavy hand, and the Earl, in all probability, brought over
foreign workmen to carry out this part of his scheme.

The grounds of Chiswick House, though they differ from those
of the imagined paradise of my childhood, are not less beautiful
in reality than in our conception of them. They are very fine and
characteristic examples of the landscape-gardening of the eighteenth
century, when landscape-gardening reached its highest develop-
ment. English taste soon framed a national style far removed
from the wide, formal, and stately manner of the French Le
Notre, and his English pupil, Rose. According to the author of
““ Horace Walpole’s World,” trees in France became royal pro-
perty as soon as they had attained the age of thirty years; in
England, happily for us, they were spared to grow old gracefully.
Horace Walpole remarks in his “‘ Essay on Gardening” that
““when a Frenchman reads of the Garden of Eden, his mind
conjures up a picture of Versailles, with clipt hedges, berceaux
and trellis work. . . . He does not consider that four of the largest
rivers in the world were half so magnificent as one hundred
fountains, full of statues by Girardin.”

Horace contrasts this artificiality with the lovely freedom
of nature, in which each tree and shrub is suffered to grow as it
lists. He ridicules the fact that the ‘“‘ venerable oak, the romantic
beech, the useful elm, and even the sweeping circuit of the lime,
and the regular round of the chestnut, and the almost moulded
orange-tree, were corrected by such fantastic admirers of symmetry.
The compass, the square, were of more use in the plantation,”
he says, “‘ than the nurseryman.”’ ye

But while thus singing the praises of natural beauty,. this ac-
complished product of the age of whalebone and wiggery, at the
same time applauded and encouraged the most rampant artificiality ;
for he advocates the introduction into the picture of a “‘ feigned
steeple, of a distant church, or an unreal bridge, to disguise the
termination of water,” and argues that ‘‘ being intended to improve
the landscape, they are no more to be condemned because common,

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Chiswick House: Sketch of Temple in Grounds.

CHISWICK HOUSE

than they would be if employed by a painter in the composition
of a picture.”

His contemporary, Wheatley, in his introduction to his ‘‘ Ob-
servations on modern gardening,” claims for landscape-gardening,
‘in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in England,”’
not only a considerable place among the liberal arts, ‘‘ but also
‘that it is as superior to landscape painting as a reality to a re-
presentation . . . being relieved now,” he says, “‘ from the restraints
of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic con-
venience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble
scenes of nature are within its province.” But Wheatley, like
Walpole, held that artificial aids to the picturesque were not only
justifiable, but necessary, to make Nature natural ; and therefore,
to deceive successfully, soon became an end in itself. “In wild
and romantic scenes,”’ he remarks, ‘“‘ may be introduced a ruined
and low bridge, of which some arches may be still standing, and
the loss of those which are fallen may be supplied by a few planks,
with a rail thrown over the vacancy. It is a picturesque object :
it suits the situation, and if due care be taken in certain respects,
it gives an imposing air of reality.”

Thus it was that when topiary work, which is the clipping and
training of trees and shrubs into shapes, had had its day, when
French gardening and Dutch gardening were beginning to pall,
areaction set in. Stiffness and conventionality went out of vogue,
and under the Georges, fashions in gardens soon passed to the other
extreme. No device was omitted, no sham was too barefaced, that
might contribute to the desired effect of picturesqueness, freedom
of growth, and apparent naturalness, while to secure a prospect,
to carry the eye up to a given point, no sacrifice was too great.
The walls of the old Elizabethan garden disappeared, and the sunk
fence or ‘‘ Ha Ha” took its place. Trees were carefully planted just
where they. would look best in twenty, forty or fifty years’ time.

‘Those groups and belts of trees and avenues of varied timber
which have actually clothed a scenery upon the simple undulations
of the midlands,” says the author of ‘“‘ Horace Walpole’s World,”
“result from no pure accident of benevolent nature; they are
a heritage from that strange century, a legacy (even if in a second
or third degree) from opulent designers who sketched the picturesque
by the mile.”

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The phrase “landscape-gardening” is quite legitimate.
These old designers, Bridgeman, Kent, “ Capability” Brown,
and the rest, werc true artists, though the pigments they juggled
with were trees, rivulets, brown earth and green grass; and the
canvas they worked upon was frequently an estate of fifty, eighty,
or one hundred acres in extent. They had faith in their art,
perfect selflessness, and the prophetic vision: and hence they
industriously delved, and sowed, and planted, and schemed for
posterity ; looking forward with complete confidenee and content,
to a future that they themselves could never hope to see; and
now they rest from their labours and their work speaks for them.
I have said all this before—I may say it again, for in studying the
inception and development of gardens, the consciousness that we
owe our present. pleasure in them to the industry and forethought
of past generations, is ever present—or it ought to be. And the
question arises: “* Are we in our turn doing as much for those who
will come after us ?”’

If we regard landseape gardening as a liberal art, then the words
of Walter Pater are peculiarly applicable to it. ‘‘ The sensuous
material of each art,”’ he says, “‘ brings with it a special phase or
quality of beauty untranslatable into the form of any other art,
an order of impressions distinct in kind.’ He further reminds us
that “ each art having, therefore, its own peculiar incommunicable
sensuous charm, has its own special mode of reaching the imagination,
tts own special responsibilities to its material.’ Kent realized this,
and neglected nothing that might be likely to stimulate the fancy,
and unconsciously excite pleasurable or solemn emotions in the
spectator. Walpole says of him “that he was painter enough
to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionated enough
to dare to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great
system from the twilight of imperfect essays.”

He had a fine eye for proportion, and fully appreciated the
fascination of vistas, and long perspectives. Having banished
the horrors of the topiary art, he knew how so to dispose of
his masses of foliage—whether evergreen or deciduous—so that
m all the circling hours of the day, and in every month of
the year, they remained broad and effective. He made great
play with cedars and yews; he knew both the preciousness of
harmony, and the importance of {contrast, in the colour and

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a

&

The Obelis

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CHISWICK HOUSE

tones of greens, and in dealing with trees that turn red and
yellow in autumn.

In the grounds at Chiswick there is a certain sedgy pool in the
centre of which is an obelisk—one of three in the gardens—
and while its moss-grown base is reflected in the still water, its
summit catches, at times, the last gleams of the sinking sun. It
lies in a green hollow, and is faced by a little domed and circular
temple with a portico of the Ionic order, and broad steps; a temple
that looks eastward. Above the pool, now picturesquely-enough
half choked with reeds and rushes—rise in concentric semicircles,
terraces of soft green turf, said to have been the favourite haunt
of Georgiana, the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire.

The whole is shut in on the north, east, and west sides, by a
dense and high plantation of yews, and solemn evergreen oaks.
But rather to the left there is a break in the belt of foliage, allowing
a vista of open glade terminating in the elegant Palladian stone
bridge that—superseding the original wooden one—the architect
Wyatt threw across the serpentine lake that lies at the farther
side of the little temple just referred to.

A gentle and rather pleasing melancholy pervades the spot,
even when the sun shines; for it belongs obviously to the past,
and is reminiscent of the faded glories of the eighteenth century ;
the temple itself showing very evident signs of incipient decay.

I first beheld the place on a moist, rather sad afternoon in
February, when nature seemed asleep and almost devoid of life
Everything was damp and cheerless—last year’s sedges and rushes,
for the most part, lay prostrate, dank and yellowing, and partly
submerged, in the pool. But here and there touches of bright green
testified to the presence of life in this apparent death, and also to the
promise of spring even, in decay. The old-world stateliness of the
place made itself felt notwithstanding the cheerlessness of the
afternoon, and there lingered over the scene that subtle charm
which nothing can obliterate when nature is resting and quiescent.

It was that moment :

“* Before decay’s defacing fingers
Has swept the lines where beauty lingers.”

‘The chastened sentiment of the place was so exactly in harmony
with the mood of the day, that mentally I instantly resolved to
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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

paint it under some such aspect. Ultimately my drawing was made
in late October, when the spot looks much as in February, for
‘** The sedge has withered from the lake
And no birds sing.”

Earlier in the year the pretty little moor-hens and the larger
water-fowl disport themselves gaily in the pool; and the peacock
makes its margin its haunt, furling and unfurling its brilliant
plumage fanlike in the sunshine. The fine strut of the bird over
the lawns at Chiswick is natural and excusable when his gorgeous
tail can sweep the turf; but it is ludicrous after the moulting
season, when seemingly all unconscious of the deplorable change
in his appearance, he often parades the grounds, dragging after
him the one miserable, mangy feather which is all that is left in
his tail !

It would, however, be unfair to Kent to let the reader suppose
that the Chiswick House grounds are melancholy. They are far
from being so; here and there the designer deliberately struck the
chord of sadness, and worked in the minor key, but for the most
part they are charmingly cheerful, and I can conceive of a delightful
week’s holiday spent entirely in the shady groves and sunny glades
of these delectable gardens.

The trees are magnificent, and very varied. No words can
exaggerate the exquisite beauty in early summer, when the green
of the young leaves is fresh, of the very long avenue of limes,
which leads from one principal gate to another : nor of the striking
aspect of the south front of the house, when, if one proceed a little
farther, it bursts upon one’s view through a double avenue of giant
cedars and limes. Beneath the cedars are ranged terminal busts,
antique vases, and recumbent animals, carved in stone. Lord
Burlington brought from abroad much fine sculpture, some of which
has no doubt been removed to Chatsworth and elsewhere, by the
Dukes of Devonshire who have succeeded him: a good deal,
however, still remains ; notably, there are some lovely flower-vases
of fine Greek workmanship, in the Italian flower-garden.

The serpentine lake is over 2,000 feet long by 60 feet wide. Water
from the Bollo Brook supplies it, the overflow finding its way into
the River Thames. The lake is spanned by the handsome stone
bridge before referred to, and at its lower extremity by a wooden
one. We cross the stone bridge and follow the footpath on the

168

“91 “ed onl op) ‘anuaay jepod) pue jwol yNoG : asnoy{ YpPIMsIyD,

’ CHISWICK HOUSE

western side of the lake; it is a lovely woodland walk, and from
the bank we catch charming glimpses of the grounds on the opposite
shore, and of the dome, and stately north front of the house. The
west front of the little Ionic temple by the pool, with steps descend-
ing to the water, is visible from the lakeside, but the steps are
partially hidden by a picturesque overgrowth of reeds, and water
plants.

Time and weather have made serious gaps in the broad cedar
avenue at the south front, and one or two splendid old trees have
had to be shored up; but on the north side, the most magnificent
group of these stately trees which I have ever seen, remain. They
are still in their prime, and are certainly superior to any at Kew or
Sion.* Farther east, between the north avenue and the Italian
flower-garden, are some fine beeches, and delicious it is in the early
autumn mornings to cross beneath them, over the carpet of fallen
leaves which, red-brown, or golden, rustle and scatter beneath one’s
feet, revealing an understratum of bright green moss of perennial
beauty.

Three diverging avenues radiating from a common centre,
was a favourite device of Kent’s in garden-planning ; he adopted
it on both sides of the lake at Chiswick. Each walk terminated
m an arbour, a statue, a grot or a pavilion. On the western
side, a handsome obelisk with a finely carved classical panel below
it, marks the spot towards which three paths once converged ;
only two now remain, the third would seem to have lost its way
in a maze of shrubbery and undergrowth.

Apparently the same thing happened on the eastern side of
the grounds, where two avenues out of those which once spread
fan-like in three directions, have disappeared. One led to a
pavilion, another to a temple of the Corinthian order, and the third
of yew—which still exists, leads to an arbour in which is a bust
of Napoleon. Hence the avenue is known as the “ Napoleon
Walk,” although Kent, of course, died twenty years before Napoleon
first saw the light. Its conversion to a memorial of the great
Corsican, is significant of the political leanings of the fifth Duke
of Devonshire and of his Duchess, the beautiful Georgiana ; just
as a similar bust in the gardens of Holland House, is of those of

_* The finest of all was unfortunately blown down in the great gale of March, 1916, when
sixteen other trees were also laid prostrate.

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

the third Lord Holland. I have not penetrated to the arbour,.
for the path to it is very narrow, its length some five or six hundred.
feet, and the curious, clipt yew hedges, walling it in on either side,
are sixteen feet high, making it mysterious and impressive, but.
somewhat uninviting for a solitary stroll. The lovely open glades.
and lawns, across which the bold brown rabbits fearlessly scud,.
playing hide-and-seek with one another, are more to my taste,
and the beautiful Italian flower-garden with its fine maidenhair
tree-fern, its straight grass walks, and exquisite classic vases,
and with flower plots gay with yellow wall-flower in spring, and
searlet with geraniums and salvia in late summer, are infinitely
more attractive.

Kent had a great acreage to deal with at Chiswick, and he made-
it still larger by the adoption of a plan not new to English gardeners,
where the maze had long been a feature. Into his shrubberies.
and plantations of laurustinus, rhododendron, and other flowering:
shrubs, he introduced a network of walks which, by continually
twisting, and turning, and doubling back, made the most of a
small area, and induckd a pleasant sense of seclusion, awaking
that sustained interest and curiosity in the path one follows,.
that one never can have in the long lane which has no turning.

From all this it will be realized that Kent was the first to intro-
duce into this country the charming combination of the Italian.
with the’ English garden. He did not altogether abolish conven--
tionality, for the true Italian garden -has much of it. Obelisks.
and bridges, and balustrades; classic temples, vases at regular:
intervals, and statuary galore, were made use of by him. But as.
a modern writer says, ‘‘ Kent was the first in English gardening:
to vindicate the natural against the artificial. Banishing all the:
clipped monstrosities of the topiary art in yew, box, or holly,
releasing the stream from the conventional canal and marble basin,
rejecting the mathematical symmetry of ground plan then in vogue-
for gardens, Kent endeavoured to imitate the variety of nature,.
with due regard to the principles of light and shade,and perspective.”

There can be no doubt but that, whatever his deficiencies as a
decorator and painter, and however questionable his claim to be
an architect, as a landscape-gardener he stands in the first rank.

Of very conspicuous interest is the Inigo Jones gateway ter-
minating the gravel walk that runs at the north side of the Chiswick.

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Villa. It was built in 1621, and was originally erected in the
grounds of Beaufort House at Chelsea. That mansion was sold
in 1736 to Sir Hans Sloan, who, knowing Lord Burlington’s passion
for the art of Inigo Jones, presented the gateway to him.

A stone tablet on the left bears the inscription :
“ Builded by Inigo Jones at Chelsea, M.D.CXXI.”
And on the right hand side are inscribed the words :
“Given by Sir Hans Sloan, Baronet, to the Earl of Burlington, M.D.CXXXVII.”
Pope, personating a traveller, thus apostrophizes the gateway :

“Passenger: Oh, Gate, how cam’st thou here ?
Gate : I was brought from Chelsea last year,
Batter’d with wind and weather ;
Inigo Jones put me together ;
Sir Hans Sloan let me alone ;
Burlington brought me hither.”

The master of Burlington House and Chiswick House was a
generous patron of musicians and men of letters, as well as of
artists and architects, and it was a brilliant society over which
he presided.

Handel, for three years his honoured guest, was Impresario
of the Italian Opera at the Haymarket Theatre, and a keen rivalry
existed between him and an Italian composer named Buononcini,
whose music is said to have had the merit of being melodious.
The fashion of the day was for Italian Opera, and Handel, humouring
it, wrote over forty operas; but, excepting for some scattered
arias, they are now no more remembered than those of Buononcini.
It speaks not a little for the taste and discernment of the Earl
that although Handel’s genius for oratorio, and choral music, was
as yet undiscovered—he sided with him in a dispute that for a
time divided the town, and that was commemorated in these
lively lines by a contemporary :

‘““ Some say compared to Buononcini
That Mynheer Handel’s but a ninny ;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle,
Strange all this difference should be
“Ewixt Tweedledum and Tweedledee.”

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The poet Gay, Swift, Pope, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke, were
all members of the famous “ Scriblerus ”’ Club that Swift, in 1714,
had founded. Gay, Pope,.and Swift, were intimate friends, and
all had the entrée of the Earl of Burlington’s house. Chiswick
was then a picturesque riverside village in the sequestered heart
of Middlesex, and doubtless Lord Burlington’s guests found the
country-house infinitely restful and delightful. Dean Swift fre-
quently visited the Earl, and must have been often at the Villa
—no doubt mentally contrasting its gardens with those of his
former patron Sir William Temple. Sir’Walter Scott relates that
visiting England soon after the Earl’s marriage, Swift accepted
an invitation to dinner. Through inadvertence, or perhaps a
momentary whim, Burlington did not introduce his wife to the
Dean. But Swift was not to be so overlooked: after dinner he
turned to Lady Burlington and said, ‘‘ I hear you can sing; sing
me.a song.” And when, somewhat nettled by the manner of the
command, she declined, Swift would take no refusal: he insisted
that “‘ she should sing,’ he would ‘‘ make her.” “*‘ Why, Madam,”
he argued, “‘ I suppose you take me for one of your English hedge-
parsons ; sing, when I bid you.” The Earl looked on with much
amusement, and did not attempt to interfere, but his wife, annoyed
and astonished at this unusual mode of address, burst into tears
and left the room. The next time Swift saw her he said, “‘ Pray,
Madam, are you as proud and ill-natured now as when I saw you
last ?”? She had learnt in the meantime that licence, permitted
to no one else, was the privilege of the Dean of St. Patrick’s, and
good humouredly replied—‘‘ No, Mr. Dean, T’ll sing for you if you
please.” From that time forward Swift had a great liking and
respect for her ladyship. Nevertheless one is inclined to regret
her surrender, and to wish that she had continued to teach the
spoilt humorist manners.

Alexander Pope, the greatest member of that wonderful literary
coterie to which Swift, and Gay, Arbuthnot, and Bolingbroke
belonged—a galaxy of genius which shed lustre on the reign of
Queen Anne and her immediate successors—for many years fre-
quented Lord Burlington’s house, on pleasant terms of intimacy.
As is well known, he was deformed and sickly, but in spite of ill-
health he must have contributed greatly to the ‘feast of reason
and the flow of soul’ of which he himself wrote.

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The most brilliant writers of that day did not hesitate to assail
with cruel satire, and to belittle, their rivals in literature, and
those from whom they differed in politics, and religion. The
lampoon, and the scurrilous literary squib, flew about and exploded
like so many bombs; and were as merciless in their effect on
human reputations as the latter on human lives.

Pope was unscrupulous in his attacks on rivals, or those whom
he considered literary upstarts or charlatans; and he also castigated
his critics severely. The ‘“ Dunciad,” dangerously full of per-
sonalities as it is, assailed the literary reputation of so many
people that it was at first published anonymously with names
veiled by initials; when its success was assured, a second edition
was issued with the names openly given; and, to protect himself,
the author assigned the copyright to three noblemen whose position
practically rendered them immune from prosecution for libel ;
one of these three sponsors was Lord Burlington.

Pope was vain, and unduly eager for posthumous praise, defeating
his own ends by the measures he took to ensure the publication
of his letters in his lifetime, and by his manipulation of these same
letters, after he had collected them from his correspondents, in
order to make himself appear in the best light to posterity : this,
however, only came to light some hundred years after his
death. Although his weaknesses must have been well known to
his associates, yet he was greatly loved by all who knew him
well, and the friendship with the Earl lasted to the end of
his life.

In that age, when no dynasty was secure, politics could nowhere
be totally excluded : and a circle which included Swift, Pope, and
Bolingbroke, among its members, must have been built on a solid
substratum of Toryism. Later on in its history, as we shall soon
see, Chiswick House, like Holland House, though in a lesser degree,
became a stronghold of Whiggism, but during the régime of Lord
Burlington, so far as I can discover, no man received a welcome,
or was refused it, on account of his political opinions. His wit,
his humour, his art, his literary eee a word, his genius, gave
the entrée.

Pope seems to have been sincerely attached to the Earl. When
he was only twenty-eight years old he wrote of him, ‘“‘ His garden
flourishes, his statues rise, his pictures arrive, and (what is far

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more valuable) his own good qualities daily extend themselves
to all about him, whereof I the meanest (next to some Italian
chymists, fiddlers and opera-makers) am a living instance.”

The letter in which this passage appears, was written long before
the Chiswick Villa was built, and the garden referred to was probably
- that of the still existing Jacobean mansion. The Earl, although
engaged in building operations elsewhere, and in forming the
magnificent collection of art objects which he afterwards enshrined
in the new house, was probably often domiciled at Chiswick.
At this period Pope was resident with his family in New Buildings
—now Mawson’s Buildings—in Chiswick Lane, where he is said
to have written many of his works, and he would therefore naturally
see much of Lord Burlington. On the death of his father, three
years later, he removed to the villa at Twickenham that, although
altered past all recognition, if not entirely rebuilt, yet goes by
his name. Here he would still be in touch with his noble friend,
but owing to the condition of the roads in the eighteenth century,
daily meetings could hardly have been possible. Matters only
grew worse as the century grew older; when Horace Walpole could
describe Northamptonshire as “a clay pudding stuck full of
villages.” Middlesex and Surrey were probably but little better,
and we know that the approaches to the metropolis were infested
by dangerous characters, and that it was unsafe to travel near
London without a train of servants, necessarily armed. In 1782
Lord North, the Prime Minister, was stopped, robbed, and wounded.
Horace Walpole, however, delighted in what he was pleased to
call ‘‘ the gothicity of the times, when one could not stir out of
one’s castle but armed for battle.” People were then as much
afraid of highwaymen as in the present day we are of air-raids.
Foreigners, visiting this country, feared to go to breakfast at
Strawberry Hill, and its gossipy master tells his correspondent
that those who came to dinner “‘ were armed as if going to Gibraltar,
and Lady Caroline Johnstone would not venture even from Peter-
sham, for in the tewn of Richmond they rob before dusk—to such
perfection are all the arts brought ”: yet this was at a time when
the fashionable dining hour was four o’clock. ‘‘ Who would
have thought,” he goes on to say, ‘‘ that the war with America
would make it impossible to stir from one village to another? .. .
before the War the Colonies took off all our commodities, even

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to highwaymen . . . now the roads are stocked with them, and
they are so tame that they even come into houses.”’

Things, however, were not quite so bad in the first half of the
century, and no doubt Pope was able to watch with growing interest
the foundation and erection of the Italian Villa at Chiswick, and
even to advise in the gradual transformation of the gardens under
Kent.*

The poet Gay, for many years Pope’s intimate friend, in an
epistle to Lord Burlington, conveys the idea that Pope was a
frequent visitor at Chiswick, and very highly appreciative of the
fruit-garden there.

““ You, my Lord, bid stately piles ascend,
And in your Chiswick bow’r enjoy your friend,
When Pope unloads the boughs within his reach,
The purple vine, blue plum, and blushing peach.”

The picture thus sketched is attractive, and not without its
humorous side. The author of the ‘‘ Beggars’ Opera ’”’ was long
resident with the earl, and must have been often at hand to join
his friend in his depredations on their host’s fruit. Indeed, how
otherwise could Gay have known of them? ‘“ Lazy, kindly, un-
commonly idle,” says Thackeray, “‘... for ever eating, and
saying good things,”—that he shared the spoil there can be no
doubt, and certainly little wonder: for where is the man, woman,
or child, who can resist the blandishments of a red-cheeked apple,
or of a scarlet strawberry peeping from its leaves ? Not peasant,
peer, nor poet ; not the fine lady of the second George’s court, if
hoop and stiff brocade permitted her to stoop down, or stretch
up; not Queen Caroline herself, who, towards the end of her life
when the “‘ bijou ”’ was a-building, was living at Kew. And what
more likely than that, curious to inspect Lord Burlington’s folly—
concerning which all the mode was gossiping—anxious to compare her
own crude attempt at gardey-planning, her pseudo-Gothic “ Grots”’
and hermitages, with Kent’s improvements on the Burlington
estate, she would order her chariot, and go lumbering forth through
the dirty Middlesex lanes to have a look at the garden celebrated
even two hundred years earlier, when it had produced fruit so

* Horace Walpole admits that Pope did much to promote the development of a better taste
in the arrangement of pleasure grounds.

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fine that the disgraced and unhappy Somerset seeking to placate
his offended sovereign, had offered it as a ‘‘ dainty dish to set before
the King.”

Pope and Gay were the products of an artificial age; or rather
it would be more correct to say that the trend of their genius was
decided by the manners and mental habits of the society in which
they found themselves—but they were true poets, notwithstanding
their upbringing, and therefore, being once brought into touch
with nature, were more sensitive to her charms than ordinary
folk of their class, and world. More especially was this so with
Pope, whose earlier verse shows much appreciation of inanimate
natural beauty ; and, as Campbell pointed out, the faculty which
enabled him to describe so exquisitely and humorously the court
and city manners, and objects of art, is essentially the same which
would have made him, under other circumstances and in a different
environment, a faithful lover, and student, and a poetic exponent, of
outside nature. Even in that artificial day, a few choice spirits,
such as Addison, found solace and refreshment in nature, and
in communing with her. Addison, as we know, delighted in a
garden, in its flowers, its seclusion, and its singing birds, to which
last we have seen him cheerfully sacrificing his fruit in exchange
for their songs. Minds such as his needed not to be “ brought
into touch” with nature, for they already walked hand-in-hand
with her. But others, like Pope and Gay, whose office it was to
reflect in their writings as in a mirror, the manners of society, to
satirize and show up its social vices, and its political venality, must
sometimes have wearied of the task. For though it is true that
as Pope himself says, “the proper study of mankind is man,”
society was then largely compounded of men and women who
lived chiefly in the limelight, and were perpetually posing ; who,
metaphorically speaking, were always in full dress. The reality
of pastoral life was unknown to them. Their rustic maidens were
Arcadian’ shepherdesses, wearing saeques of flcwered brocade,
carrying crooks bedecked with ribbons; and Corin, as well as
Corinna, was utterly unreal: he was an impossible swain in an
impossible country! The age of Pope and Gay was the age of
petticoats— Stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs of whale ”—
of snuff boxes, and pomander, of long stiff-skirted gold-laced satin
or velvet coats, of ruffles, swords, and full-bottomed wigs. A

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generation later, Horace Walpole, writing to the Earl of Hertford,
could tell him of “‘ the entertaining petition of the periwig-makers:
to the King, complaining that men will insist on wearing their own:
hair,” and he sagely remarks that a carpenter might just as
reasonably complain that “since the peace their trade decays
because there is no demand for wooden legs.”

Pope, however, appears in his portraits in a full-bottomed wig,
except in one in which he wears a night-cap, the alternative to it.

The wig must have looked ridiculous on his small person. ‘‘ He
was the only wit of the day,” writes Thackeray, ‘‘ who was not
fat. . . . Swift was fat; Addison was fat: Steele was fat. Gay

and Thomson were preposterously fat. All that fuddling, and
punch-drinking, that club and coffee-house boozing, shortened
the lives and enlarged the waistcoats of the men of that age.”
To me it is very pleasant to think of these two men dropping
for the nonce, the manner of St. James’s, and in the retirement of
that delightful garden, becoming entirely natural. Gay, “a little
round French Abbé of a man, sleek, soft-handed and soft-hearted,®’
... “little Mr. Pope, the decrepid papist.” Listen to them,
laugh at them, and with them, as they strip the branches, for the
two have become boys again. And see! they are caught in the
very act! they hear footsteps and look up—who is that coming
quickly round the corner, arm in arm with the Dean of St. Patrick’s,
newly come to town? It is Dr. Arbuthnot, author of ‘“ John
Bull” and “‘ Martinus Scriblerus.”’ He was Queen Anne’s physician
until her death—hearing which a modern wit remarked—‘ Then
if Queen Anne is really dead, it was Dr. Arbuthnot who killed her ! ”
Well, well! They have all gone. Swift survived Pope (if his
mental state in his latter days can be called living) only about
a twelvemonth, and twelve years earlier Pope himself had written
Gay’s epitaph for the monument in Westminster Abbey, raised
to his memory by his good friends the Duke and Duchess of Queens-
berry—every word of it was inspired by genuine feeling; and
it is a fine tribute. It begins:
“Of manners gentle, of affections mild ;
In wit a man; simplicity a child.”
The last three words scarcely fit the facts of the case. ‘‘ Simplicity,”
depend upon it, never raided an orchard ; he who did so was the
sophisticated grown-up schoolboy, whose ‘“‘ long experience,” to
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quote from himself, ‘“‘ made him sage,” who “ was so kind, so gentle,
so jocular, so delightfully brisk at times, so dismally woebegone at
others, such a natural good creature, that the giants loved him.
The great Swift was gentle and sportive with him, as the enormous
Brobdingnag maids were with little Gulliver. He could frisk and
fondle round Pope, and sport, and bark, and caper, without offend-
ing the most thin-skinned of poets and men.” Of him we may
remark that Gay by name, he was also gay by nature, and, writing
his own mocking epitaph, he could say—the lines are inscribed
with Pope’s at Westminster :

‘* Life is a jest and all things show it,
I thought so once, but now I know it.”

Chiswick House in those days was Liberty Hall. Pope seems
to have come and gone as he pleased, and when there, to have
made himself thoroughly at home, ordering his meals at any time
he liked to have them. In a letter dated March 30th, 1744, only
two months before his death—he mentions his intention to go
over to Chiswick for the day, “‘ to dine by myself before their hour,
and to return in the evening ’’—because he dared not “‘ lie abroad.”

And what of Burlington himself? Of the generous friend to
belles lettres, the kind host, the benefactor of musicians and artists,
so justly known as the “‘ Architect Earl’? ? His munificence and
public spirit seem to have impoverished him. His father, dying
in 1702, had left him rich, yet twenty years before his own death
he owed £200,000! That sum, even allowing a wide margin for
his patronage of great men and unstinted private hospitality,
and a still wider one for heavy expenditure on his building schemes
and purchases of works of art, seems large; unless indeed he was
infected with that passion for high play that was one of the fashion-
able vices of the reigns of the four Georges.

It is, therefore, not a matter for surprise that he was in the
habit of making a charge to all those who desired to visit his
collections—who were admitted by ticket only. When he died
in 1758, the Chiswick estate fell to his daughter and heiress, who
had married the fourth Duke of Devonshire. This marriage carried
the unique house and its contents, and its lovely grounds, definitely
and finally, into the political camp of the Whigs. The fifth Duke,
grandson of Lord Burlington, married Georgiana, daughter of

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Lord Spencer, known as “ the beautiful Duchess ’’—though, ac-
cording to Horace Walpole, she had more charm than beauty.
He says of her, “* She effaces all without being a beauty; but her
youthful figure, flowing good nature, sense and lively modesty,
and modest familiarity, make her a phenomenon.” Elizabeth,
Lady Holland, in her journal, edited by the present Lord Ilchester,
makes an unflattering reference to the celebrated Duchess when
her physical attractions were declining. ‘‘ Scarcely has she a
vestige of those charms that once attracted all hearts. Her figure
is corpulent, her complexion coarse: one eye gone, and her neck
immense. How frail is the tenure of beauty.” After this it is
curious to read in the diary, and only a few pages farther on:
‘“ A long acquaintance, with me, is a passport to affection.”’ Lady
Holland, herself a beauty 1 in her youth—when she broke the bonds
of an unhappy first marriage for the sake of Lord Holland, ought,
even in her private journal, to have written more tenderly of one
who had visited her at Holland House, when other ladies of position
held aloof. The Duchess was an acknowledged leader of society,
and her power was sufficient to achieve the abolition of the hideous
fashion of the hoop—and the adoption of the graceful costume
which we admire so much in the pictures of Reynolds and Gains-
borough. Gainsborough, whose brush was “ light as the sweep
of a cloud, as swift as the flash of a sunbeam,” to quote Ruskin’s
description of his touch, painted her two or three times. He
quitted Bath for London in 1774, when Georgiana, a girl of seven-
teen, and newly-married, was in the fresh, ripe glory of her beauty.
In his portraits of her he could not satisfy himself. ‘‘ Her Grace
is too hard for me!” he exclaimed when engaged upon one of
these; and seizing his brush he painted out the mouth, though
others had pronounced it lovely. Everybody knows the picture
of the Duchess of Devonshire with her child on her knee—the
little one’s hands raised in imitation of its mother. For grace
of movement and spontaneity, it is unsurpassed by any of his
works.

The Duchess was remarkable for her strong Whig proclivities,
and for the active part she took in Whig propaganda. Charles
James Fox, and Sheridan, were among her intimate friends, and
she was a conspicuous ornament in the Holland House political
cirele—a circle which seems to have included no other woman

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of any distinction. She retained the confidence of the Whig
leaders to the end of her life, and while the Duke haunted
‘* Brooks’s,” the Duchess entertained at Devonshire House and
Chiswick House, in every way seeking to advance the interests of
her party. In this connection I may repeat a story told of the
manner in which, aided by others, she manceuvred to secure the
election of Sheridan into ‘“‘ Brooks’s,’’ when he entered the House
of Commons in 1789. Membership of that famous Whig club
was a passport to the great Whig houses, also to Carlton House,
where the Prince of Wales—estranged from his father—held inde-
pendent court. At the ballot, one biack ball was sufficient to
exclude, and George Selwyn, the wit, and the Earl of Bessborough,
were determined to keep out Sheridan. In order to upset their
plans it was necessary to secure their absence on the day of elec-
tion. Therefore urgent messages, inventing the alarming illness of
a relative, were sent to each of the two members who had intended
to keep out the brilliant dramatist, and orator. The ruse succeeded,
for each trusted to the other being present to black-ball—and
Sheridan was elected.

When Fox was seeking the suffrages of the electors of West-
minster Georgiana personally canvassed the slums, and purchased
a vote from a burly butcher, with a kiss.

Her Grace was an inveterate card-player, and lost heavily,
but the Duke paid her debts two years before her death. Of him
it may be said that his fame was somewhat overshadowed by that
of his brilliant wife, of whom it is hinted he had scon grown tired:
he does not seem to have been a man of lively parts, and he was
chiefly remarkable as being the husband, in succession, of two
charming and distinguished women, his second Duchess, the Lady
Elizabeth Foster, a great friend of Georgiana, who had declined
the hand of Gibbon, possessing mental gifts above the average.

It was owing, I believe, to Georgiana, that the wings to
Chiswick House, designed by the architect Wyatt, afterwards
President of the Royal Academy, were added in 1788, at a risk
of destroying the symmetry of the Palladian house, that the
result has amply justified. But although such an ardent Whig,
the beautiful Duchess was patriotic enough to lament the death
of Pitt, and to entertain Dr. Johnson—hardened old Tory as he
was—at Chatsworth; there is no record to my knowledge of his

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having visited Chiswick. Nor do I know that Sir Joshua Reynolds
was ever at the Villa, but Gainsborough was probably frequently
there, as he had a cottage at Richmond, and must have loved the
neighbourhood, since, by his own desire, he lies buried in Kew
Churchyard.

David Garrick, and his beautiful wife (described by Horace
Walpole as ‘‘ the finest and most admired dancer in the world,”
who lived to within two years of a century), spent their honey-
moon—or part of it—at Chiswick House; but this was before
the death of the Harl of Burlington, when Georgiana was a child
of two years old. So also must have been the visits of Thomas
Gray, the poet, if he came there with Horace Walpole before the
two friends became estranged. But Horace Walpole, a man still
young when the Earl of Burlington died, and himself resident at
Strawberry Hill from about 1750, must have known the Villa under
several masters, for he died in 1797, at the ripe age of eighty-
nine years, before the comparatively early death of Georgiana.

We now come to the sixth Duke of Devonshire, who, from the
standpoint of a writer on gardens, is a personage of vastly greater
interest than his father, because, being a keen horticulturist, he
did much to improve and develop the Chiswick estate. Some
fifty years had now elapsed since the death of Kent; years that
at their close, amply proved the prescience of the great garden-
designer, and justified his faith in the ultimate development
of his plans, though he himself could not have hoped to see them
consummated.

We talk glibly enough of ‘‘ Time the Destroyer,” forgetting that
he is equally ‘“‘ Time the Constructor,’ without whose patient aid
nothing would reach maturity.

Time, then, had been the nurseryman upon whom Kent had
mainly relied, trusting also not a little to the unremitting care
and wise direction, of those who would come after him; nor did
he trust in vain, else had the landscape on which he had traced out
so fair a pattern, become again an ugly, unproductive waste, with
nothing, maybe, but a few cabbage stalks, or a stunted thornbush,
to show that it had been, before his day, a country meadow, or
a smiling garden.

At its best the deserted garden soon becomes but a tangled
wilderness ; a wilderness without the mysterious charm of the

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virgin forest in which, as yet, the footsteps of man have never
laid a trail, nor his axe hewed its way. It may be picturesque—
it often is; but with landmarks lost, flower-beds overrun and choked
by weeds, lawns, once trim, now rank and coarse, walks grass-
grown, hedges unclipped, terrace-steps and balustrades (where
there is stone-work), moss-grown and mouldering, fountains
quiescent, pools half stagnant—its picturesqueness is melancholy.
There is in such a garden an ever-present sense of loss and absence,
almost of death ; for too plainly has the tending hand been with-
drawn, the guiding mind removed. Like Lord Bacon, “I am
speaking now of gardens that are Prince-like”; that even in
desolation may retain some beauty—but, for the untidy small
garden, there is nothing good to be said! Bacon, in that notion
of his of a ‘‘ Prince-like garden,”’ sets much store upon “‘ Decent
Order”’; and although he advises that, in a large acreage, a portion
should be ‘‘ framed as much as may be to a Natural Wildernesse,”’
this wilderness is to be deliberately planned, and not due to
neglect. ‘‘ Order is Heaven’s first law,” and it is a sine qué
non in an enclosed garden, differentiating it from the field, and
the common land, which lie beyond its pale. But, because the
beauty of the ‘‘ Greene Grasse kept finely shorne”’ is greatly
enhanced by contrast, wherever there are wide lawns to
be mown, as at Chiswick, Fulham, Lambeth and Sion, there
should be wild bits left of set purpose to be a playground, as
it were, for Nature, wherein she may riot and do just what
she likes.

‘** Who loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too,” says Cowper.
It is to the sixth Duke of Devonshire the gardens owe the very
beautiful conservatory which is shown in the illustration. It is
remarkable for its great length, and for having been the first
important work undertaken by Joseph, afterwards Sir Joseph,
Paxton, whose talent the Duke discovered when Paxton was a
mere boy in his employment. It is unnecessary to remind anyone
that Paxton, born in 1801 of quite humble parentage, rose from
the modest position of an under-gardener in the Arboretum at
Chiswick, to be superintendent of the Duke’s gardens at Chats-
worth, and manager of his Derbyshire estates ; and that he designed
the palace of crystal in which was held the first great international
exhibition.

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CHISWICK HOUSE

A feature of the conservatory is the bank, or thicket, of magnifi-
cent camellia shrubs, or rather trees, for they rise from the ground
to the roof. They extend the entire length of the glass-house.
which is three hundred feet; the glossy beauty of their smooth
dark leaves would render them attractive at any season ; even when
out of flower, but in the earlier months of the year, when, from
base to summit, they are laden with blossoms—rpse, scarlet and
white—the effect of the long perspective of the conservatory,
studied from either extremity, is really wonderful. The camellia
is an aristocratic flower, almost as much so, although in shape and
manner of growth it differs widely from it, as the stately white
Nile Lily, of which the conservatory at Chiswick shows fine speci-
mens. There are fashions in floriculture as in everything else,
and except in old-fashioned greenhouses like this, one rarely
meets now with the exquisite waxen flowers that Japan and China
sent to us. Yet they are no more stiff than the sunflower or the
dahlia, or the hollyhock, which we admire so much, and they are
quite as decorative, and more lasting. Why, then, are they
banished ? Is it because some thirty years ago a craze set in for
cottage flowers, old English flowers, to the exclusion of foreign
ones? Up to a certain point the preference was explained, since
no one can deny the peculiar attractiveness and sweetness of such
—but it ran to absurd extremes. The glorious scarlet geranium,
for instance, was voted vulgar, although the vulgarity only lay
in the bad taste which could plant it in a “ribbon” border, or
contrast it with the peculiarly inharmonious yellow of the cal-
ceolaria ; consequently many gardens have been denied altogether
the cheerful blaze of “Tom Thumb ” and his brethren; and those
who in the last generation pretended to special culture, and arrayed
themselves in sad-coloured serges, and art muslins of secondary
and tertiary tint—although they highly approved the daffodil,
did not altogether despise the violet, nor quite taboo the rose—
mostly shunned flowers of indefinite form, and of positive colour,
and sat up all night worshipping lilies! Truly the last generation
saw the apotheosis of the lily, the columbine, and the Canterbury
bell, and all other flowers of undefined shape and pale complexion.

In March, when the bright petals of the camellia commence to
drop, making a splash of red on the ground below the shrubs, the
conservatory at Chiswick begins to think of putting on its summer

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robe, for at midsummer it wears a new, and very lovely aspect.
The gardener has then filled the space to the left with rows of
choice greenhouse plants, in bloom. All down the long vista, and
pendant from the glass roof, the cup-like blossoms of fuchsias
that have climbed all over it inside, soften the glare from the
hot sun which filters through them, making a cool green shade
that is very restful and agreeable to the eye. The fuchsia flowers
are purple and red, red and white, and white and purple; and
they hang like myriads of silent fairy bells. ‘“‘ Heard melodies
are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter,’”’ sings Keats—maybe
these bells do actually ring, or chime the hour, for ears that,
unlike ours, are not too dull to hear them!

One of the Misses Berry, those neighbours of Horace Walpole
who were his great friends, writing in her journal under date of
June Ist, 1818, says: ‘‘ Drove with the Duke of Devonshire
in his curricle to Chiswick, where he showed me all the alterations
that he was about to make, in adding the garden of Lady Mary
Coke’s house to his own. The house is down, and in the garden
he has constructed a magnificent hot-house, with a conservatory
for flowers, the middle under a cupola; altogether it is three
hundred feet long. The communication between the two gardens
is through the old greenhouse, of which they have made a double
arcade, making the prettiest effect imaginable.’’ It was this Duke
who also brought to Chiswick the beautiful gates, rumour of
which sent us forth as children on a futile voyage of discovery.
But besides his horticultural tastes, the sixth Duke of Devonshire
had a great interest in wild animals, and a love of Natural History.
He actually had a menagerie, of which his sister Harriet, Countess
of Granville, gives an amusing account. Among the animals
were “a few kangaroos who, if affronted, will rip up anyone as
soon as look at him; elks, emus, and other pretty sportive death-
dealers playing about.” ‘‘ The lawn,” we are told, was “‘ beautifully
variegated by an Indian Bull and his spouse, and goats of all colours
and dimensions.”

Sir Walter Scott writes in his Diary on May 17th, 1828: “I
drove down to Chiswick, where I had never been before. A
numerous and gay party were assembled to walk and enjoy the
beauty of that Palladian House. The place and highly ornamental
garden belonging to it, resembles a picture by Watteau. There

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CHISWICK HOUSE

is some affectation in the picture, but in the ensemble the original
looked very well. The Duke of Devonshire received me with the
best possible manners. The scene was dignified by the presence
of an immense elephant, who, under the charge of a groom,
wandered up and down, giving an air of Asiatic pageantry to the
entertainment. I was never more sensible,” continues the author
of “ Waverley,” ‘of the dignity which largeness of size, and
freedom of movement give to this otherwise very ugly animal.”
This elephant occupied a paddock near the house, and his in-
telligence, docility and affection were remarkable.

Chiswick House, where in health Charles James Fox was a
frequent visitor, was the scene of his end. In August, 1806, not six
months after the death of his friend Georgiana, the great Whig
statesman and orator, came there to die. He was unable to stand
the fatigue of the journey to his own home of St. Anne’s Hill,
and it was hoped that the change to the country—for Chiswick
was in the country a hundred and twelve years ago—would do some-
thing towards restoring him to health, and his nephew, Lord
Holland, tells us that for a while the beauty of the gardens outside,
and of the works of art within, did indeed revive and benefit him ;
but only for a time; and a fortnight later, in September, 1806,
he passed away, with the words: ‘‘ I die happy,” on his lips.

Twenty-one years after the death of Fox, George Canning came
to Chiswick, also to die. He had caught cold at the Duke of York’s
funeral, and his health had already begun to give way, when, on
the death of Lord Liverpool, he was called upon to form a ministry.
The difficulty he found in doing so, the anxiety and strain he
had undergone, proved too much for him. He came to Chiswick
House to recuperate, but three weeks later, on the 8th of August,
1827, he died. It is said, but of the truth of the statement I
am doubtful, that he passed away in the same room in which
Fox had breathed his last.

With regard to Fox and the affection with which he was regarded
by his associates, Sir George Trevelyan tells us that it was said
in 1794: ‘‘ There are only forty of them, and any of them would
be hanged for Fox.”

Sir Robert Adair, British Minister at Vienna and Constantinople,
who died in 1825, at the age of ninety-two, was actually the last
survivor of Fox’s friends. Many years after the death of Fox,

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he was walking through Chiswick House with the poet Rogers,
who relates the anecdote, describing how they wandered up and
down stairs, and into various apartments.

The diplomatist asked the poet in which room Fox had died.
‘“In this very room,” was the answer—whereupon Adair burst
into tears, “‘ with a vehemence of grief,” says Rogers, “‘ I hardly
ever saw exhibited by a man.”

Chiswick House is thus full of memories of great men. In
addition to those whom Lord Burlington collected around him,
it is highly probable that all the wits and politicians who fre-
quented Holland House and made it famous, at times wandered
down to the Villa, received its hospitality and enjoyed its lovely
gardens—for ties both social and political, united the houses of
Cavendish and Fox. In later times all the distinguished people
in art, literature and politics must have visited Chiswick, for
the sixth Duke of Devonshire entertained lavishly. He took
but little part in politics, but he went on a special embassy to
Moscow in 1826, on the occasion of the Czar Nicholas’s Coronation,
when he is said to have spent £50,000. He received the Allied
sovereigns when they visited London in 1814, when the Czar
Alexander, the King of Prussia, and Marshal Bliicher, were of the
company; and in 1844 he entertained the Czar Nicholas, and the
King of Saxony, at Chiswick, with great magnificence. Whether
at this time of his life, when nearly seventy years of age, he retained
his passion for Natural History, and still permitted animals to
wander about his grounds, I do not know, but on the occasion of
Czar Nicholas’s visit, according to Mr. Lloyd Sanders in his in-
teresting ‘‘ Old Kew, Chiswick and Kensington,” four giraffes—
perhaps hired for the event—were conspicuously present in the
gardens. The statement when I read it, recalled a fact connected
with my childhood, which I have never entirely forgotten. When
I was walking out with my mother, or nurse, we often remarked
with curiosity, a large and somewhat dilapidated wooden building,
standing in a bit of waste ground, not a quarter of a mile from
the place where I now know Chiswick House to be; for this was
long before the time when we made our pilgrimage to find the
golden gates. Painted on the wall in large letters, more than half
effaced by time and weather, were scrawled the mysterious. words
“ Four Giraffes.” When I first read of the giraffes at Chiswick

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House, it was impossible not to connect one circumstance with
the other, and to wonder whether the wooden shed with the un-
explained legend on its walls, could possibly have been that
which, once upon a time, had sheltered the queer-looking animals
provided by the Duke of Devonshire for the Czar’s entertainment.
I think it must have been so.

The sixth Duke left Chiswick House to his sister, the widowed
Countess of Granville, who spent the last four years of her life
there; occupying herself with works of philanthropy. Lloyd
Sanders tells us, on the authority of her son, the late Mr. Leveson
Gower, that ‘‘ she wished to sell the camellias in the hot-houses
in order to devote the proceeds to charity, but she had some
misgivings whether she was justified in doing so.” No one raising
any objection, she wrote to .a friend: ‘‘ Dear me, how rich my
poor will be ! ”

Among interesting people who have visited Chiswick and planted
memorial trees in the grounds, Garibaldi, brought there in 1869
by the Duchess of Sutherland, was one of the most prominent. In
more recent years, the late King Edward, when Prince of Wales,
had the place for a time; and the present King and his brothers
spent some of their childish years there. At the present day the
spacious and beautiful gardens that I have so inadequately de-
scribed, and the history of which I have essayed to trace, afford
solace and refreshment to the mentally afflicted. The objects
of the tenderest care and skill, their heavy lot is here alleviated,
and in these lovely and peaceful surroundings they have every
possible chance of ultimate recovery.

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CHAPTER VIII
WALPOLE HOUSE

Tue Maui, CHiswick

. HEN the present century was in its teens and on a sun-

shiny morning in June, there drove up to the great

iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s Academy for young
ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses
in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered
hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour. A black servant
who reposed on the box beside the fat coachman, uncurled his
bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up opposite Miss Pinker-
ton’s shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell at least a score
of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows of
the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have
recognized the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinker-
ton herself, rising over the geranium pots in the window of that
lady’s own drawing-room.”’

At the moment when William Makepeace Thackeray wrote
these words in the well-known opening to “ Vanity Fair,” there
is no doubt that he had in his mind’s eye Walpole House—the
beautiful old Restoration House on Chiswick Mall at which, once
upon a time, he had been at school. A certain Doctor Turner
was the pedagogue into whose care the little fatherless boy from
India had been entrusted. There is no reason to think that he
was not kindly treated—though he seems to have been very unhappy
there—and to have attempted to run away, but got no farther
than Young’s Corner. A pretty, gentle, timid child who was

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short-sighted, and did not care for games—he was probably merely
homesick, and pining for the mother whom he had left behind
in India, and who soon married again, wedding one who made an
excellent stepfather to her son.

So far as I know no tradition connects Walpole House with
a young ladies’ seminary—but on the authority of Lysons, writing
about the time Thackeray was born—there had been for some years
a boarding-school for girls at “‘ the College House,” which was.
also on the Mall, but a little farther west, and of which the Principal
was a certain Mrs. Solicux.

College House—of which no vestige now remains—had had
an interesting history. In the reign of Elizabeth, the old
Prebendal Manor House which stood at the east of Chiswick
Church, and the corner of Chiswick Lane, was partially pulled
down, and the materials used for building a sanatorium—‘“ a
school for Her Majesty’s scholars at Cheswycke in times of in-
fection.” Up to 1733, the Master, Usher, and forty scholars of
Westminster, regularly retired thither during the frequent and
terrible visitations of the plague, so that for over 160 years there
was a very close connection between the great Abbey school
and its river-side offspring, in the Prebendal Manor of Chiswick.
The name ‘“‘Chiswicks” applied, still I believe, to the “ studies ”
used by the Foundation boys (at the present day eighty in number)
—sufficiently attest this fact.

Lloyd Sanders, who makes reference to the College House
in his account of ‘‘ Chiswick,” thinks that the actual existence
of a boarding-school for girls on the Mall, so very. near
to it, probably suggested to Thackeray Miss Pinkerton’s famous
“Academy for Young Ladies,” only that he located it in
Walpole House instead of the College House. I agree, but
go farther. Several generations of reverend Headmasters in
mortar-board and- college gown, some thin and ascetic, others
portly and rubicund, have walked that pleasant road by the
Kyot, or island—from end to end. They were, all alike, the
terror of small boys: each in turn staunchly upholding at least
three of the cardinal virtues—for justice and prudence demanded
of them that they should not spare the rod and spoil the child,
and in this respect they fulfilled their duty—but they practised
fortitude by proxy—on their pupils with the birch.

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The awful Dr. Busby, who for fifty-five years, ruled Westminster
School, left behind him an unenviable reputation for severity ;
and many are the tales of his excessive addiction to the birch.

I think it must have been of this famous pedagogue that the
story was told that when on one occasion a dozen boys appeared
before him, he at once concluded that they were misdemeanants
—sent up to him for correction, and had already birched half of
them, before the remainder could explain that they were the
new confirmation class !

The doctor numbered among his pupils Dryden, Locke, Prior
and Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester—and was able to boast that
at one time, sixteen of the bishops who then occupied the bench,
had been punished by his “ little rod.”

It is probable that these and similar stories haunting the College
House, and the dwelling still nearer to Walpole House in which the
School staff resided when at Chiswick—and reaching the ears
of the boy Thackeray, impressed his childish imagination; and
so much so, that, in after years—the plot of his immortal novel—
demanding the introduction of a schoolmistress rather than a
schoolmaster—he created Miss Pinkerton, ‘‘ that austere and
god-like woman ”—‘‘ that majestic woman,” the friend of the great
lexicographer ; the correspondent of Mrs. Chapone—of whom, never-
theless, Becky Sharp so completely got the better.

Among the earliest tenants of Walpole House—which must
have gone by another name in her time—was one of the three
notorious women of whom Macaulay in his history says, that
“their charms were the boast, and their vices the disgrace of
three nations.”” No longer young in 1685, when Charles II. died,
‘** Barbara, Duchess of Cleveland ’”—better known as Lady Castle-
maine—“ still retained some traces of that superb and voluptuous
loveliness, which, twenty years before, overcame the hearts of
men.” In her old age she retired to Chiswick—then a pretty
waterside village chiefly inhabited by fisher folk, and watermen.
She died in 1709 and was buried in Chiswick Church, in company
far too good for so graceless a dame. She had been created
Duchess of Cleveland in 1670, with limitations to her son Charles
Fitzroy, and his heirs male—and his name appears among the
inhabitants of Chiswick in 1723—so that presumably he retained
Walpole House during his lifetime as a residence.

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WALPOLE HOUSE

The tower of Chiswick Church, the only part that has not under-
gone material changes in restoration, has kept watch and ward
over the hamlets of Chiswick and Sutton, for 500 years. It forms
a landmark towards Kew. It has witnessed many changes, for
most of the older houses which must have given great distinction
to the neighbourhood in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
have one by one disappeared. Corney House, the old home of
the Russell family, with the beautiful gardens by the river-side
in which Queen Elizabeth walked—was pulled down in 1832,
and on part of the site Messrs. Thornycroft established their
boat-building works, where the first launches made of steel were
constructed, and here, in 1876, the first torpedo boat for the British
navy, named “ The Lightning,”’ was built.

College House, before mentioned, has also passed away; so,
too, has Sutton Court, formerly the Manor House of ‘‘ The Dean’s ”’
—or Manor of Sutton—where at one time dwelt the Viscount and
Viscountess Fauconberg. The Viscountess was the third daughter
of the Protector Cromwell. After her father’s death she favoured
the Restoration, which her husband certainly helped to bring about.

Left a widow, she lived on at Chiswick for many years, dying
a benefactress to the poor of the hamlet.

These and other memorials of a vanished age have all, with one
exception passed away, and left no trace, and now the oldest
houses remaining in Chiswick Mall, are mostly, Queen Anne or
Georgian.

The exception is Walpole House, attractively situated on the
water-side, with the willowy island separating it from the
broad course of the stream. It is a beautiful example of
the early Wren period. Its windows command extensive views
towards Kew on the one hand, and Fulham on the other. There
is no garden in front, but there is a flagged space between the
front door and the wrought-iron entrance gate—and in this respect
the place does not correspond with Thackeray’s own drawing
of Miss Pinkerton’s Academy, the variations being probably made
intentionally. On the river side of the Mall, the row of dainty little
shut-in gardens—each one belonging to the house it faces—are,
a quaint and pretty feature of the locality.

Beyond these the long narrow Eyot—green with willows in
the summer, yellow with kingcups in the spring, is divided from

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the bank to which it is parallel, by a narrow strip of water, the
main stream running on its farther side. The banks are muddy.
when the water is low; but at exceptionally high tides—coinciding
with a season of rain and storm, the basement kitchens of Walpole
House are sometimes flooded. They are large, rambling, and
picturesque kitchens. Not far from the garden-door is a curious.
fixture. It is a spacious barred cage—the bars far apart—suggestive
of an exaggerated hen-coop—and traditionally said to have been
used as a place of detention for refractory pupils in the days when.
Walpole House was a boys’ school. The story is not improbable,
since apparently there is no other purpose to which such a cage.
could have been put, and since children were often treated with
much sternness a hundred years ago. If indeed so used in
Dr. Turner’s time, the fear of incarcération on a_bread-and-
water diet, may have inspired young Thackeray’s attempt to run
away.

The restoration and improvements in the place made chiefly
by the late Sir Herbert and Lady Tree, who resided there for
many years—have been carefully carried out, and happily for
Chiswick, which should be proud of the old mansion—are con-
gruous, and in correct taste.

It is by no means clear how Walpole House came by its name.
Probably some member of the Walpole family may have possessed
it for a time. One of these, the Hon. Thomas Walpole, son of
Horatio, Lord Walpole, lies buried in Chiswick Church, and Orford
House, and Strawberry House, the latter next door to Walpole
House, are significant of some connection with the master of
Strawberry Hill. The house wherein the frail Barbara ended
her wasted days, has had a chequered history, and one a little
difficuit to trace. I think it must have been subsequent to Dr.
Turner’s retirement from school-mastering, that it became for a
time a boarding-house at which Daniel O’Connell, the Irish “‘ libera-
tor,’ stayed. Forty-eight years ago, and possibly during some
years later, it was again a boys’ school, kept by a Mr. John Watson
Allen. But public day schools began to come into fashion, and
with these he probably found it difficult to compete. But before
he gave up the attempt to do so he did yeoman’s service to all
lovers of the picturesque, for I understand it was he who suggested
to Sir John Thornycroft the purchase of the place with its.

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charming garden, in order to rescue it from the fate which
threatens all old houses in unfashionable districts.

For which of us does not recall some such mansion in one of
the outlying districts around the metropolis? A house that has
obviously seen better days, and is still striving to hold up its head
above its plebeian, or upstart neighbours. We have all passed
such in the motor-’bus or the tram; and, through the bars of its
wrought-iron gates, have had glimpses of green-sward and spread-
ing cedars. The big board set up above the high brick walls of
the garden, announces that “this desirable residence, standing
in its own ground—with coach house, and stabling,”’ and so forth,
‘is for sale.” Fifty or sixty years ago maybe, it was a fine country
house; but the town, and the shabby side of it—had crept up,
elbowed it, and finally passed it by, leaving it derelict. For some
time it struggled bravely against its impending fate, becoming a
hospital, or mdustrial school; or else an institution for the blind,
the halt, and the lame ; or it was turned to account as local muni-
cipal offices—but factory or board-school hemming it in, its situation
became too noisy, so that ere long a firm of housebreakers was
called in to pull it down. And though reconstruction followed
disintegration, it was that of the speculative builder, who put up
a tall, ugly, tenement building for factory hands, on its site. And
when, in a year or two, we passed that way again—the cedars had
disappeared, the oaks and the elms were felled, and a double row
of workmen’s cottages stood where once was a fair avenue! Alas!
for the house that had once been a home whence may have
radiated gracious influences and generous impulses, whose walls
were storied, could we but have read them; alas! for the tide of
fashion set the other way and left it stranded !

And the end of Walpole House would have been much the same,
had it not been for the beneficent intervention of Sir John Thorny-
croft. :

Just as Lieutenant-Colonel Shipway, by his spirited action
saved Hogarth’s country house from demolition, by purchasing
it and presenting it to the Middlesex Urban District Council, so
Sir John Thornycroft at an opportune moment, bought Walpole
House lest it should be turned to objectionable uses.

He did so none too soon, for though the Mall lies as it were, in
a sort of backwater, away from the traffic on the high road to

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Richmond, and (protected on one side by the river) is so out of
the way that no trams or ’buses are likely to disturb its picturesque
seclusion—it is a fact that no sooner was it known that Sir John
had bought it, than someone in Hammersmith came to him and
sought to purchase it from him, in order to turn it into a steam
laundry !

No member of the Thornycroft family—a family distinguished
both in art and engineering science, has resided at Walpole House
—but one has made great use of the garden. Beautiful in itself,
the garden gains in interest from the fact that the group in plaster
of the well-known Boadicea group at Westminster, the work of
the late Thomas Thornycroft, was housed for some time in a
corrugated iron building erected in the garden in a spot at some
distance from the house itself, which it is probable was formerly
the playing-ground of Dr. Turner’s pupils. ‘‘ The Boadicea group,”
to quote from a letter from Lady Thornycroft, “‘ was cast at
Frome, but lived in plaster for some years in the building put
up for it by my husband, until he could get a site given whereon
it could be put up in bronze.” She also tells me, in this con-
nection, that “‘ A really interesting fact is that my husband, feeling
sure that motor vehicles would become general, started twenty-three
years ago, ‘the Steam Wagon Company’ as a private enterprise;
not in connection with the Church Wharf works where torpedo-
boats, and destroyers were built. The Steam Wagon Co. has now
become the motor works at Basingstoke, where the weekly turn-out
is over twenty—sometimes thirty motor lorries a week, all of
which are built for the Government, besides motors for boats
for the Admiralty. ‘ Boadicea House,’ as we called the building,
was the early workshop for the motor vehicles which took the
place of the steam-driven lorries first made.”

‘“‘ Boadicea House ”’ no longer exists—the site that once it stood
on is now a stretch of green lawn—bordered with flowers—and
separated from the tennis lawn by a pergola of considerable length,
and of much beauty when the sun, shining through the trellised
roof, sends flickering lights and shadows across the walk below.

The erection of ‘‘ Boadicea House” in the rear of the garden
must necessarily have destroyed its picturesqueness for a time,
and corrugated iron in a Restoration garden seems incongruous.
What would Evelyn have said to it ?

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v61 asng uapiwg pup asnoyy fo MIA -GASNOH ATOdIVAL

WALPOLE HOUSE

But when the late Sir Herbert Tree took the place on a long
lease from Sir John Thornycroft, he proceeded to restore the
house and rehabilitate the garden, and this, he and Lady Tree
accomplished, in the judicious, tasteful, and correct fashion that
might have been expected of them.

When I was drawing there in the absence of its present owners,
the skill and industry of one old gardener kept the garden in order ;
his kindly wife acted as caretaker, and the pair had evidently
conceived a high regard for their former mistress, and often re-
marked that ‘‘ Lady Tree planted this” or ‘‘ Lady Tree did that,”
from which I realized that she and her distinguished husband
must have cared much for the place, and cared for it intelligently.
The finest standard roses were of Lady Tree’s planting. The
stone-flagged pathway which appears in my drawing, and the
paved sunken area, to which, from the garden, the descent is by
stone steps—were probably features of the house in its earlier
days; how grateful should we be that, having fallen into
disrepair, asphalt, or gravel, was not substituted for stone, as in
philistine hands, one or the other might easily have been.

Every ancient house perforce has its ghost story; its respecta-
bility would be impugned without it : Walpole House is no excep-
tion. There is a tale that a weird old man clad in black velvet,
with iron-grey hair, and a sad, but not unpleasing countenance, |
his face twisted and drawn down by paralysis, is occasionally
seen in the upper rooms, but who he was in life, and what the
purport of his visitations, nobody seems to know. The house
with its broad, well-lighted staircase, is indeed much too cheerful
to fittingly harbour ghosts.

Its present owner is a picture-lover, and many beautiful works
of art now adorn it; they are principally by the late Sir Edward
Burne-Jones. To see these came one day someone who requested
permission to view the works of Mr. John Burns !

‘The grand old gardener and his wife’ to whom I have before
referred, far from smiling ‘‘ at the claims of long descent” as
did their Tennysonian prototypes—revelled in apocryphal stories,
testifying to the antiquity of the house. It is an absolute fact
‘that, first the one and then the other, informed me with delightful
naiveté, that ‘‘ Queen Elizabeth used to come here to see her
minister, Mr. Pitt,” that even the story of King Alfred and the

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cakes had some connection—though I forget what it was—with
Walpole House, and that ‘‘ Henry the Kighth came here to see one of
his ladies.” I felt it my duty to defend even a royal Bluebeard
from so unwarranted an aspersion—and I explained as gravely
as I could that ‘“‘ he was not that sort of person at all! That
he had six wives !’? The remark fell on deaf ears, and no doubt
as to the truth of the stories remained in the minds of my in-
formants, and probably they still confuse the husband of Anne
Boleyn with Charles II.—and believe my Lady Castlemaine to
have been Henry’s enchantress !

On one warm September day, when I was drawing at Walpole
House, though I myself sat in the shade, I could no longer work,
for the sun had moved round and altered the effect in my subject.
Therefore I put down my brush and gave myself up—as one is
prone to do in old gardens—to the pleasure of day-dreaming.

And just as at Lambeth the year before, I had seen in fancy
the Maiden Queen and a brilliant retinue, issue from the great
Tudor gateway into the courtyard of the Archbishop’s palace—so
now I saw the “‘ Majestic Miss Pinkerton ”’ standing in the door-
way, and gesticulating—for I could not hear a word she said—
and realized that she was giving instructions to kind Miss Jemima.

The pair passed inside, and as I waited, wondering if they
would return—two girls—both fair to look upon, their arms round
each other’s waists—came out of the house and tripped across the
lawn to where I sat; and at once I knew them for Becky Sharp,
and Amelia Sedley !

Then a curious thing happened; a thing that until then I
should have said never could have chanced save in a dream—
where chronology is of no account, and when the past and the
present—the real and the unreal, get inextricably mixed—a pretty,
rather delicate-looking little boy, ran out of the house and followed
the girls—a boy with curly head, and short-sighted eyes, and in-
tuitively I recognized him as the home-sick pupil from overseas—
little Willie Thackeray. The two girls turned and spoke to him,
and it was then I remembered that here, these three first met,
and I knew that I was witnessing the reconstruction of their
meeting, and I knew also that for nearly thirty years they would
not meet again, but that during all that long time the boy would.
not cease to remember the maidens and the sunny garden !

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The trio vanished indoors, but though I watched, nobody else
came forth—never a Duchess of Cleveland, or a Daniel O’Connell,
not even a sculptor who had wrought a great work, and made
much use of the garden; nor the eminent actors who later trod
that stage—not. one of these came into my day-dream. And this
was not unnatural when one comes to think of it, because romance
is more lasting than history—and while fiction of the first class will
live for ever in the human mind, bald, unadorned facts are forgotten.

‘The Castlemaine’? I am told, drew her last breath in a
panelled upper room to the front; where two large windows face
the Eyot, and another, set in the angle of the house, commands
the whole length of the Mall, the lovely bend of the Thames towards
Kew, and glorious views of the sunset. This may be so, but I am
more interested to know that in a certain little attic in the roof,
with a tiny window buried in greenery, had slept the dependent,
Becky Sharp, one who was no better, but no worse, than the
Duchess herself; and that the sweet face of the well-to-do pupil
from Russell Square, had looked out upon the garden from yonder
window to the left, on the first-floor back; the window that is
nearest to the great sumach tree, in the corner next to Strawberry
House.

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CHAPTER IX
HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS

ET in gardens lovely enough to have alone made it famous,
the unique characteristic of Holland House is the fact that
it is the only noble and ancient family mansion of wide

historic interest and much picturesqueness, that lies, at the present
day, well within the London radius.

Portions of the Home Park, that once stretched to the Uxbridge
Road on the north, and nearly to Brook Green on the west—also
Lord Holland’s farm on the south-west side, have long disappeared.
““ Nightingale Lahe”’ is no more, but a few of the patriarchal
trees that were planted when Evelyn’s “ Sylva”? roused the gentry
of England to replace the oaks and the beeches that had vanished
in the Civil Wars, still remain.

But Tisdall’s dairy stands on ground where, not so very long
ago, lowing cattle waded deep in buttercups, or cropped the clover ;
and the Earl of Warwick’s dairymaids turned homewards after
milking time, to listen later to love tales, under the trysting oak
in what was to become Lord Leighton’s garden. But that was
when London was far, far away, and

“* When all the world was young, lad,
All the world was young.”

I have told elsewhere, in the chapter on Chiswick House,
how in childhood we wandered afar to find the golden gates of
a fairy tale, and how with myopic vision found them not, because
they were close at home ; (were I moralizing, I think a lesson might
be drawn from that). Likewise, full many a time in student

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days, have I turned up Holland Walk to the spot whence, standing
on the public pathway, it was possible, at that time, to catch
a glimpse across the stately avenue, of the courtyard and principal
entrance, and I have wondered, and wondered, what lay beyond !
Nor was this in the least from idle curiosity ; I cared not who
came out. Had any done so it would have destroyed the spell
of romance and of mystery that Holland House, its gables, its
turrets, and all that could at that period be seen of its terraces
and arcades, had, almost all my life, laid upon me. That glimpse
of the interior at such times vouchsafed, was a glimpse into the
world of romance—for I then knew little or nothing of the actual
history of the place. It was the positive architectural charm
and picturesqueness of that particular corner, added to its mystery,
that always fascinated me—so that returning under the stately ,
trees, where the twisted roots of the giant elms still push them-
selves up through the soil, and their branches interlace overhead
—to the dusty pavements, the dull brick and mortar of Kensing-
tonia—to the daily round, the common task (for an artist’s
serious training has its irksome side), was much like receiving
a chilling welcome from the Present after an excursion into the
fanciful Past.

And Lord Holland himself ? Looking very lonely and solitary
as he sits there behind his iron grid—as though counting the "buses
that pass the boundaries of his ancestral acres—not the real Lord
Holland, of course, but his counterpart in bronze.

Stationary, unmoved, and immovable—hatless, whether in

_ summer heat or winter’s frost. Why is he there? Does he watch
the realization of much he had dreamed of and striven for—the
freeing of the slave, Catholic Emancipation, Reform—reform of,
and for, the masses—the greater happiness of the greater number ?
If not, what else can he see in these new men and women with
their new-fangled manners and dress? these hurrying, hustling
crowds of the twentieth century, who, whether of the leisured
or the working classes, pay no heed to him? Why does he not
turn his back on the long, unlovely street ?

The reader will know before this chapter closes.

The air of aloofness, of mystery and repose, in which Holland
House is now more than ever enveloped—for new and thick plan-
tations of trees are growing up rapidly between the old house and

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the road—adds tantalizingly to its charm; only in winter, or early
spring, or in the fall of the leaf, may one now, from the roof of
an omnibus, catch sight of its tall chimney-tops above the
embosoming trees. Therefore, is it more than ever—at least in
my eyes—some palace of fairyland in which a Sleeping Princess
dreams away the centuries—may the kiss of the Prince never
be that of the jerry builder !

It cannot be claimed for Holland House that it has the symmetry
and proportion of strict architectural beauty—much of its charm
lies in the unexpectedness and irregularity of the pile—but it is emi-
nently picturesque, and being so has always attracted the attention
of painters—but it has been very difficult to get permission to
draw there. Therefore I render grateful thanks to Mary, Lady
Iichester, for making an exception in my favour.

There is a tradition that Vandyke dwelt at Holland House for
a year or more; but the fact has not beenestablished. Sir Joshua
Reynolds probably frequented the place—for there is a ‘‘ Reynolds
room ”’—and there, too, is the famous picture of Charles James Fox
as a boy, his aunt, the Lady Sarah Lennox—first love of George IIi.,
and the Lady Susan Strangways. Canova, the sculptor, was enter-
tained there; and Wilkie was an occasional visitor. This we
know from Macaulay’s letters, but otherwise I can find no trace
of any steady and special encouragement of the fine arts by the
third Lord Holland. The late G. F. Watts, who was an intimate
friend of the owners, and Sir Frederick Leighton, had the entrée
in the eighties, during the reigns of the fourth Lord and Lady
Holland, and of the Earl and Countess of Ilchester. :

Independently of the beauty of its gardens and the picturesque-
ness of its exterior (this is not the place in which to refer to its
internal treasures), Holland House has the additional attraction
of a famous history. In the seventeenth century Cromwell and
Ireton crossed its stage; Fairfax and William Penn were for a
time resident there.

But after the Civil Wars were over, the place played no great
part in military history; but it concerned itself greatly with
politics as well as with literature. Joseph Addison’s connection
with it is commemorated in the name of the well-known road
and station : and it was the boyish home of Charles James Fox,
the great Whig leader. In the next generation the great house

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attracted to itself whole constellations of wits and illustrious men
of letters, who clustered round the engaging personality of its
genial and cultivated master, the third Lord Holland. He had
‘ adopted the political faith of his famous uncle, and Holland House
was for long the centre of the social life of the Whig party. To
mention Holland House at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
is to think of Rogers, and Sydney Smith and Sheridan, of Campbell
and Moore, Byron and Scott ; of Mackintosh and Canning, Hallam,
Macaulay, of Talleyrand, “ the diplomatic wit and witty diploma-
tist;”? of Guizot, Madame de Staél; of Philip Francis, supposed
author of “ Junius,” of Sir Samuel Romilly, of Lords Chancellor
Thurlow, Lyndhurst, and Erskine; of Eldon, who spoke for the
prosecution, at the trial of Queen Caroline, and of Brougham, who
defended her, and who later carried the Reform Bill; of the
two Humboldts, and Sir Humphrey Davy, Lord John Russell, and
Palmerston, of Lord Holland himself, actively interested in the
abolition of the Slave Trade, Catholic Emancipation and Reform—
nor can we forget the extraordinary woman who kept these guests
in order, and whose pungent wit added spice, and sometimes
vinegar, to the intellectual diet.

The active history of the house begins when Henry Rich, Baron
Kensington and Earl of Holland, married the only daughter of
Sir Walter Cope of Cope Castle, Kensington, and succeeding in
right of his wife, changed the name of the mansion to Holland
House, and entertained there lavishly. The second son of the
Earl of Warwick and of Penelope his wife—the ‘‘ Stella” of Sir
Philip Sidney, Rich was a splendid courtier, and a great favourite
of James I. He modelled himself on the pattern of the Duke of
Buckingham, and almost equalled him in magnificence.

However, when the Civil Wars broke out, the Earl wavered in
his allegiance to King Charles—played fast and loose, and as a
consequence, did not retain the confidence of either of the con-
tending parties. Clarendon remarks that he was “a fine gentle-
man in good times, but too much desired to have ease and plenty
when the King could have neither, and did think poverty the most
unsupportable thing that could befall any man in his condition.”

The sequel was naturally and inevitably tragic. Rich, returning
to the King’s side, headed an unsuccessful Royalist rising at
Kingston-on-Thames—was taken prisoner, kept for a time a

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captive in his own house, the scene of many meetings of the Par-
liament party,” and just three months after Charles’s death he
ended his* “days on the scaffold. An exquisite to the last, he was
beheaded in a“ white satin waistcoat, and a white satin cap with -
silver lace. His head was exposed at the Tower, and his headless
corpse was brought back next day to Kensington, and buried
in St. Mary Abbot’s churchyard.

After this event General Fairfax made Holland House his resi-
dence for a time; and Cromwell is said to have conferred with
Ireton on the lawn in front of the mansion, choosing that spot
in order to be out of hearing of others, since, Ireton being deaf,
it was necessary to shout at him. However, the widowed countess
herself—probably through the influence of her brother-in-law, the
Earl of Warwick—a staunch Parliamentarian—was ere long per-
mitted to return to her home, and during her reign there, Holland
House was one of the great mansions at which stage plays were
privately performed, although, by the laws of the Commonwealth,
they had been prohibited.

Her son, the second Earl of Holland, succeeded to the title and
estates of his uncle, the Earl of Warwick; yet notwithstanding, the
Riches, after the Restoration, do not seem to have recovered their
former position. Apparently Holland House lost for a time its
place in the sun, for we find that down to the middle of the eighteenth
century it was sometimes let to strangers, one of them being the
famous William Penn.

Later on it narrowly escaped becoming a Royal residence ;_ but
ultimately William and Mary settled at Nottingham House, since
known as Kensington Palace—the Court, however, occupied Holland
House until Nottingham House was ready for its reception ; there-
fore when we read that after this ‘‘ the garden of Holland House
was being prepared for lodgers ”—we surmise that arrangements
were made for the accommodation of the lords and ladies in
attendance, and their servants—the term‘‘ lodgings,” in the
eighteenth century, having a more distinguished signification than
at present.

The most illustrious name in English literature associated with
Holland House, is that of J oseph Addison, who, marrying the widow
of the sixth Earl of Warwick, went to reside there during the last
three years of his life, and died there in 1719.

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HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS

But the “ Spectator’s ” association with the spot began many
years before this. He had had a small house and a pretty garden
at Chelsea, and to quote Lord Macaulay’s well-known essay,
“in the days of Anne and George I., milkmaids and sportsmen
wandered between green hedges and over fields bright with
daisies from Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames.
Addison and Lady Warwick were country neighbours, and
became intimate friends.”” The great wit and gentle satirist of
men and manners, whose own life was so consistently virtuous—
strove to wean the young Lord Warwick from the vices and the
follies of the town, and to encourage him to live up to his
great place and opportunities—but he failed! ‘‘ Lord Warwick
grew up a rake and Addison fell in love!”—and the gardens
and groves of Holland House have been classic ground ever
since !

Even in those days when mere rank—unsupported by distin-
guished merit or shining talents—counted for more than it does
now, the haughtiest and most aristocratic beauty in her first youth,
which Lady Warwick was not, must have been flattered by the
sincere and delicate devotion of such a man as Addison. He had
genius, and genius that had already received the widest recogni-
tion from an admiring and even affectionate public; for “ Mr.
Spectator ” was a vivid and living personality in thousands of city
homes, and in quiet parsonages and country houses, whose in-
mates had never set eyes on him. There, like The Tatler before
it, the little paper was eagerly watched for—and when read, and
digested, was passed on to others. Its matter, grave or gay,
appealed to everyone, and Addison was. the Spectator, and the
Spectator was the ‘‘ Mode.”

Yet in society he himself was rarely seen: the Countess, who
liked him best when his political star was in the ascendant, would
have preferred a husband who would shine therein. But he shunned
it. He, the most witty, the most charming of companions, when
alone with her or in the company of his intimates, could not be
got to utter a word among strangers, or in the House of Commons.
He was indeed curiously shy—‘‘ shamefaced,”’ “‘ bashful,” he would
himself have designated it; singularly timid, when we consider
his intellectual supremacy, and that he was certainly the most
popular person of the day

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His tragedy of Cato had been a phenomenal success. The
Spectator, when it followed The Tatler, a still greater one. It
ventured boldly, to take a high moral and religious tone, even in
that age of licence, and riotous irreligion. But what need to
enlarge upon its merits? Or to tell how it alternated gravity
with innocent mirth, and moved men to better living, by laughter
as well as by pathos. The Countess must have glowed with pride
—pride in him who wooed her—when she heard Addison’s praises
passed from mouth to mouth, knowing that the choicest treasures
of the great writer’s wit and conversation were still reserved for
her. Rumour says that she was arrogant, and had the pride of
place and birth—but there must have been “ something in her,”
as we should phrase it now, or Addison would not have loved her
so long and faithfully. Therefore I like to think that in her
heart she recognized how far she was beneath him, that when she
opened her Spectator, as she sipped her chocolate or her bohea, a
little smile that was not all triumph in her conquest, but was,
indeed, all tenderness, flickered round her beautiful mouth, when
she read; and I would fain believe that she had indeed the “ pride
of place,” but that it was her place in the heart of her so noble
lover.

Addison was only forty-seven at the time of his death. As is
well known, he summoned his wild young stepson to his bedside
—‘‘ to see how a Christian can die,” referring to which Horace
Walpole sardonically remarked: ‘“‘ He died of brandy!” In this
connection I may mention that the celebrated library at Holland
House, formerly a picture gallery, which runs across the buildings
from east to west, and measures 110 feet by about 17—the great
west window of which is shown in my illustration—is the place
where the famous essayist was in the habit of walking—his de-
tractors said, “‘ with a bottle at one end and a bottle at the other.”
I do not believe this. Addison was in failing health, though still
in early middle age, and if he indulged to some extent in a vice
unhappily very common among men of position in those days—
every excuse should be made for him—particularly if there be
any truth in the assertion that he and the countess whom he had
wooed so long, did not live happily together. ‘‘ Holland House,”
says one author, “is a large mansion, but could not contain Mr.
Addison, the Countess of Warwick, and one guest—peace.”’

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Less than fifty years after Addison’s death, Holland House
passed into the possession of Henry Fox, the younger son of Sir
Stephen Fox, of the Manor House, Chiswick—who was the founder
of the Fox fortunes.

Sir Stephen Fox had begun life in the service of the Earl of
Northumberland, chamberlain to Charles II. while in exile. By
keeping in touch with loyalists at home, Stephen was able to be
the first to announce the death of Cromwell to the King at Brussels,
at a moment when Charles was playing tennis with the Arch-
duke Leopold, and some Spanish Grandees.

Starting on this auspicious foundation, Fox’s advance was
rapid. Evelyn has only good to say of him; but though he used
his great wealth well, there can be no doubt but that as Paymaster
to the King’s Forces in England, he contrived, far too easily, to
amass a very large fortune.

To his credit it must be said that, together with Nell Gwynne,
he was one of the founders of Chelsea Hospital; and he was also
one of the original members of the Royal Society. He served in
four reigns, those of Charles II., James II., William and Mary, and
Queen Anne. At seventy-five he married for the second time ;
his wife, a Miss Christian Hope, being only twenty-six. They were
united at Chiswick Church, and their two sons became respectively
Earl of Ilechester, and Baron Holland.

There was no connection between the families of Rich and
Fox—and “the barony of Holland,” says the Princess Maric
Lichstenstein in her history of Holland House, ‘“ took the place
of the extinct earldom simply because the first Fox proprietor of
Holland House, chose the latter title when elevated to the
peerage.”

Henry Fox, afterwards first Lord Holland, left a memorandum
written when he was fourteen years old, and now in Lord Ilchester’s
possession, beginning: ‘‘My dear Mamma died on ye 21st of
February 1718, and a fortnight afore she died, calling us all about
her, with a mild air she said ‘My Dears, will ye be good? I
am now going to leave you and entreat you to serve and be constant
in your Duty towards him.’ Then taking off all that mildness,
she assumed a more than ordinary majestick air, and directing
her discourse chiefly to my brother said, ‘I don’t desire you, but
command you to be good. ... Don’t be a Fop, don’t be a

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Rake, mind on yr name Stephen Fox; that I hope will keep you
from being wicked. Think on your name, it will even fly in your
face, and say did your Father do so? Think on his virtues and
follow y». Love your Brother I charge you Stephen. -I charge you
all love one another. You have Ennemys enough, make not one
another so; you will have too many Stephen that will flock about
you, court you, and fawn upon you, these are your worst Ennemys,
take care of ys. You Harry having a less fortune, won’t be
subject to so many temptations, but withstand those you have
when you grow up take care and avoid ill company, if you don’t
you are gone... . . Then you’d learn to swear, to drink, to rake
about, to game, and at last be ruined by those, vou unhappily
think your friends. Don’t affect, or think it a genteel or a pretty
thing to be a Rake, for if you are wicked what will your Estate
signifye. . . . Be humble and obliging to and obey your Trustees
and though they may have failings never laugh at them, take
their advice in everything, mind what they say to you; while
you are at School. . . . W" you come of age don’t be conceited
or self-sufficient, don’t think above advice, for y you’d want it
most. . . . I have said all I can think of now. Let me tell you
when I am gone, it will show you Love or hate me, as you obey, or
disobey, these my instructions.’ ”’

I have left spelling and punctuation, written by a mere boy, as
they appear in the original.

The tender mother’s admonitions read strangely when we
consider the extraordinary upbringing, by him who records them,
of his favourite son, afterwards the famous Whig statesman,
Charles James Fox.

The lad was but fourteen when his father took him from Eton
to the Continent where he introduced him to undesirable society,
and supplying him with money for the purpose, during four months
deliberately taught him to gamble. This was at the period when,
as Horace Walpole tells us, ‘‘ young men lose five, ten, fifteen,
thousand pounds in an evening ’’—when the Earl of Carlisle could
write: ‘‘ The hazard last evening was very deep—Meynell won
£4,000, Pigot £5,000 ’’—when we learn from Sir George Trevelyan’s
“« Karly History of Charles James Fox,” that during the years that
preceded the American war “£5,000 was staked on one card, and
£70,000 changed hands in a single night.”

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, One marvels where all the wealth thus squandered came from,
and how even the richest could support such charges, but in
that corrupt period money was easy to get. ‘‘ Private vices,”
says Trevelyan, ‘‘ were reflected in the conduct of public affairs,
and the enormous expenditure which the habits and ideas of
good society inexorably demanded, had to be met by one
expedient or another, and an expedient was not far to seek
when the same men who, as a class, were the most generally
addicted to personal extravagance possessed a_ practical
monopoly of political power. Everybody who had _ influence
in Parliament or at court, used it for the express purpose
of mending or repairing his fortunes. ... One nobleman had
£8,000 a year in sinecures, and the colonelcies of three regi-
ments ... another, an auditor of the Exchequer into which
he never looked, had £8,000 a year in peace time, and £20,000
in years of war.”

Henry Fox himself held many of these lucrative appointments.
Ultimately he became Paymaster to the Forces as his father
had been before him; and whilst holding that post he was de-
nounced in an address of the citizens of London, as a defaulter
to the tune of millions. He cleared himself, but he was always
unpopular.

Before purchasing Holland House Fox had rented it on a lease
of twenty-one years. He did a great deal for the gardens, for he
was an enthusiastic gardener; and his wife, the daughter of the
second Duke of Richmond, whose elopement with Fox had been
a nine days’ society wonder, shared his horticultural tastes. In
a letter to a friend he says: ‘“‘ And if you will permit us, Lady
Caroline has a thousand questions to ask you about flowers, and
not much fewer about plants.” Again, he writes concerning
cypresses. “‘Can you procure me any cones? ... I want also
some acorns of scarlet oak, and a bushel or more of chestnuts for
sowing. Excuse me for troubling you; I think they are less
likely to think of imposing on one so learned, than on your ignorant
and humble servant, H. Fox. P.S. Mr. Watson advised me to
sow something with a hard name, to creep on the ground and
cover with green all the vacant places in my young plantations.
I wish you would tell me what it was.”

A note on the letter, probably written by the recipient, says :

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“Double snowdrops . . . to remind him in March to sow candy,
tuft, Rock stuff, Venus’ looking glass,”’ ete.

Though in some respects, as we have seen, Henry Fox dis-
regarded his mother’s dying advice, his runaway marriage with
Lady Caroline Lennox proved a happy one. He was an affec-
tionate, but over-indulgent father, gratifying every foolish whim
of his children. On one occasion a wall having been pronounced
unsafe, it was to come down, and he had promised Charles James
Fox that he should witness its fall. By some chance the boy was
absent on the day of its destruction, and rather than disappoint
him the father had the wall rebuilt, and again demolished in his
son’s presence. Another time the child wanted to break a watch.
The parent protested. ‘‘ But I must,’”’ persisted the lad. “‘ Oh,
if you must you must,” replied the father, and the watch was
smashed. .

The folly of this sort of bringing-up, and particularly of the
teaching he had given to the boy at the Continental gaming-
tables, probably came home to Henry Fox—when he afterwards
had to pay his son’s gambling debts, amounting to one hundred
and forty thousand pounds. Charles James had certainly learnt
his lesson well.

Nevertheless, to his credit be it told that he never touched a
card while in office—but, unfortunately, most of his life was spent
in opposition. His friends who were devoted to him, once collected
a sum of money for his benefit, and then, considering the matter
rather a delicate one, ‘‘ wondered how he would take it.”’ ‘‘ Take
it!’ exclaimed his father’s friend, George Selwyn the wit, “ why,
quarterly, of course!’ Of Selwyn it is told, that he had an extra-
ordinary passion for looking upon the dead. When Lord Holland
was dying he gave instructions with regard to Selwyn’s admission.
“Tf Mr. Selwyn calls again, let him in; if I am alive F shall be
very glad to see him, if I am dead he will be very glad to see me.”

Lord Holland was clever in repartee and epigram. From the
“Life and Times of Charles James Fox,” we learn that having
stipulated for an earldom and received only a barony, Henry Fox
reproached Lord Bute for so great a breach of faith! “It was
only a pious fraud,” protested Lord Bute; said Fox, ‘“‘ I pereeive
the fraud, my lord, but not the piety.” He had the faults of
his class and time—the same may be said of his famous son; but

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in his case there were shining virtues to counterbalance the faults.
“To Charles James Fox,” says Trevelyan, “ belongs the credit.
that he did much to reform all the corruption of political life at:
that time, and with more temptations to evil than most, he did
resist the opportunities of place—this in spite of his bringing
up.” He was “the only English statesman who has left a reputa-
tion of the first order, acquired in lifelong opposition, who manfully
and cheerfully surrendered all that he had been taught to value,
for the sake of principles at which he had been diligently taught
to sneer.”

The birth of the nephew who, in infancy, became the third Lord.
Holland, and to whom he was so much attached, destroyed any
hopes he might otherwise have entertained of succeeding to the
title and estates. He was not born at Holland House, and it so
chanced that he did not die there—but he loved the spot where
so much of his boyhood had been spent with an abiding affection,
and Burke justly remarked of him: ‘‘ Yes, he is like a cat—he is
fond of the house, though the family be gone.’ Shortly before
he died, he went to Holland House and walked all over the gardens,
looking tenderly at each familiar spot, “as if he wished,” says
Marie Lichstenstein, “to carry through the gates of death the
impression engraved on his soul during his childhood.” And he
lingered long in the Green drive describing to Lord Holland and

General Fitzpatrick, the making of it, by his mother, Caroline, Lady
Holland.

The years of the young Lord Holland’s minority were strenuous
ones—nearly as difficult and dangerous as those in which our
own lot is cast. For they witnessed the Reign of Terror in
France—the rise and fall of Napoleon—the revolt of the American
Colonies and their declaration of Independence; and many other
events—international and domestic—of vast,. if comparatively
, Secondary importance, and in many of which Holland House was
more or less concerned.

It was in 1797, that the figure of Elizabeth, Lady Webster,
afterwards Lady Holland, first crosses its picturesque stage. At
once she seems to fill it. Nor are we allowed to lose sight of her,
for she stands in the cruel glare of the footlights when first she
enters, and afterwards, wherever she moves, she is followed by the

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fierce political and social limelight which played upon Holland
House for nearly five-and-forty years.

She is conspicuous, too, as being for a long time the only woman
in the crowded and busy scene—for although young, beautiful,
charming, and intellectually gifted—she is ostracized by her own
sex. This because she had sacrificed everything—husband, home,
children, and reputation—besides the greater part of a large
fortune, for love—the love of Richard Henry, third Baron Holland,
who married her at Rickmansworth Church, the very day after
Sir Godfrey Webster, Bart., of Battle Abbey, Hastings, her first
husband, had obtained his divorce.

Thirty-four years later—in May, 1831, Lord Macaulay, then
just entering political life, was presented to her at a reception.
at Lansdowne House.

‘“T was shaking hands with Sir James Macdonald,” he writes
to his sister, ‘‘ when I heard a command behind me: ‘ Sir James,
introduce me to Mr. Macaulay ’—and we turned, and there sat
a large bold-looking woman, with the remains of a fine person
and the air of Queen Elizabeth. ‘ Macaulay,’ said Sir James, * let
me introduce you to Lady Holland.’ . Then was her ladyship
gracious beyond description and asked me to dine and take a bed
at Holland House next Tuesday.”

Time partially effaced the writer’s first unfavourable impression,
and he came to recognize Lady Holland’s good points, her real
kindness of heart, her steadfastness in friendship; to admire her
ability and her humour ; and to smile good-naturedly at her weak-
nesses. But he never cordially liked her, and always slightly
resented her freedom of speech and her airs of command; and
I think it very significant that in the eloquent tribute he paid to
Lord Holland after his death, in one of his “ Critical Essays ”—he
is altogether silent concerning his wife. He had not the key
to the softer and more feminine traits in her character which we
possess in her “‘ Journal,” which begins in 1791, and ends in 1811.

In recent years this has been edited and published by the Earl
of Ilchester. Lord and Lady Holland’s son, the fourth Baron,
died childless, so that the title became extinct; and the estates
passed into the hands of Lord Ilchester, the representative of the
elder branch of the Fox family, who alone had the right to publish
the diary. He has done well to do so, for without condoning

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Lady Holland’s offences—most people, on learning the true facts
of the case, will allow that there were many excuses to be made
for her.

She was the only child and heiress of Richard Vassall, owner
of an estate in Jamaica, which greatly decreased in value after
the abolition of the Slave trade in 1807.

Her over-indulgent parents, of whom she speaks affectionately,
troubled her but little with education, and left her, she tells us,
to form her own conclusions in the matter of religion and morals.
They married her at fifteen to a ‘“‘ pompous coxcomb”’ (as she
frankly calls Sir Godfrey Webster, of Battle Abbey, near Hastings),
who was twenty years her senior, and quite unfitted to take charge
of the happiness of a bright, beautiful, but wayward girl. It
must be owned, however, that the patience of the mature husband
was sometimes severely tried; for even in these early days Eliza-
beth betrayed much of the imperious temper that only increased
with advancing years, so that when, the lapses of her youth for-
gotten, she was an acknowledged leader in political society, Lady
Granville could write of her, when in 1825 Lady Holland once
visited her in Paris, as being ‘‘ to me, of course, all smiles, but
rather more of a termagant than ever.”

Lord Ilchester, in the introduction to the ‘“‘ Journal,”’ describes
an amusing feud that raged between the girl-wife and her husband’s
aunt, who, as widow of the late baronet, had the right to reside at
the Abbey, until her death. She played various schoolgirl pranks
upon the dowager, and for some time sent across every morning to
the Abbey, to inquire whether ‘“‘ the old hag were still alive.”
But let us not judge her over-harshly. Hers had been a marriage
of convenience; wealth and beauty, in exchange for a title and
position, and somehow the girl seems to have felt herself unfairly
treated. She had to live in a small, dull, country house with one
who apparently made no effort to win the affections of the mere
child he had married. In her own words, “‘ the union was perdition
to her!’”’ She was very unhappy, when she met in Florence in
1794, the only man she seems ever to have loved ; but the resolution
to renounce everything for the young Lord’s sake was not quickly
made. She dreaded the scandal, and still more the inevitable
Separation from her children. The surrender of the greater part
of her own large fortune to Sir Godfrey, does not appear to have

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weighed with her. But Lady Webster now took a step which
cannot be defended. ‘‘ The certainty,” she writes, “ of losing all
my children was agony to me, and I resolved to keep one in my
possession, and I chose the one which from her tender age and sex,
required the tenderness of a mother.”

She gave out that the child was dead, and for three years she
kept the little girl concealed; then, influenced chiefly by the
fear that her action might compromise Lord Holland, in the
spring of 1799, she slowly made up her mind to give her up. Not
till after the event do entries in the ‘“‘ Journal’ betray how great
had been her mental suffering, for at first she will not put her
trouble into words, even in the pages of her locked diary. But
she is restless, seeks relief in society, and entertains a great deal ;
and her remarks remind us that in those days conversation was
almost a fine art, and that a bon mot or an epigram was a passport
to great houses. ‘‘ The wits and humorists,’’ she writes, “‘ were in
high spirits ; nothing could be pleasanter.”” But few ladies attend
her parties, and the divorced wife of Sir Godfrey Webster is received
as yet, only by the wives of her husband’s political friends. But
she goes with her mother to the opera; and to Lady Heathfield’s
masquerade where, in spite of her disguise, the Prince of Wales
recognizes her—and where (as she thinks it worth while to note
in her “ Journal”) two great ladies are cordial. We find her
at the theatre with a gay party seeing Sheridan’s play Pizarro.
Apparently it was the first night, for Sheridan comes into her
box and explains the cause whenever there is a hitch in the per-
formance. “‘I was surprised,” she writes, ‘‘ at his eagerness,
and was glad to find that drinking had not totally absorbed his
faculties.” Canning dines at Holland House. “ He is very enter-

taining, or can be,” she remarks on June Ist. ‘‘ I made him repeat.
the parody on Lewis’s ‘ Alonzo and Imogene.’ It goes very well
to music—a ‘ Parson so grave and a baron so bold.’”? But her

moods are variable—one day she praises a friend, the next she is.
captious and sarcastic. She now finds that ‘“‘ Canning’s jokes are
local, and that unless he gives laws to his little senate he is silent.”
‘The Prince has given up Lady Jersey and is now trying to make
up with Mrs. Fitzherbert. He ought to try and make his peace
with Heaven if he has any account to settle, as he does not look
long for this life.” ‘‘ Sheridan, since he gained such credit as a
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witness can never give a direct answer ”’ (an allusion to his brilliant
repartees at a celebrated state trial)—under the same date we
read: ‘“‘ The Brest fleet is out, and the alarm is great.” It is
noticeable that Lady Holland’s wit is less caustic at this time
than in after years. At any rate, she spares her friends in public,
and confines her sarcasms to her “‘ Journal.”

But although she shows nothing outwardly of the mother-
hunger that is gnawing at her heart, it is significant of mental
unrest to find her spending so much of her time alone in the grounds.
‘““T passed a great part of the evening and night in the garden,”’
she writes; ‘‘ the weather is delicious and the nightingales in the
full vigour of song.”” And thereupon, much as a jester laughs and
jokes whilst his heart is breaking, she passes to that unfailing
topic which we all employ sometimes to camouflage our deepest
feelings—the weather.

“The spring,”’ she remarks, “is very tardy; vegetation is now
as it was in the first week of May,” and she repeats: ‘“‘ Our garden
is delicious, Drew and I have begun our lounging walks in the
Green Lane in the garden chair.”

But we have the truth at last! ‘‘ I have been out of spirits,”
she writes, ‘‘ at the approach of a crisis very painful to my feelings ;
but my duty and justice, compel me. I shall now be obliged to
dwell on the particulars—Heaven knows the agony I endure.”

The dénouement follows; on June 19th she says: ‘“‘ I restored
to her father my little daughter Harriet . . . she was here with
my mother and has now gone,” and on the following day she
adds: ‘‘ On Sunday the event took place, there was a sort of scene
at dinner. Sydney Smith, William Lamb” (afterwards Lord
Melbourne) “‘ were present. . . . The story is very much talked
about but ... I had rather hear nothing of the fables engrafted
on it. I only feel I have renounced a darling child . . . would to
God I were allowed to bring her up!”

The entry closes with the matter of fact statement—significant
owing to its studied indifference : ‘‘ To-day Digby, and A. S. Bess-
boro dined. We went into the garden and stayed late.”

Thus abruptly closes the tragic story, and it loses nothing in
pitifulness, and poignancy, because Lady Holland’s own offence
was the immediate cause of the tragic happening; for surely the
ultimate one was the early and loveless marriage ?

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It is difficult to recognize in the writer of the “Journal,” the
Lady Holland of the Princess Lichstenstein’s ‘‘ Holland House,”
of Macaulay’s letters to his sisters, and of the accounts and casual
remarks of contemporaries. Unfortunately the “ Journal ” ceases
in 1811, and therefore does not help us as it might otherwise have
done, to trace the gradual hardening that undeniably took place
in her character.

There were two Elizabeths, one capable of committing a felony
to keep her child, and yet of giving her up at last, lest she should
injure the man who held her heart—and the brilliant, but embittered
woman who founded what was virtually a salon on the French
lines where she queened it over the wits, men of letters, and poli-
ticians, whom her genial and cultured husband—aided no doubt
in the first instance by her own beauty and piquant personality
—attracted to Holland House. I am sure she was embittered :
I believe that rebellion against what she probably felt to be a
monstrous price for a woman to pay for happiness—first led
her to assume those “airs of Queen Elizabeth,’ upon which
Macaulay remarked; and that she assumed them as defensive
armour against a world prepared to ostracize her unheard. Un-
happily she wore it so long that it became part and parcel of
herself.

Other children gathered round her to whom she was a tender
mother. Her daughter, Mary Fox, afterwards Lady Lilford,
who died in 1891, was a charming character, greatly beloved by
her family—though, as years went on Lady Holland’s sharp tongue
did not spare even her. From time to time she saw the young
Websters secretly, at her mother’s. The eldest boy went to Harrow,
and we learn from the ‘“‘ Journal ”’ that she could see the spire of
Harrow Church from her window, and “sighed to be near
him.”

Harriet grew up and married ; she never lived in close intimacy
with her mother, but when Lady Holland, who survived her
‘husband, was dying, the daughter, in obedience to an urgent
summons, promptly crossed the Channel and came to receive her
last breath.

But that was long after, and meanwhile we see her, not without
amusement, rapping on the table with her fan, calling first one and
then another of her guests to order—commanding them to do

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this or that, telling Sydney Smith to ring the bell! “Oh, yes,
and shall I sweep the floor too!” answers that most amiable of
wits—and when a seat for some late-comer had to be found at the
already over-crowded table, bidding Luttrell “make room.” “It
must certainly be made,” he retorts, “for it does not exist.”” We
watch her insisting upon her guests exchanging places so often,
that at last Lord Melbourne, exclaiming “I’ll be damned if I
dine with you at all,” marches off in dudgeon. We see her not
hesitating to instruct even Sheridan in the niceties of the English
language ; and, at a later period, correcting Guizot’s pronunciation,
and rebuking him for quoting the proverb: ‘ Hell is paved with
good intention,” because she said ‘“‘ that word, except in an epic,
is never heard in good society ;”’ and snubbing a literary aspirant
with the remark: “I hear you are going to publish a poem.
Cannot you suppress it ?”’

I owe the reader an apology perhaps for introducing such well-
known stories here. I do so because’ they may be new to some.
But she had her kinder moments ; Lord Jeffreys, of the Edinburgh
Review, after a large dinner-party at Holland House in 1840—
describes his hostess as having been “‘in great gentleness and
softness.”

The poet Campbell, on his first visit to Holland House in 1806,
had not known “‘ whether he was standing on his head or his heels,”’
until Charles James Fox, divining his nervousness, walked round
with him arm in arm, showing him the wonders of the place, He
told his nephew, Lord Holland, that he liked Campbell, he was
“so right about Virgil,” and asked him down to St. Anne’s: two
years later we find Campbell again at Kensington, and this time
Her Ladyship herself, grown matronly, but still sprightly and
handsome, walked about with him for about an hour, showing
him the gardens; and though he found her “a most formidable
person, cleverer by many degrees than Buonaparte,” she soon
set him at his ease so completely, that “never did he feel
such self-possession, such a rattle of tongue and spring-tide of
conversation, so perfectly joyous.” And she herself must have
been secretly amused, for Campbell had a strange taste in dress,
and according to Byron “ dressed to sprucery, as if Apollo had sent
him a birthday present.” On this occasion he wore, by his own
account, a huge cravat resembling a halter.

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Lord Holland was the good genius of Holland House. “I
would not go to Heaven with Lady Holland, but I would go to
Hell with Lord Holland,” says Ugo Foscolo.

““Lord Holland,” wrote Macaulay to his sister, “is extremely
kind. But that is of course, for he is kindness itself. Her Lady-
ship, too, which is by no means of course, is all graciousness and
civility.” These remarks expressed the general opinion of society ;
but despite her despotism and her whims, those who knew Lady
Holland best and longest, testify to her real kindness of heart.

Lord Holland was a victim to gout, and during the greater part
of his life he was a confirmed invalid, and a cripple; but his
patience and invariable sweetness of temper, were phenomenal.
If unable to appear at dinner he would be wheeled in afterwards ;
and he always came down to. breakfast, said Samuel Rogers,
his friend for forty years—‘‘ like a man on whom some sudden
good fortune had just fallen.” Thomas Moore describes him in
1818 as being “‘ full of sunshine, as usual;”’ and in 1832 Macaulay
wrote that ‘“‘ the sight of him spreads good humour over the face
of every one who comes near him.”

When not suffering, Lord Holland was the most delightful
companion ; cheerful, intellectual, and well read; and he was
sometimes “‘ extravagantly entertaining,” for he enhanced his
delightful gift of story-telling with the drollest mimicry.

‘Macaulay once spent a Saturday and Sunday at Kensington,
when:‘‘ my Lord was ill, and my Lady thought herself so” .. .
She had ‘‘ fretted herself into being ill, could eat nothing but the
breast of a partridge, and thought the howling of a dog portended’
her own death, or Lord Holland’s.”’ They dined at four instead
of six.or seven, and the company was “‘ scant ’’—for “‘ Allen, like
the poor, we have always with us ’—Macaulay says he did his best
to keep the house alive, but he found the day dull, for Lord Holland
was in bed ; but since he had the library and the delightful gardens
all to himself, I cannot extend much compassion to him.

Dr. Allen was the factotum, and useful friend, practically resident
at Holland House. The poet Rogers was its ‘‘ Oracle,” and
persona grata, with both master and mistress. He delighted in
healing quarrels, was fond of children, and staunch in friendship ;
to him the dying Sheridan turned for help, when there was an
execution in his house, and almost everybody else had deserted him.

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But to try conclusions with Rogers was a dangerous game, for
nobody could say disagreeable things so wittily. Even Lady
Holland’s sharp tongue must have found its match in his, and it
is to the credit of both that their friendship was never broken.

It was Rogers who introduced Byron to Lord and Lady Holland,
about the time that “‘ Childe Harold ” appeared ; and afterwards—
until he left England—he was frequently at their house.

It is surprising that he never fell foul of his hostess, for he could
be a most uncomfortable dinner guest. ‘‘ Did he take soup?”

“No, he never took soup.” ‘‘ Did he take fish ? ”’ ‘‘ No, he never
took fish.” ‘‘ Mutton?’ ‘‘ No, he never ate mutton.”
“Would he take wine ?”’ ‘“ Thank you, I never take wine.”

‘What will you take?” inquired the distressed host (who on
this occasion happened to be Rogers, but might quite as well have
been Lord Holland). ‘‘I take nothing but biscuits and soda-
water.” There were no biscuits, and there was no soda-water in
the house. So Byron helped himself to a plate of potatoes, mashed
them with a fork, and drenched them with vinegar; ‘‘ and con-
trived,” says Tom Moore, who was present, ‘‘ to make rather a
hearty meal out of this meagre material.”

In this year of grace 1918 we ourselves are fast learning to live
on vinegar and potatoes, but minus Byron’s compensations ; for
it appears in the sequel, that on leaving St. James’ Street, the poet
turned into his club and had a good meat supper !

Moore was a welcome guest on the Kensington Mount Parnassus ;
and once Rogers, desiring to take him to his sister’s at Highbury,
met with strong opposition from her ladyship. ‘‘ Do you allow
him,” she cried to Moore, ‘‘ to dispose of you like a little bit of
literary property ?”’ She did her utmost to prevent “ her dear,
dear Macaulay” from going to India. She cried and raved; and
afterwards stormed at the Ministry for letting him go, rousing even
her good-humoured husband to say: ‘‘ Don’t talk nonsense, my
Lady !—what the devil !—can we tell a gentleman who has a claim
upon us that he must lose his only chance of getting an independ-
ence, in order that he may come and talk to you in an evening ? ”’

‘The ‘intimates of Holland House were Rogers, Luttrell, the epi-
eurean, witty, and polished man-about-town ; and—when he was
in London—Sydney Smith, the most lovable of the wits. In earlier
days Charles James Fox was a welcome guest, and his delightful

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conversation, as we learn from the “‘ Journal,” tempted the family
party, whenever he came, to sit up late—Lady Holland being
relieved to find that he had as little inclination to talk politics as
she then had.

But in this respect she changed in later years, and when the
Whigs were in power, as everybody knows, the old house, under her
régime, was their social headquarters. The tables were still over-
crowded at times, as in earlier years; and Lord Jeffreys in 1840
—the year of Lord Holland’s death—being invited to dine there on
Sunday en famille, was astonished to find a goodly company of
sixteen, assembled, ‘‘ foreign ambassadors and everyone!” In
those later days Palmerston and Lord John Russell might be seen
there: and old Talleyrand: “‘ his face like a corpse—his hair,
thickly powdered and pomatumed, hanging down straight on either
side of his face, like a pair of tallow candles, but whose odd appear-
ance was forgotten when he began to talk.”

The hostess managed these heterogeneous elements with admir-
able tact. She encouraged the talk, but let no one talk too much—
not even Macaulay, whose prodigious memory for facts led him
sometimes to tire his audience—however appreciative—before he
exhausted his subject. At such times she ruthlessly applied the
closure with, ‘‘ Now, Macaulay, that’s enough of that; can’t you
give us something else ? ”’ -

Epigrams sparkled, and witticisms flashed, at that wonderful
table, like the old silver and cut and jewelled glass upon it, and the
wine that, without excess, passed round the polished board. There
was fun in plenty without flippancy, and serious talk that was never
dull. And if an argument threatened to become over warm, or
a repartee were too pungent, or my Lady were displeased, because
the French cook was ill, and the favourite dishes—or even the
dining-hour itself delayed—the host might be trusted to restore
good humour.

And what mattered it if the guests did elbow and jostle one
another sometimes in the dining-room, when there would be room
and to spare in the great library later? The season permitting,
they wandered out into the gardens, and after sunset, in the soft
summer darkness, listened to the nightingales answering one another
in the great avenue or the ‘“‘ Green Lane,” that favourite walk before
mentioned, that is still a lovely forest glade, and which now forms

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. the western boundary of the estate. At other times, when the moon
cast athwart the lawn, the shadows of the cedars, oaks, and
cypresses, that Henry Fox, the first Lord Holland, had planted,
and, rising higher and higher, threw every gable, and pinnacle, and
arcade of the old house into strong relief, and the harper played
beneath the trees—they would stay out of doors till long past mid-
night—for guests were generally asked to “‘ take a bed ” at Holland
House. Those whose duties prevented them from doing so, or
who were too poor to afford a hackney coach to town, had—like
Sydney Smith, when Canon of St. Paul’s—to bring their dress shoes
with them and change them in the hall.

Incidentally, the gardens are very frequently mentioned by
Lady Holland in the “ Journal,’ when writing from Holland
House. But a very large proportion of it is dated from abroad,
whither the Hollands often went, since foreign travel brought
some alleviation to his Lordship’s gout.

At all times in their history the gardens seem to have been much
used by the inmates of the house. As far back as the eighteenth
century, they are mentioned as the scene of a weird ghost story.
Lady Diana Rich, one of the daughters of the Earl of Warwick,
when walking in her father’s park in the forenoon, was confronted
by her own apparition, and died within a month, two of her
sisters meeting with the same uncanny experience elsewhere.
This is tradition, but it is a matter of history that the young King
George III., when riding down to Kew, fell in love with the Lady
Sarah Lennox, sister-in-law of Henry Fox, when, dressed up as a
charming shepherdess, she was making hay on the lawn between
the house and the high road, on the very spot where once Cromwell
shouted in the ear of Ireton, and where, in later days, the statue
of the great Lord Holland was placed.

While fully appreciating the courtesy that extended to me the
rare and coveted privilege of painting in these delectable gardens
at a time when I had no thought of this book in my mind, I regretted
that I was allowed to make but one drawing there. For they are
so varied and picturesque, and at the present day still so extensive,
that they offer subjects without end to painters—even to those to
whom their historical associations may make no special appeal.
I was simply saturated with the summer loveliness of the scene on
that brilliant August day in 1918, when first I went there. The old

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house lay sleeping in the sunshine, and the place wore the same air
of “ profound seclusion” that Sir Walter Scott remarks upon in
his diary in 1829. Then, after an afternoon at Chiswick House,
on the occasion of a féte given by the Duke of Devonshire to which
I have elsewhere referred, he spent a night at Holland House,
where his works were so much appreciated that, when the “ Tales of
my Landlord ” appeared, his lordship remarked to the publisher,
Murray, who had asked him whether he likedthem: “ Like them!
Why we sat up all night to read them, and nothing slept but my
gout!”

But the Wizard of the North himself, had he waved his magical
wand, could not, by his own unaided art, have summoned up for
us a complete picture of the scene that met his eyes when he drew
up his blinds and looked out next morning. It is here that painting
steps in. For the things that make the chief charm of a garden are
not to be described in words, and they are not even hinted at in
black and white. Only colour and form in partnership, can give to
others a true and vivid image of the appearance of things as we
ourselves remember them, at a moment when they are not before
the eye; and colour is too elusive, too dependent on such accidents
as the sun’s position, and the season of the year, and form is too
subtle and abstract, to be explained by words only. Words can
tell us no more of the splendour and character of last night’s sunset
than that it was stormy, or calm; crimson fusing with gold, gold
melting into tender green—and so on through the entire chromatic
scale of colour. They cannot show us the shapes of things, unless
by the cumbrous and incomplete method of analogy and compari-
son; nor demonstrate in what manner the fleecy cloudlets, that
high up in the ether, catch the last rosy glow from the setting sun—
differ so greatly in bulk and character, from the grand, rolling,
heaped-up masses of vapour, that, nearer the horizon, are slowly
sailing before a gentle summer’s breeze as I write. For what should
the factory hand, or the Board-school child, brought up in a City
alley--where they really never see the sky—(though both may have
passed the seventh standard)—know, arte of the meaning
of cirrus and cumulus ?

Nor can words describe a rose ora “Tiy to one who has never
seen either, by merely saying: ‘‘ It is red” ‘“* white,”? without
tellmg him whether it is touched with its ne eee blue, or

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dashed with its complementary yellow; and of its shape he
learns—nothing at all! The artist-monk in his medieval cloister,
illuminating his missal or his breviary with loving patience and
skill, in the long hours between matins and compline, did more
for the rose and the lily when, mixed with gold-leaf, he introduced
them into his borders—than Shakespeare and Spenser have done—
for he indicated their shape and their colour.

And words are unreliable, as well as inadequate; because, in
process of time, their signification may change. Damask with us
means dark red; with the Elizabethans (who were not colour-
blind) it meant pink; for their poets, one and all, describe a
maiden’s cheek as ‘‘ damask.”

The beautiful rose-walk at the north side of Holland House was,
when I saw it, lined with roses that were pink, not crimson. Had
Scott so seen them from his bedroom window and described them
in Spenserian terms, he would have called their colour ‘‘ damask.”
It all resolves itself into this—a splash of colour quite rightly
chosen, and deftly laid on by a trained hand, will better convey the
beauty of a natural scene than whole pages of descriptive poetry,
or prose.

The things that make for beauty in open landscape, when land-
scape is left to itself, do so equally in a garden; but there, alas,
discords—blatant and unnecessary ones—are too frequently de-
liberately encouraged by an arrangement of planting of which
Nature would be ashamed, and so much so that she would pro-
ceed at once to rectify, or conceal her error in taste. She is a
wonderful and artful pacifist. By means of play of light and
shadow, by notes of colour, accidentally struck, and by the free use
of her own glorious sunshine, she brings discords into perfect
harmony: and the eye trained to harmony in colour is as sensitive
as the ear attuned to harmony in music, and much more frequently
suffers, because more people are taught to detect discord in sound
than in colour. Unfortunately, Nature cannot always interfere in
a garden, for there man is responsible. Nevertheless, she does
what she can, as I can testify from my personal and recent ex-
perience. In the garish noontide of a most glorious May, my
windows, facing east, looked out on a trim little garden, gay with
masses of wallflowers, mostly yellow; and immediately beyond
were two well-grown hawthorns of the scentless, double-blossomed,

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crimson variety, dear to the ordinary gardener’s heart. Behind
them lay a stretch of meadow-land, yellow with buttercups, shut
in by a belt of trees, barely in leaf, and empurpled by distance.
It was all so crude in colour that, except in the early morning,
when the newly risen sun behind them, merely catching the edges
of the crimson May, threw its masses into broad, purplish shadow,
I had little pleasure in looking out, for the violent contrast jarred.
But towards evening, when the sun having travelled round to the
back of the house, poured a flood of all-embracing amber light
over the entire scene, fusing and harmonizing the fiery elements
that were before at war, changing the fierce crimson of the May-
flower into orange, and warming into “old gold” the yellow of
the meadow in which the hay grass was beginning to turn colour—
the effect was superb, though singular and unconventional.

It is the painter’s mission to reveal facts in their environment
that the majority of people do not see them for themselves. Their
senses are not keenly alive to pleasure or pain, and they pass by
half the loveliest things in Nature, and would resent, or at best not
heed, a verbal demonstration. I once remarked to a friend upon
some unfortunate arrangement in a garden, due to insensitiveness
to colour-discords. He shrugged his shoulders, regarded me
compassionately, and said: ‘‘ How thankful I am I am not an
artist!’ The obvious answer to this, though I did not give it,
was: “ If we suffer much that you do not suffer, we enjoy more! ”’
On the other hand, there are people who may feel, but who are
inarticulate ; unable to convey in words what they see, or to
make others see it too; and it is our business as painters, to explain
and interpret Nature for them, because :

“We love first, first when we see them painted
Things we have seen a hundred times—
Nor cared to see... .....
Art was given for that—God uses us to help each other so
Sending our minds out.”

I would that the first and greatest of all Impressionist painters,
Turner, could return to life and reconstruct for us, the vision of the
Lake of Lucerne as he must have seen it, and as once I, too, saw it,
many, many years ago; when, opening my hotel window the
morning after my arrival, I looked forth, and beheld for the first

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time the panorama of radiant splendour that stretched before my
dazzled and delighted eyes. I can just recall that all colour was
eliminated, and there was nothing left but light. The town, with
its covered bridges, was behind me; the twin towers and pointed
spires of the cathedral to the left ; but all this I found out later—
I observed no details, and of anything that was going on down below
in the foreground, I took no heed—all that I carried away with me,
all that remains in my memory to this day, was the broad impres-
sion of a world of glittering, dancing, silvery light, sparkling water,
and gleaming snowy peaks. Of course no feeble words of mine
could paint it, then or now, but—and herein lies my point—
neither could Sir Walter Scott’s. It was the record of a poet-painter’s
impression that was wanted. But no impressionist below the rank
of Turner could have touched it; and better, far better, a feeble
effort in words, that we have all been taught to lisp, and that, how-
ever halting, are not without suggestiveness to one who has passed
through similar experiences—than the amateur artist’s daring
attempt to paint the unpaintable—to rush in—to clamber Alps,
where we find the pebbles difficult !

I cannot paint Alps; no, nor sketch them—but I think I can
paint gardens—and possibly what my brush fails to explain, my
pen may help to elucidate. And just as it is the painter’s supreme
joy to seize the passing impression and paint it with such force and
truth as is in him—so it is also his solemn duty and his high voca-
tion. Every artist recognizes this, and knows the vital and insistent
call for self-expression—at every hour, at every moment; and if
life were not so short, and its many uncongenial tasks so long,
there would be more evidence of this fact in the world around us.

And since, as I said before, many things that cannot be described
in words are of the very essence of the loveliness of gardens, particu-
larly of large gardens, how can bare words, and one drawing only,
convey the dignity and charm of the grounds of Holland House ?,
Of the long, straight rose-walk in the north garden before referred
to—grassy, not gravelled, and bordered on either side by roses that
are all pink—though when I beheld it in August, its beauty had
somewhat departed ; of the pleasing effect, in the Japanese Garden,
of the miniature ponds and pools, fringed, and filled with all manner
of foreign aquatic plants—rising, as it were in low steps, to the higher
ground; and of the interest of the curious exotic shrubs to be

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found there. Nor can language alone demonstrate how happy was:
the thought that converted the old brick arches—all that remains.
of the former stables in which Cromwell and Ireton had installed
their horses—into a graceful arcade, festooned with creepers,
through which one catches glimpses of a terraced wall, descending,
by one or two steps, to the wilder woodland below, where begins.
the leafy glade still known as the ‘‘ Green Lane.”

It was after one of her later continental trips, that Elizabeth,
Lady Holland—for it is necessary to distinguish between her and
her daughter-in-law, wife of the fourth baron—brought back from
Spain the dahlia—a plant that she is erroneously supposed by some
people to have been the very first to introduce into this country.

The: flower—which it is scarcely necessary to say, is the lovely
single variety—still grows abundantly near ‘‘ Rogers’ Seat,” the
famous alcove where the poet Rogers was wont to sit, which faces that
bust of Napoleon, by Canova, that, ten years after Waterloo, Lord
Holland put up on a pedestal in the ‘‘ Dutch ”’ or “‘ West Garden.”

I chanced upon that bower accidentally, selecting it as a suitable
place in which to eat my sandwiches—I chose it simply because it
happened to be within a few yards of the point of view that I finally
fixed upon for my illustration. Looking up, I read the lines by
Lord Holland himself :

“* Here Rogers sate, and here for ever dwell
For me, the pleasures that he sang so well.”

Who reads Rogers now? The couplet was an enigmato me. I
speculated on its meaning, associating it vaguely with Campbell’s
‘* Pleasures of Hope ’’—which, indeed, Rogers’ earlier work had
inspired—for I frankly confess that I had forgotten—if I ever knew
—that Rogers had written ‘‘ The Pleasures of Memory,” a poem
that had great vogue a hundred years ago. Moreover, beyond that
I knew Holland House to have been a centre of Whiggism and of
culture, I was unversed in its history when I first went there.

I turned to my work! And the ‘‘ Pleasures of Memory ”’ will
always be mine when I recall that brilliant summer day when I
first beheld the ‘“* Dutch Garden.’ I prefer to call it that, though
it scarcely bore out its name at the time, being ablaze, not with
such flowers as have come to us from Holland, but with scarlet
geraniums. These were astonishing; never shall I forget the

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impression they made on me when I turned the corner of the house
from the north side, and came upon them suddenly. This garden,
which lies to the west of the house, is a vast parterre that slopes
gently downwards from the mansion, till it is shut in at the lower
end by the high, creeper-covered arcade just mentioned. My
drawing is taken looking east, in order to introduce the fine old
house itself as a background. The parterre is intersected by the
little, lozenge-shaped beds, known as “‘ knots.” These are separated
from each other by. very narrow walks, edged with high box—as
we have seen them in the Bishop’s rose-garden at Fulham—but
in this larger area the dividing borders are lost sight of, and the
effect in sunshine, is of a lake of scarlet flame.

It is the fashion—one which I have deprecated elsewhere—to
brand the geranium as vulgar, and crude. It is undoubtedly
vulgar, in opposition to certain strongly-contrasting yellows and.
blues; or when used in “ ribbon-borders,” or, as commonly
planted, in beds, in the garden plots of suburban villas. But as.
seen at Holland House it is a truly regal flower, and its splendour
under such conditions is undeniable.

Quite as striking and surprising as the effect of this blazing
parterre, was the profound quiet and seclusion of the place. For
all that it is within a few minutes’ walk of one of the liveliest of
London’s thoroughfares, the sunny stillness was unbroken.

‘I might be fifty miles in the country,” I said to myself, ‘‘ instead
of well within the four-mile radius.”

True, the season was over; the great house shut up; society
had fled to the sea or the moor; or had crossed the Channel, to the
Continent, for as yet no war. or rumours of war, had disturbed the
tranquility of Europe. But even in normal years, though fashion
is out of town there is an influx from the country to take its place ;
and the great arteries of London are thronged, and of these the
gayest and busiest is that which passes the handsome gates of
Holland House.

Eighty years ago it was not so peaceful ; then the Whigs were in
power, and the house was the ministerial social headquarters.
Dinner-parties and crowded receptions were the order of the day.
_Lady Holland, sardonic but brilliant, ill-tempered and kindly,
imperious, and gracious by turns, ‘‘ received her subjects,” says one
of them, ‘“‘ on her throne, a pony-chaise on the lawn ”—a much

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more formidable ceremony, we are assured, than going to kiss a
young Queen’s hand. There might be seen Lord Melbourne,
Lord John Russell, Palmerston, Guizot, and notabilities by the
Jegion—and the garden itself was a perennial joy! Lord Jeffreys
describes “‘ a sweet walk under the cedars . . . . where he listened
in vain for the nightingales, though Lord Holland and Allen chal-
lenged them to answer by divers fat and asthmatical whistles.”
This was in 1840, the year of Lord Holland’s death, which
brought to a sudden close the most wonderful chapter in the
remarkable history of Holland House. Such another era the world
can never see again, unless one gifted like the third Lord Holland
should arise, capable of attracting a company as brilliant as that
which he gathered round him in the earlier half of the nineteenth
century, to a house as picturesquely and historically interesting.

CHAPTER X
HOGARTH HOUSE, CHISWICK

OMEWHERE about the year 1750, in the reign of the
Second George, William Hogarth, of Leicester Fields,
in the parish of St. Martin, in the county of Middlesex,

Painter and Engraver, he being at the time some 53 years old, and
a prosperous man—deemed it right and necessary that he and his
wife, like other well-to-do London “ cits,’’ should have a “‘ country
box ” of their own, wherein to pass the summer days.

Born in 1697, within the sound of Bow Bells—and baptized in the
beautiful church of St. Bartholomew the Great—Hogarth was a
Londoner, every inch of him, and never looked for the subject of
his brush or his graver, in country life ; the men and women whom he
loved to study, and whom by laughing at their foibles and showing
up their vices, he sought to reform, were not picturesque, wnsophisti-
cated rustics, nor yet the country gentry who in those days of slow
travelling, on roads infested by highwaymen, seldom stirred beyond
the boundaries of their own estates; they were the denizens of
town alone. Therefore it is a little surprising to find that the
country attracted him to the extent of inducing him to buy a
residence there. .

Before finally settling down in a village to the far west of Charing
Cross, we may be quite sure that he and his wife explored the
districts, north, east, and south of the confines of the metropolis.
But evidently the beauty of the Thames made a strong appeal to
the painter, for in the course of his peaceful, uneventful life we find
record of “‘ summer lodgings’ at South Lambeth, and at Isle-
worth; and he eventually purchased a small house in a large
garden, within easy reach of the river, at Chiswick. at oo

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This house is the little messuage which appears in the illustration.
The Hogarths were intending to set up their “ chariot,” therefore
the considerable distance between their cottage—for it is but little
more—and Leicester Fields, was no deterrent.

Even at the present day the water-side parts of Chiswick are
wonderfully picturesque, and there are bits that are entirely
unspoilt. The church, considerably restored, but with a tower
built by Vicar Brydell, about 1420, stands well, at a fine bend of
the river—a river that, even at this point, is still beautiful at high
tide—and the old-world houses on the Mall facing the island, or
Eyot, with little enclosed front-gardens between roadway and
water, command a pleasant prospect of it. With these attractions,
Chiswick in the twentieth century, can easily hold its own in friendly
rivalry with Hampstead and Highgate, where many quaint corners
still exist. But in the eighteenth century and earlier, 7.e., in
Commonwealth and Revolutionary times, before that arch-enemy
of natural beauty—the ubiquitous jerry-builder—had covered the
meadows, lanes, and market-gardens that lay between the river and
the high-road, with rows of ugly, fourth-rate streets—the entire
village must have been a charming spot.

Besides which, up to a comparatively recent date, there were
many comfortable, even stately residences dotted about Chiswick.
Incidentally I may mention that there were two manors in Chis-
wick, the Prebendal Manor of St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the Dean’s,
or Manor of Sutton. The Chapter of St. Paul’s Cathedral had
prebendal rights in Chiswick—which, by the way, are commemo-
rated in certain roads and terraces at the present day. These
rights they had to surrender in the revolutionary year of 1643, to
the Lord Mayor and citizens of London. Chaloner Chute, for a
short time Speaker of the House of Commons under Cromwell,
who is buried in a Vault in Chiswick Church, lived at Sutton Court
(the Sutton Manor House), one of the finest of the old houses of the
district. His son-in-law, Barker, who resided in the neighbouring
Grove House, had taken up arms for the King, but remained on
good terms with his wife’s family. At Sutton Court afterwards
dwelt Viscount Fauconberg, a son-in-law of Cromwell’s, whose
wife, compared with her brother Richard, is said to have been the
better man of the two. Her husband actively worked for the
restoration of the Stuarts—yet was one of those who invited over

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HOGARTH HOUSE, CHISWICK

William of Orange. Sutton Court, with all these historic memories,
has disappeared ; so, too, has the mansion belonging to the Pre-
‘bendal Manor. Close to it, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth,
as mentioned elsewhere, Gabriel Goodman, Dean of Westminster,
erected a house whither the masters and boys of Westminster
School might retire in times of the plague and sickness. Hither,
as we have seen, frequently came the awful Dr. Busby, who died in
1695, when nearly 90, and who for fifty-five years was Headmaster
at Westminster. But the use of College House, as the place came
to be called, as a sanatorium, ceased in 1738. Lysons tells us
that in 1810 it was a ladies’ boarding-school.

Corney House, associated with the Russell family, and visited by
Queen Elizabeth, another famous Chiswick residence, was pulled
down in 1832; but its beautiful gardens on the river side remained
until they were absorbed in the works of Messrs. Thornycroft, Of
the Mall I have already spoken in the chapter on ‘“‘ Walpole House.”

Sir Stephen Fox, founder of the fortunes of the Fox family, who,
when seventy-five years old, married, in Chiswick Church, a lady
fifty years his junior, built the Manor House and the ‘‘ Manor House
Farm.” The grounds of the Manor House, a residence for some time
occupied by Lady Mary Coke, were on her death incorporated by
the Duke of Devonshire in those of Chiswick House, and the house, as
we know, was pulled down ; but the Manor House Farm, a creeper-
covered mansion with dormer windows, existed for two hundred
years. All these fine houses gave distinction to the river-side
village at the period of the Hogarth settlement there when the
success of the ‘‘ Marriage 4 la mode ”’ had enhanced his fame as an
artist and a moralist.

Hogarth House, the name by which Hogarth’s country residence
is now known, is literally within a stone’s-throw of the gates of Chis- .
wick House, “‘ the fine bijou,”’ to use the eighteenth-century phrase,
described in an earlier chapter, which Richard Boyle, Earl of Bur-
lington, built to contain the precious works of art that he had
collected abroad. Together with the beautiful gardens laid out by
William Kent, and stocked —Horace Walpole says overstocked —
with classic statuary, terminal busts, sculptures, and so forth, it
was, as we know, well worth a day’s journey to see.

I do not think it at all likely, however, that Hogarth himself
had ever seen it. In earlier days he had cast too much ridicule on

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Kent—that ‘‘ Jack-of-all-trades ’? who was the Earl’s pet artist—
to be a persona grata with Lord Burlington. In two early plates,
““ The Taste of the Town” and ‘‘ The Man of Taste,” or “‘ Burling-
ton Gate,’’ he had burlesqued Burlington’s favourites, Kent and
Pope, representing Kent as perched aloft on the summit of the gate,
_ with Michael Angelo and Raphael for supporters, while little Mr.
Pope, on a scaffolding, is whitewashing the gate and bespattering the
people passing below, among them Lord Chandos, whom the poet,
in a letter to Lord Burlington, had lampooned. Nor did Hogarth
spare the Earl himself, for he makes him bring the whitewash !
But this lively raillery was as nothing compared with the contempt
that he had contrived to pour upon the unlucky Kent in the
matter of an altar-piece for St. Clement’s Danes, which Kent’s
ignorance of his own limitations had induced him to execute. It
was so execrably bad, that to satisfy the parishioners, Bishop Gibson
had ordered its removal. But Hogarth held it up to worse derision,
by publishing a print thereof, purporting to be “‘ exactly engraved ”
from it. Nor was this unfair; Hogarth, uncompromisingly sincere
himself (though he, too, did not always recognize his own limita-
tions—witness his ‘‘ Pool of Bethesda ”’ and ‘‘ Sigismunda ’’), was
intolerant of charlatans, and pretenders of all sorts.

Part of his strong aversion to Kent may have arisen from his
championship of his father-in-law, Sir James Thornhill, whom, in
his own individual line, Kent had attempted to rival. And this
painter of bad portraits, this high priest of the Baroque, who tried
his hand at everything, from the decoration of a ceiling to the
designing of a lady’s dress, no doubt really deserved the true artist’s
scorn. He was a passable architect, but his best efforts in archi-
tecture seem to have been inspired and directed by the superior
taste of his patron ; he was a good planner of fine gardens—indeed,
a past-master in the art of landscape-gardening ; but that was an
art of which the painter of city scenes, the resident’ in Leicester
Fields, knew nought.

So far as I am aware, no writer on Hogarth or on Chiswick, with
one exception—and he was under the mistaken impression that
Kent was still resident at Chiswick House when Hogarth came
to the cottage—has remarked on his rather singular choice of a
country house situated at the very gates of the nobleman ridiculed
by him in “ Burlington Gate,” the patron of the man who had been

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chief victim of Hogarth’s satiric humour. Yet why should Hogarth
have avoided Chiswick ? The satire in question had been published
a quarter of a century before Hogarth came to Chiswick, and his
burlesques, if pointed, were not venomous. Pope, who appears
never to have retaliated for the “ Burlington Gate” affront, in
which he had been included, no doubt feeling that with so formid-
able an antagonist as Hogarth, silence was the wisest course—
Pope was dead, and the remainder of the brilliant circle of which
Lord Burlington had been the centre, was melting away. He
himself had fallen on evil days, brought about chiefly by his own
splendid public spirit and hospitality ; possibly he was not even
aware of the presence of the stranger—i.e., the painter—at his
gates ; possibly he chose not to be; anyway, I have come across
no record of his dealings with the artist.

Hogarth, sturdily independent, would be loftily indifferent alike
to his noble neighbour’s notice or disdain, and in his walks abroad
there was no danger of an encounter with Kent himself, either in
the flesh or in the spirit, for, unless the date given by the most
reliable authorities as that of Hogarth’s settlement at Chiswick, be
incorrect, .the man whose “ oracle,’ says Horace Walpole, ‘‘ was
so much consulted by all who affected taste, that nothing was
thought complete without his assistance,” had two years earlier
gone the way of all men, whether geniuses or mediocrities, and had
been honourably interred by Lord Burlington, in the family vault
of the Boyles, in Chiswick Church. If, indeed, his unquiet ghost
walked at all, it would naturally do so at Westminster Abbey or
Kensington Palace, where his sins as an artist are most glaring and
still in evidence, rather than near the scene of his genuine successes.

The “country box” to which Hogarth now came, is a mere slip:
of a house—nay, rather a cottage in dimensions—bearing, indeed,
some sort of resemblance to a shallow box turned up on end and
divided into stories, and these again into rooms, and pierced in front
only—in doll’s-house fashion—with windows. There is a large
overhanging bay above the front door, overlooking the garden ; it
is the window of what must have been Mrs. Hogarth’s withdrawing-
room, where with her mother, widow of the late Sergeant-painter
to the King, and M.P. for Weymouth, and her cousin, Mary Lewis,
she entertained Mrs. Garrick, and other lady friends. Here they
sipped fine bohea out of handleless cups of delicate porcelain, dis~

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cussing the taste of the town in the latest modes, comparing
embroidery, and the samplers they were working, and maybe talking
a little scandal too, to give flavour to the tea. Below, in the oak-
_panelled parlour, seated on either side of the wide fireplace in-
chairs that may be seen at Hogarth House to-day, Hogarth and
‘“‘ Little David ’’ talked and joked, and at intervals puffed at their
long clay pipes. Fielding, even then in failing health, might
sometimes have been present, and possibly Wilkes, for as yet there
was no quarrel.

The affection between Hogarth and Garrick was very real, and
we know how the actor wrote to Churchill the poet, when the
latter was meditating the slashing attack, that, associated with
Wilkes’s, he delighted to think helped largely to bring Hogarth to
his grave. He entreated him to refrain, for he said, speaking of
the painter, ‘“‘ He is a great and original genius; I love him as
a man, and reverence him as an artist,’ which I take to be
as fine a panegyric as that afterwards written upon his friend’s
tombstone. .

Hogarth, it will be remembered, some twenty years earlier, had
run away with Sir James Thornhill’s only daughter. The knight
had contrived to make a considerable fortune, even although,
according to Walpole, he received only forty shillings a square
yard for painting the cupola of St. Paul’s, and twenty-five shillings
a yard, for the hall at Blenheim. Angry at first, he rather quickly
forgave the young couple, for Hogarth, at the time of his marriage,
had just made his mark with ‘‘ The Harlot’s Progress ;” and, with
his conversation-groups of small family portraits, was making a
competency. Thornhill lived long enough to rejoice in the begin-
nings of his son-in-law’s fame, to recognize his genius, and to
acknowledge that his pretty daughter had not made a bad match,
after all. The union proved a very happy one; Jane made the
painter an excellent wife. But her father died fifteen years before
they came to Chiswick, where Mrs. Hogarth continued mostly to
live after her famous husband’s death. He left her his house at
Chiswick, and all his other property, consisting chiefly of his:
engraved copper-plates. One is glad to know that, by a special
Act of Parliament, the copyright of these was secured to her for a
considerable number of years, and that, when the sale of the prints
gradually decreased, the Royal Academy, at the instance of the

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HOGARTH HOUSE, CHISWICK

King, had bestowed upon her a pension of forty pounds. She
could not have been at all wealthy, and the carriage was probably
soon given up; but she kept up her dignity, and, accompanied by
a relation, who was probably Mary Lewis, to whom she leit her
property, she was,long wheeled to the parish church in a bath-chair,
attended by her grey-headed man-servant Samuel, who walked
before her carrying her books up the aisle. Sir Richard Phillips
had vivid recollections of seeing her on these occasions ; he was a
boy at the time, but recalls the stately air with which, carrying a
cane, she sailed up the church in her silken sacque, high head-dress,
and black whaleboned hood, being locked in her pew by her
dependant.

Living as they did for the greater part of their lives, in the city,
the attraction that drew Hogarth and his wife to Chiswick was
probably the garden, which in their day, according to Mary Lewis,
‘was laid out in good style.” It was then in the midst of fields ;
it is now nearly built up by small, shabby houses and fifth-rate
streets. Factories, steam laundries, and large board-schools, turn-
ing out daily hundreds of noisy children, steam-whistles and
buzzards, screaming out the hour for the factory hands to assemble
or disperse, the cries of the cats’-meat man, and of costermongers—
many of these unintelligible to the uninitiated ear, disturb the
otherwise sunny silence of the place, and have destroyed the peace
that must have reigned there two hundred and fifty years ago.

Thanks to the public-spiritedness and munificence of Lieutenant-
Colonel Shipway, of Chiswick, who in 1902 purchased the house
and garden, and presented them to the Middlesex County Council
in trust for the nation—the place where the most individual and
original of British artists, and one of the most distinguished of
moralists and teachers, spent his summers, is saved from actual
desecration. The slums can no farther encroach upon the sacred
privacy of the former haunts of genius. So far as is possible, the
garden is still ‘“‘ laid out in good style.” The beautiful old brick
wall to the left of my picture, is high enough to shut out the ugly
street on its outer side, and the old vine still clings to it in places.
The Filbert Walk, of which one reads, has gone, but the path
remains, lined by plane trees which lend a grateful shade in what
Carlyle called the ‘‘ July blazes.” Hogarth’s country studio, at
its lower end, has been absorbed in the surrounding buildings ;

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it has been turned into a stable or a warehouse ; and, sighing,
one exclaims, ‘‘ What sacrilege ! ”

No trace exists of the gravestone of the bullfinch ‘ Dick,” on
which he roughly etched its name and epitaph with a nail; nor yet
of the tomb of Pompey, the dog; but the famous mulberry tree,
beneath which tradition says he feasted the country children with
luscious fruit, survives, or did so a year ago. It occupies a
subordinate place in the centre of my drawing, and is partly hidden
by the intervening trees.

The level of the garden is below the roadway, and when the heavy
old gate, or door, in the wall to the left, is opened, we see a well-kept
acre, gay in spring-time with daffodils and yellow wallflowers. In
the sequence of the seasons, these are followed in May by irises and
pansies, and a month later the air is heavily scented with the
fragrance of a magnificent snowy syringa. This is the signal for
the garden to don its summer dress, a lavish mantle of scarlet
geraniums, beautiful in themselves, but somewhat out of keeping
with the memories the place enshrines.

It is a peaceful, retired spot, an oasis in a dreary wilderness of
dingy brick, and shabby stucco. In respect of its situation among
houses, it is not unlike the Chelsea Physic Garden described in
another chapter; but the surroundings of the old botanic garden
are fashionable, and speak of prosperity, while on three sides it is
overlooked ; the environment of Hogarth’s garden, on the contrary,
though not exactly squalid, is dreary, ugly, and vulgar; and if
poverty is not actually present, its spectre seems to hang over it
and point at it a threatening finger ; but from without nothing of
the garden is visible, and but little of the house occupying an
angle of it.

During the not inconsiderable time that I was going backwards
and forwards to and from Hogarth House, the place was nearly
deserted. It is open to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays, at the modest charge of sixpence ; yet not more than half
a score of visitors came near it, and the caretaker’s office is a
sinecure. Is this because interest in the work of this unique
artist has waned ? that his art itself is discredited ? Or is it that
few have the courage to make the unpleasing pilgrimage to his
shrine, through the grey back-lanes of Chiswick, for they are green
lanes no longer? To such I would say, ‘‘ The game is worth the

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HOGARTH HOUSE, CHISWICK be

ioe

candle,” the Mecca to be reached is worth the ‘pilgrimage, part
of which may be made by way of the river-side, and picturesque
Mall.

It is to be feared, however, that lack of interest, due to changed
views of the mission of art, or, rather, to the circumstance that
nowadays many people deny art’s claim to a mission at all, has
much to do with the defection of the pilgrims.

The art critic of to-day looks askance at every modern picture
with a story. He often writes, openly or anonymously, in half
a dozen papers, varying his words but not his views, and thus
disseminates these among a wide public ; and so great is the power
of the Pre s, that by a light word he can make or mar a reputation.
The reputation of Hogarth is of course unassailable ; it has stood
the test of changing taste and fashion, but it can be temporarily
lowered, and eclipsed.

For when the public is told that a painting with a story or a
message is to be despised, however admirable its technique; that
an appeal to the intellect, or the emotions, is commonplace ; that
“the painter is not to think, but to see, and record exactly what he
sees;”’? when, on the other hand, the Post Impressionist claims
that an entire philosophy lies hidden in his unattractive perform-
ances ; when the Futurist asserts that the truth is veiled in certain
rhythmic scratches and blotches, of which the purport is too recon-
dite for the ordinary intelligence to grasp; when, trusting to
native cleverness and facility, there are some, who, though they
profess to follow the great French Impressionists, yet neglect the
patient methods by which they arrived at breadth and brilliancy,
and offer merely dashing sketches as finished pictures; when, in
an era of self-advertisement and wanton violation of the honoured
canons of art, strange, unwholesome productions from abroad
astonish the land of Turner and Reynolds, and are admired by
some—it is surely wonderful that Hogarth should receive any
recognition at all! For he is the prince of story-tellers; his art
is all story, it is literary from beginning to end. Of him William
Sharp says: ‘“ Into the darkest work the artist has put meaning,
and there is instruction and sarcasm in all that he has introduced.”
Therefore, whenever he duly subordinates details, and lets them
simply unfold themselves to the observer, bit by bit, without disturb-
ing the unity of the whole, is his picture any the worse ?

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Nay, is it not all the better for making an appeal to the faculties
and nobler emotions of man ?

It is true that a picture may satisfy the requirements of Art
without any such direct appeal; that a work of art should first
attract attention on its zesthetic merits, and not as a study of men
and manners. The story, if there be any, should be of secondary
importance, otherwise it were better told in words than in print.
For Art is not to be the mere handmaiden of Literature ; such a
position would derogate from her dignity. However, she is safe-
guarded by the needs of the case, because without high technical
excellence, the artist cannot reach the heart and intellect of the
spectator, and it is obvious that the finer the technique, the more
forcibly will the thought, and lesson, be conveyed.

Hogarth lies in Chiswick Churchyard. Most people know the
spot, and the heavy-railed, eighteenth-century tomb raised by his
friends to his memory.

Even those who have never visited Chiswick are familiar with
Garrick’s epitaph thereon inscribed :

** Farewell, great painter of mankind,
Who reached the noblest point of art,
Whose pictured morals charm the mind
And through the eye correct the heart.

‘‘ If genius fire thee, Reader, stay ;
If Nature touch thee drop a tear ;
If neither move thee turn away,
For Hogarth’s honoured dust lies here.”

James McNeill Whistler, the stranger from - across the Atlantic,
who made his home with us, and William Hogarth, so sturdily
British, whose work, or some of it, Whistler nevertheless greatly
admired, types as they are of opposing principles and aims in
Art, lie interred in the same graveyard. There are many mansions
in the Heaven of Art; let those who so mercilessly abuse the
dissenters from their own narrow creeds, remember this; and that
the apostle of breadth and mystery, with no story to tell beyond
the beauty of the vague and suggestive, and the great teacher and
humorist who felt no detail to be unworthy of his brush if it
accentuated, in language artistically worthy, the force of the human
dramas he presented, has each in that heaven his appropriate place.

Who will be bold enough to say that we could have spared either ?

236

CHAPTER XI

THE GROVE, HIGHGATE, AND SAMUEL TAYLOR
COLERIDGE

F the history of William Hogarth, as we have just seen, was
I uneventful, and, except in the episode of his run-away
marriage, entirely devoid of romance, the illustrious poet and
philosopher, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who was born eight years.
after the death of the great English painter of men and manners,
crowded as much of adventure and poignant emotion as was
possible into sixty-two years of a life mainly devoted to sedentary
pursuits.

For the benefit of those who may have forgotten, I would recall
that the author of ‘‘ Christabel’’? and ‘“‘ The Ancient Mariner,’’
was the youngest son of the Vicar and schoolmaster of St. Mary
Ottery, a village in Devonshire, that boasted a grammar school
at which, under his parent’s eye, the future poet received the
rudiments of his education. His father dying when he was about
nine years old, Samuel was presented to a scholarship at Christ’s
Hospital, spending some eight years of his life there, and he rarely
visited his native place after he had left it.

‘““'He was transplanted,”’ says he himself, ‘‘ before his soul had
fixed its first domestic loves,” and his filial and fraternal feelings
do not appear to have been very strong. He seems, however, to
have retained an admiring recollection of the rural beauty of his
early home, for the sensitive boy spent much of his spare time
lying on the leads of the School House of Christ’s Hospital, gazing
at the sky and dreaming of the scenes of his childhood.

He tells us that ‘‘ he never closed his eyes in the sun without
seeing afresh the waters of the Otter and its willowy banks, the

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plank that crossed it, and the sands of varied tint that lay in its
bed.”’ In another place he recalls his daylight vision of the old
church tower of St. Mary Ottery—‘‘ The bells of which haunted him
even under the preceptor’s stern gaze, when his eyes were fixed in
mock study on his swimming books.” This being so, we can well
believe him when he says that he “‘ never thought as a child, never
had the language of a child.”

In his “‘ Table Talk,” Coleridge, in later years, describes the iron
discipline at Christ’s Hospital in those days as being, indeed, “ ultra
spartan’”’; all thoughts of home were to be banished. “ Boy,” he
remembered the head master saying to him once when he was crying,
the first day of his return after the holidays, “ Boy, the school
is your father, Boy, the school is your mother! Boy, the school
is your brother! the school is your sister, the school is your first
cousin and your second cousin, and all the rest of your relations.
Let’s have no more crying!” The head-master’s severity, also
the excellence of his teaching, is recorded by Coleridge’s school-
fellow and lifelong friend, Charles Lamb, his junior by some three
years, and himself a sizar at Christ’s ; he recalls in the “ Essays of
Klia’ how “the walls of the old Grey Friars re-echoed to the
accents of the inspired charity boy,’’ who even then read Virgil
for amusement.

On monthly holidays the scholars were turned adrift for a day—
those who had friends in London seeking them out, while those who
had not, wandered about the streets till it was time to return.
On one such occasion Coleridge, swimming in the New River in his
clothes, caught jaundice and rheumatic fever, to the deleterious
effects of which may be traced much of the trouble of later life.

Another time he made the acquaintance of a shoe-maker and his
wife, whose kindness to the friendless lad resulted in his announcing
his determination to make shoe-making his trade, instead of
entering the Church, for which, in common with most of the scholars
of Christ’s Hospital, he was being prepared. Asked his reason, he
boldly declared that he was an “ infidel,” whereupon the head
master, sensible but severe, birched him. “So, sirrah, you are an
infidel, are you? Then Ill flog your infidelity out of you!”

Sent to Cambridge, Samuel left it without the knowledge of the
authorities, and escaping to London, spent a night on a doorstep
in Chancery Lane, and next day enlisted in a regiment of dragoons,

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under the assumed name of “Silas Comberbach.” As might
have been expected, he made a very indifferent dragoon, but his
excellent conversational powers made him popular with his com-
rades; he nursed the sick in the hospital, and told admirable
‘stories to the men; but at the end of four months he betrayed him-
self by a Latin legend which he wrote on the wall, stating that
“he is doubly wretched who had never once been happy.” This
attracting attention, he became orderly to an officer, and one day,
walking behind him in the street, a Cambridge student recognized
Coleridge, and the upshot was that his friends procured his dis-
charge from the army, and he was sent back to complete his term
at the University, but he left it without taking a degree.

He formed a scheme, in common with Southey and some others,
to emigrate to America, and found a colony started on entirely new
principles on the banks of the Susquehanna. It failed because the
would-be emigrants had not the wherewithal to pay their passages.
Coleridge was bitterly disappointed.

He was only twenty-three when he married the eldest Miss
Fricker, of Bristol, one of whose sisters shortly after became Mrs.
Southey. The poet and his young wife settled at Clevedon on the
Bristol Channel, in a pretty one-storied cottage, with whitewashed
parlour walls, and roses peeping in at the casement, that they rented
at five pounds per annum. They soon after removed to Nether
Stowey, and Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy came to Alfoxden,
distant a mile and a half, to be near them.

Coleridge’s appearance at this time is described by Dorothy—
“thin and pale, the lower part of the face not good, wide mouth,
thick lips, not very good teeth, longish, loose, half-curling, rough,
brown hair.”

There is nothing in the annals of literature more remarkable
than the beautiful and lifelong friendship of Coleridge and Words-
worth, founded on mutual attraction and instinctive sympathy,
and cemented by a profound appreciation of each other’s gifts.

It is doubtful whether Wordsworth’s most human lyrics, not
to speak of his longer poems, would ever have been published, or
even written at all, but for the enthusiastic encouragement given
by his friend, at a moment of early and acute disappointment.
On the other hand, it was at Watchet, on the Bristol Channel, that
the idea of the ‘Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was developed ;

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Wordsworth suggesting the shooting of the albatross as the central
thought and turning-point of the wonderful story. They emulated,
criticized, and inspired each other, taking each his individual line,
his own view of the powers and province of poetry. From this
time forth Coleridge was to concern himself with the supernatural
and the mystical, Wordsworth to be the exponent of the wonder
and the beauty underlying even common things in life and nature.

The subsequent events of Coleridge’s life are well known.
Having to support a growing family, he began to lecture on religion
and politics at Bristol, and there he published his first. volume of
poems in 1796. To start a periodical called The Watchman, that
only survived two months, he toured the country, canvassing for
subscribers. He preached in several Unitarian pulpits, and was
about, half-heartedly, to enter the Unitarian ministry, when the
brothers Wedgwood (foreseeing the loss to the world of a poetical
genius), by a beneficent arrangement, stepped in and rendered
the sacrifice unnecessary. In 1798 he travelled in Germany with
the Wordsworths; there, in the Hartz Mountains, though ill-
dressed and slovenly, he was the very life of the party, rhyming
and poetizing, singing and joking, and “ discoursing in eloquent
monologue, as was his wont, on every subject from the captivity
of nations to the Millennium.”’ He then left his friends, and spent
eight or nine months in Germany, making himself master of the
language, attending lectures, and, in a period of great intellectual
activity and excitement, accepting for the time being many of
the dogmas and theories held by German philosophers and thinkers.
In 1800 he left London and settled in the Lake district, sharing
Greta Hall with Southey. A cold that he caught on the occasion
of a tour in Scotland with the Wordsworths, resulted, on his return,
in a long and severe illness, during which, to assuage pain, he first
fell into the terrible opium habit that wrecked his after life.
Cursing his weakness, and fleeing, as it were, from himself, he now
again went abroad. For nearly a year he acted as secretary to
the Governor of Malta; he stayed seven or eight months in Italy,
and during the whole of that period he never communicated with
his family at the Lakes. Back in England again, he was offered
shares in two newspapers, and could have made two thousand a
year; but he refused, declaring that he wouldn’t give up the
country and the leisurely reading of old folios for “‘ two thousand

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

times two thousand,” and that beyond three hundred and fifty
pounds a year, he held money to be an evil. Finally, at forty-two,
a broken and aged man, a slave to a vice which he felt that he
himself was too infirm of purpose to overcome, he voluntarily put
himself under the care of Dr. James Gillman, of Highgate, who
ultimately effected a cure. All this is well known to the world
at large.

Dr. Gillman, in two volumes, of which the first alone has been
published, has left an interesting account of the great poet’s advent
at the Grove, Highgate, and how he came to fix upon his house
as his home.

A physician wrote to him, suggesting that he should under-
take the professional charge of a distinguished literary man who
was the victim of an unfortunate habit, but was so eager to cure
it that he was willing to submit to any regimen, however severe.
“As he is desirous of retirement and a garden,” he wrote, “I
could think of no one so readily as yourself.”

Thus the garden, the same beautiful garden shown in the drawing,
was the determining factor which took the author of “ Christabel ”
to the place where he lived for twenty years.

Dr. Adams, who made the proposal, was to drive Coleridge
to the Grove the following evening—but in the end he came alone.
“An old gentleman of more than ordinary acquirements,” says
Dr. Gillman, was sitting by the fireside when Coleridge was
announced,

Anyone who knows the pleasant, old-fashioned drawing-room
at the Grove—even as it is to-day, will readily reconstruct
the scene. It is a long, quaint room with several windows,
opening on to a verandah overlooking the garden, where
crocuses and a “‘ cloud of golden daffodils ’—the flowers beloved
of Wordsworth—would in daylight have been in evidence; but
night was closing down—the maid had shut the shutters, and
drawn the curtains. As it was the 9th of April, there was a
fire in the grate; and wax tapers glimmered on the high mantel-
shelf, and on the centre-table, shedding a soft light over the
apartment.

Dr. Gillman, a dignified, benevolent-looking man in his prime,
rose up when the guest was announced; his wife—a pretty
woman, fair-haired and blue-eyed, as her grandson has described

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her in the memoirs of his family—wearing the lace cap that in
those days even the youngest matron wore—dropped her work,
and came forward to receive him. So great was the poet’s tact
and savoir-faire—that there seems to have been neither constraint
nor awkwardness on either side. They met as old friends rather
than as strangers; Dr. Gillman says, ‘“‘ Coleridge took his seat ;
his manner, his appearance, and above all, his conversation, were
captivating ; we listened with delight.”” So much at ease were
hosts and guests, that, on the first pause, the visitor before men-
tioned, who had not been there long, rose to go, under the im-
pression that he was witnessing the reunion of long-parted friends.

Such a successful meeting between total strangers with none
present to introduce them and bring forward topics of common
interest—would even under ordinary circumstances, speak well
for the native courtesy of the hosts, and the utter freedom from
self-consciousness of the newcomer: it was nothing less than
wonderful when we remember what were the actual conditions
under which it took place, and the deep emotions that (under-
lying their calm exterior) must have been stirring in the breasts
of at least two of the actors in the silently-tragical drama: but
the poet had come in his life to the parting of the ways, had made
a stern and heroic resolve ; and the physician was a man of subtle
Sympathy and insight. He beheld in his new patient a dis-
appointed and saddened man of genius; whose magnificent
poetry and prose works, had met with small success ; who, conscious
of his own powers—paralysed as they were by slavery to the drug
—after receiving an unprofessional and cruel opinion warning
him that to discontinue it would be fatal, yet at the same time
telling him the consequences of persistence in its use—had braced
himself to come to him to cure him.

In a pathetic letter written next day, Coleridge urges the doctor
to watch him closely, for though he could not bring himself to
speak an untruth, he might be tempted to act one. ‘‘ Not sixty
hours,” he said, “ have yet passed without my taking laudanum
. .. for the first week I shall not, must not, be permitted to
leave your house unless with you. Delicately or indelicately, this
must be done, and both the servants and assistants must receive
absolute command from you. The stimulus of conversation
suspends the terror that haunts my mind, but when I am alone,

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

the horrors I have suffered from laudanum, the degradation, the
blighted utility, almost overwhelm me. If, as I feel for the first
time . . . I should leave you restored to my moral and bodily
health, it is not myself only that will love and honour you; every
friend I have (and thank God! in spite of this wretched vice, I
have many and warm ones who were friends of my youth, and
have never deserted me) will thank you with reverence.”

One is reluctant to bring this touching letter, well known as it
is—to the eyes of any who may never, as yet, have read it. For
instinctively we feel that the writer would have shrunk from
such publicity : but the hero belongs to posterity, and posterity
claims the right to know all about him—even to the smallest detail
of his appearance: whether he wore his hair long or short—and
whether the buttons of his coat were black or brown—and he
pays heavily for his posthumous honours in the blazoning forth
in exaggerated form—for the special behoof of a scandal-loving
world, of all his failings and peccadilloes. Therefore, if in the
house of genius, as in the case of Thomas Carlyle, with whom
my next chapter is concerned—there should be a certain cup-
board, that, according to report, conceals a ghastly skeleton—
it is just as well that it should at last be unlocked ; because, ten ~
chances to one, as in the Chelsea house, when we let in the air
and the light, and the cobwebs are all swept away, it will be found
to contain nothing more damning than a bundle of old letters—
breathing of love and regret, of longing, and of exaggerated self-
blame; all of which appear in the epistle in which the suffering
Coleridge appeals to the physician for help and rescue ; and to which
Dr. Gillman appends a footnote : “‘ Vice is too strong an expression.
It was not idleness or sensuous indulgence that led Coleridge to
contract this habit. No! it was latent disease.”

The Lancet, commenting on Coleridge after the autopsy which
followed his death, remarked ‘‘ that this intellectual giant suffered
more than the world was aware of, and it can be understood that
his indolence as well as his opium habit had a physical basis. It
can only add to the marvel with which his achievements are justly
regarded, that one so physically disabled, should have made
such extensive and profound contributions to philosophy and
literature. It is one more instance of the triumphs of mind
over body.”

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The heights of Hampstead, now easily reached by the Under-
ground Railway, have been invaded by the builder, and although
some quiet corners remain that. are deliciously old-world, the
place is fast losing its former charming air of dignified seclusion.
But Highgate, twin sister to Hampstead, also seated aloft above
the stir and hum of London City, has been hitherto greatly pro-
tected by the exceeding steepness of her hill, and even now, when
the all-conquering electric tram ventures to climb the gradient—
the place retains something of the character of a rural hamlet.

Of its rustic beauty over a century ago, when Coleridge went
to live at the Grove, it is possible still to form some conception
if one stands on the summit of the hill on a clear evening in
summer, at the moment when the westering sun behind casts
one’s own long shadow in front. A violet mistiness is beginning
to creep up the lower slopes of the incline, veiling in kindly
mystery, the sordid streets at its foot; but, looking beyond and
above it, one catches a glorified glimpse of London when no heavy
pall of smoke overhangs it, and when the distant and familiar
landmarks are bathed in suffused and golden light.

Some of Highgate’s former architectural dignity lingers in the
comfortable Queen Anne Terrace to the left, and in the red brick
front of Cromwell House lower down, its rows of windows all afire
with the reflection from the sky; and one can still look past the
clustering roofs of S. Joseph’s to the ancient buttressed wall of
Willoughby Park—once a residence of Nell Gwynne, over which
one gets a glimpse of a tall, picturesque dovecot among the
embowering trees.

Many and many a time has the author of “‘ Christabel ” stood
on the same spot, at the same time of day and season—looking
down upon a changed London—arrested by its beauty.

For in this magical light all things are transfigured, and it is
a new heaven and a new earth one looks upon—verily a new
revelation of the utter peace and loveliness of Nature the Divine.
Distance lends enchantment ; the outlines of the ugliest buildings
are lost in the amber haze. The hum of the great city reaches
us but faintly from afar, like the heart-beats of humanity throbbing
in unison. That flat, grey-blue plain of houses, that, far as the
eye can reach, is London, seems almost to be a “‘ no man’s land,”
so silently it sleeps in the evening sunshine; but by and by, a

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familiar dome or spire will detach itself, and as one gazes, there
are various signs significant of life. Yonder thin column of smoke
against the warm sky, rises straight up in the windless air from the
slender shaft of a factory chimney—while nearer the horizon, a
white moving streak follows the track of a railway, and the scream
of a locomotive is faintly heard—all telling of the near neighbour-
hood of working, enjoying, spending, suffering man.

In Coleridge’s day, the outlook was wider, for there were ‘far
fewer buildings to obstruct it, and the cloud of smoke that except
on such clear days as that just described, often hides the prospect
now—was then comparatively light. The denizen of London
nowadays, must choose his hour to see it—but it is well worth while
to do so; and my Highgate drawing will for ever be associated
in my mind with that glimpse of glorified London so often vouch-
safed to me on my homeward way. There was no monotony ;
sometimes rolling cumulus clouds ahead (piled snow-white on
each other) caught and reflected the glow from the sunset; or if
fleecy cirri were about, they too caught it, and dyed the heavens
to the zenith with rippling waves of rose-red. But always the
glory was short-lived—the shadows crept up higher and descended
—the spell of enchantment holding me on the hill-top, was broken,
and everything was grey, and cold, and matter-of-fact, when at
length I reached the neighbourhood of the ‘‘ Archway,” with its
mundane noise and bustle, and entered the nether regions of the
Hampstead and Highgate tube. station.

The general features of the Grove—the name given to a row of
large, comfortable-looking and dignified houses—early Georgian
or older—standing in an old world corner of Highgate a little off
the main road from London—remain much as they were in the
days when Dr. James Gillman resided at No. 3—had a large and
lucrative practice, and had attracted some attention among his
professional brethren by the publication of a pamphlet on hydro-
phobia. They speak now, as they did then, of the refinement and
taste of well-to-do inhabitants.

They were built when large cellar-kitchens were universal,
and when hot and cold water laid on, were unheard-of luxuries.
No doubt, added to the charm of a romantic situation, they have
now domestic conveniences of which our forefathers knew nothing.
They face east and west, and the old-fashioned, green-shuttered

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windows in the rear of No. 3, command a glorious prospect, for
they look right across the ‘‘ Nightingale Valley,”’ over Lord Mans-
field’s Park, to the sunsets, while in the early days of the nine-
teenth century, there must have been a magnificent view from the
front of the house also.

Coleridge came to the Grove in 1813. An acquaintance that
we have seen so auspiciously begun, ripened daily throughout
the years of his residence at Highgate; and the friendship thus
felicitously formed, only ended with his death in 1834.

‘* Here on the brow of Highgate Hill,” wrote Carlyle, “‘ he sat
looking down on London, and its smoke and tumult, like a sage
escaped from the inanity of life’s battles, and attracting the
thoughts of innumerable brave souls still engaged there—a heavy-
laden, high aspiring, surely much suffering man.”

Among the poet’s ardent admirers and disciples, Carlyle himself,
then newly come to London, cannot be classed—but the picturesque ~
sidelights that he throws upon this period of Coleridge’s life are
invaluable ; and it is interesting to contrast his description of his
personal appearance in his last days, when prematurely aged,
with that by Dorothy Wordsworth of the poet in his youth, before
quoted: ‘‘ A good man,” he says, ‘“‘ he was now getting old and
gave you the idea of a life full of suffering; a life heavy laden,
half vanquished, still swimming painfully in seas of manifold
physical and other bewilderment. Brow and head were. round
and of massive weight, but the face was flabby, irresolute. The
deep eyes, of a light hazel, were as full of sorrow as of inspiration,
compressed pain looked mildly from them, as in a kind of mild
astonishment ; the whole figure and air good and amiable, other-
wise might be called flabby, irresolute; expressive of weakness
under possibility of strength. He hung loosely on his limbs,
with knees bent and stooping attitude; in walking, he rather
shuffled than decisively stepped; and a lady once remarked he
could never fix which side of the garden walk would suit him
best, but continually shifted corkscrew fashion, and kept trying
both.”

Truly doctors differ, and it is amusing to find that Emerson
saw in Coleridge “‘ a short, thick old man, with bright blue eyes
and fine, clear complexion—who took snuff freely, which presently
soiled his clothes and neat black suit.” Harriet Martineau,

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

visiting the Grove in 1832, says in her autobiography, ‘‘ He looked

‘old with his rounded shoulders, and drooping head, and excessively
thin limbs. His eyes were as wonderful as they were reported,
light grey and extremely prominent and actually glittering.” Was
this a subconscious mental comparison of the creator with the
creation ?—of Coleridge himself with the ancient mariner who—
with his ‘“‘long grey. beard and glittering eye ’’—willed men
involuntarily to halt and listen ?

Others besides Carlyle have left on record Coleridge’s peculiar
gait. Hazlitt remarked it long before the opium habit began.
In his later days at Highgate, his rough, black locks turned white,
his figure bent, ‘‘ dressed all in black as he moved about the house
and garden,” writes Alex. Gillman, “‘ he might have been taken for
a clergyman; he shared his breakfast with the birds, and his
knowledge with his friends.” Among these friends he did not
always discriminate; he sometimes wasted his conversational
powers, which were never greater than at this period of his life;
and he often cast his pearls of wisdom before the young, or those
otherwise unfitted to appreciate them.

One who bore witness to this was Lord Hatherley, then Mr.
William Page Wood; who was a frequent visitor at the house of
Basil Montague, scholar and barrister of Bedford Square.
Thursday was the only day when Mr. and Mrs. Montague did
not receive—that evening being always reserved for the Grove—
whither the future Lord Chancellor frequently accompanied
them. He says that Coleridge ‘‘ poured out all the riches of his
prodigious memory, and all the poetry of his brilliant imagination
to every listener. I was not only addressed myself, but I heard
the whole of the poet-philosopher’s favourite system of Polarites,
the Thesis, the Menothesis, and Antithesis—showered down on a
young lady of seventeen, with as much unction as he afterwards
expounded it to Edward Irving.”

Gillman’s son, when a schoolboy, once asked him for help in
a school exercise, but never did so again, as the sage gave him a
lecture an hour long on the profoundest principles of the subject,
beginning with our first parents !

Audiences of older people, however, generally hung entranced
upon his words. Dr. Dibdin met him at a dinner-party ‘“‘ where
the orator rolled himself up as it were, in his chair,” and talked

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for nearly two hours, and where “ there seemed to be no dish
like Coleridge’s conversation to feed upon,” the company listen-
ing in wonder and delight; ‘‘ he thought a second Johnson had
visited the earth to make wise the sons of men,’”’ and wished he
himself could have been his Boswell. But, as is remarked in the
preface to Coleridge’s ‘“ Table Talk,” ‘‘ Johnson talked with his
companions, Coleridge talked to them.” He monopolized the
conversation—and Carlyle (himself an astonishing conversation-
alist), who did much the same, said that Coleridge’s voice, naturally
soft and good, had contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle
and sing-song ... he spoke as if preaching—you would have
said preaching earnestly and almost hopelessly, the weightiest
things... .” ;

‘*T think, Charles,” said Coleridge once to his old school-fellow
Lamb, referring to the days when he so nearly became a Unitarian
preacher, ‘‘ you never heard me preach ?”’

‘* My dear boy,” replied Lamb, ‘‘ { never heard you do anything
else!”

A more sympathetic report of Coleridge’s conversational gifts
is that of Justice Talfourd. ‘‘ Who that has ever heard him can
forget him?” he wrote, ‘his mild benignity, the unbounded
variety of his knowledge, the fast-succeeding products of his
imagination, the childlike simplicity with which he rises from the
driest and commonest theme, into the wildest magnificence of
thought, pouring on the soul a strain of beauty and of wisdom to

mellow and enrich it for ever.’ It is a description that forcibly
recalls his own lines :

“* And now ’twas like all instruments,
Now like a lonely flute ;
And now it is an angel’s song,
That makes the heavens be mute.”

Even Carlyle could say “no talk in his century or any other
could be more surprising.”

Coleridge could more than hold his own on any theme, for the
variety and extent of his knowledge were extraordinary, and every
topic under the sun brought some inspiration to him. Yet during
the Highgate period, his chief interest lay in philosophy and
religion, and whatever the starting-point of the conversation, he
always led the talk towards those subjects. The man who, study-

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

ing Voltaire, when a boy had announced himself to be an infide.
—who later steeped himself in German metaphysics, in Pan-
theism, and Socinianism and was once on the point of throwing
in his lot with the Unitarians—now in his declining years severely
censured them to Emerson, one of themselves, cared only to
reconcile German philosophy with Christian dogmas, and died
in the odour of orthodoxy.

His theological wanderings are explained, for as Emerson says,
“* His was a catholic mind with a hunger for ideas, with eyes
looking before and again to the highest bards and sages.”’ And
in his “ Table Talk,’’ Coleridge himself states: ‘‘I owe under
God, my return to the faith to my having gone much further
than the Unitarians, and having come round to the other side.”

Coleridge’s flow of speech, readiness, and rapidity of thought,
were as remarkable when he lectured, as in conversation. He
would not, Dr. Gillman tells us, lecture on any topic that he had
specially to get up. Once his readiness was put to a severe test,
he had to lecture on the growth of the original mind, “‘ and the
subject was only given out to him at the moment before delivery.
He turned to Dr. Gillman: ‘A pretty stiff subject they have
chosen for me,”’ and he looked rather startled; but it was not
for long. Arranging with his friend that if the audience seemed
bored he was to touch his leg—but that if they seemed pleased he
was to let him go on for an hour, he began: ‘‘ The lecture I am
about to give you is purely extempore, but I have thought and
read much on the subject. Should you find a nominative case
looking out for a verb, or a fatherless verb for a nominative case
—you must secure it.”’ ‘‘ This beginning,” says Dr. Gillman, ‘‘ was
a sort of mental curvetting,” the audience began to smile and
it gave him confidence; and the result was “he was brilliant,
eloquent, and logically consecutive.”” The time sped so swiftly
that the hour had passed before Dr. Gillman looked at his watch
—but Coleridge never knew what gave rise to the singular request
‘that he should lecture on the spur of the moment.

Coleridge was very happy in his relations with the Gillmans.
His grandson, Ernest Hartley Coleridge, says, ‘‘ There were some
chords in his nature that were struck for the first time by. these
good people. . . . Their patience must have been inexhaustible,
their loyalty unimpeachable, their love indestructible.”

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But loyalty, patience, and love, were not expended in vain;
there can be no manner of doubt that the patient, ere the close
of his life, was cured, and that no opium except to relieve pain
ever entered the doctor’s house—although a report to the contrary
was circulated : a boy employed at the Grove was in the habit
_ of making weekly journeys to town to procure drugs for the doctor,
and it was asserted that on these occasions he had often brought
laudanum for Coleridge, from a chemist’s in the Tottenham Court
Road. But this was entirely disproved when the same lad, no
longer in Dr. Gillman’s service and now grown up, was questioned
on the point. He stated emphatically that the little packages he
used to bring for Mr. Coleridge from London, contained nothing
more noxious than the poet’s favourite brand of snuff, of which
he took large quantities ; and that moreover he had never heard
a whisper of his addiction to laudanum.

Mrs. Gillman was an excellent manager, and what, in view of
Coleridge’s passion for self-expression, was almost equally im-
portant, she was an admirable and patient listener also. She
was proud, her grandson tells us, of so distinguished a guest, and
welcomed his friends, and those thinkers and searchers after
truth, who flocked to the philosopher-poet as to an oracle. Among
these were Frederick Denison Maurice, Arthur H. Hallam, and
Kdward Irving, together with many others who were leaders or
followers of the new schools of thought ; and the Grove soon became
famous as a centre of intellectual activity. The Wordsworths
came when in London, Charles Lamb, whose devotion to the
‘inspired charity boy ”—the friend of his youth, knew no bounds
—dined at the Gillmans’ every Sunday, and frequently came on
week-day evenings also, returning to town by the coach that
then ran from the “‘ Fox and Crown ”’ to Holborn—fares for inside
passengers 2s., for outside 1s. 6d. Mrs. Coleridge spent the Christ-
mas of 1822 at the Grove, and ultimately came to live with her
daughter Sara, when she married her cousin, and settled at
Hampstead. Mrs. Gillman corresponded with Mrs. Coleridge:
and we learn that her letters to her husband used to sadden him
—no doubt the thought of what might have been, and regrets
for what he had missed of domestic happiness—in the society
of his wife and children, were at such times uppermost in the mind
of the too-severely self-accusing man. Perhaps these were the

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

occasions on which he fled to the garden; there is a tradition
current on the spot, that his favourite haunt was a certain bosky
walk between the right-hand wall, and the evergreen oak shown
in my drawing.

The gardens behind the Grove houses vie with each other in
charm. They have in common the great beauty of their situation,
and some of the larger ones—No. 3 is not among these—wander
down the slopes of the valley which the houses overlook : in the
days when land was not at a premium, and labour was cheap,
when everything near London grew easily and well—they probably
lost themselves on the hillside till they met a neighbouring garden
and accepted a boundary wall. Dr. Gillman’s garden at the
present day does not continue over the crest of the hill—if it ever
did so, it was no doubt simply as a kitchen-garden. In any case,
the existing garden—the picture of which was taken at the moment
in late afternoon when the sinking sun sent sharp shadows from
behind me—was probably, then as now, a flower-garden only. It
is a long, comparatively narrow strip, set between two high brick
walls. That to the left was not built yesterday: I should say
that a portion of it is older than the house itself—the house that,
once red-brick like its neighbours, was faced with stucco in the
time of Dr. Gillman’s successor. It was probably he who raised
the entire top story to the level of Coleridge’s study window,
which Dr. Gillman, in order to give his friend and patient un-
disturbed quiet and a perfect view—had had lifted higher than
the rest. In an engraving in “ The Gillmans of Highgate,”’ it is
shown standing tower-like by itself. In my illustration it is the
top window to the extreme right of the picture. But this was
not the only change made after Dr. Gillman’s death; the stone
steps leading to the garden from the drawing-room, were removed
from the centre of the verandah to their present position at the
extreme left of it. They are of a venerable age—the feet of many
distinguished literary men have trodden and worn them down—
and for twenty summers Coleridge must have used them daily,
supporting his hesitating steps by the iron railing. As for the
garden itself, as it is to-day, I can only say that of all the gardens,
little and large, that I have drawn—that of No. 3, the Grove,
Highgate, though almost the smallest, is the sunniest and most
flowery. There is scarcely an inch of soil between the roots of the

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GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

plants—and yet it is not over-crowded—and while all sorts of plants
seem to do well, it is pre-eminently a rose-garden; every rose
theré is a magnificent specimen, and many have taken prizes.
There are roses new-fangled, and roses old-fashioned; and they
vary in tint from white and pale-blush, nearly to black. I am not
learned in flower-lore—and know next to nothing of the nomen-
clature of roses, but I learnt from the label attached to it, that
the beautiful white rose-bush that appears in the immediate
foreground of the drawing, is designated ‘‘ John Craig.””» Who
that individual was I do not know, but he has given his very
matter-of-fact name, to a rose with small green leaves that is
picturesque in its manner of growth, as well as lovely in its
individual blossoms.

Mrs. Gillman seems to have been an excellent gardener; she
kept’ the house bright with geraniums and myrtles—these being
Coleridge’s favourite plants. In a letter to his hostess, written in
1827, the poet says: ‘“ The rose is the pride of the summer, the
delight and beauty of the garden—the eglantine, the honeysuckle
and the jasmine, if not so bright and ambrosial, are less transient,
creep nearer to us, clothe our walls, twine over our porch, and
haply peep in at our chamber window with the crested wren or
linnet within.” There is much more in the same strain, extolling
the virtues of the geranium, singing enthusiastically, in somewhat
high-flown and stilted language, the praises of the myrtle. ‘‘ Oh,
precious,” he exclaims, “‘ in its sweetness is the rich innocence of
its snow-white blossoms,” and he points out that when these
have fallen, “ they survive invisibly in every more than fragrant
leaf. As the flashing strain of the nightingale to the yearning
murmur of the dove, so the myrtle to the rose! He who once
possessed a prized and genuine myrtle, will rather remember it
under the cypress tree than seek to forget it among the roses
of a Paradise.” Thus does Coleridge rhapsodize over his floral
favourites, and Mrs. Gillman no doubt thought it all very fine
poetry ; she was very proud of her guest, whose innate love of a
garden, had had time to grow, and his taste for flowers to specialize,
during the fourteen summers that he had already spent at the
Grove.

That shelter so happily provided, he seldom quitted for long.
‘* His luxuriant white hair was like a crown of honour,” says one

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THE GROVE, HIGHGATE

of his biographers, “and wherever he appeared, whether in the
flowery fields, or woods of Highgate, old and young took off their
hats.”

Once a year he visited Ramsgate; and on one occasion during
his sojourn with the Gillmans, he went abroad with the Words-
worths—with Dorothy, and her brother William, his almost life-
long friend, who said of him: ‘ The only truly wonderful man
I ever met was Coleridge.”

His friends learnt to identify him with the Grove, and Lamb
wrote mournfully after his death: ‘‘ Never saw his likeness, nor
probably the world can see it again. I seem to love the house he
lived in more passionately than when he lived.”

The house was originally panelled throughout, and though it
was modernized sixty years ago, it has still a powder-closet, and a
fine carved staircase. It is, therefore, interesting, apart from its
association with the author of ‘“Christabel’? and “ Kubla
Khan.” And Coleridge loved it, for he went to it intending to
stay a few months, he remained over twenty years! And having
in his youth sung of mystic Southern seas where

“* The Sun’s rim dipped, the stars rushed out,
With one stride came the dark,”
throughout his middle-age and premature decline, he must have
watched from his window at Highgate, the sun’s slow sinking,
the afterglow, and stealthy oncoming of night in our Northern
land. He was happy at the Grove, and he loved the garden well.

Writing from Malden to Mrs. Gillman in July, 1818, he com-
pares the fine gardens of a house at which he was a guest, with that
at the Grove.

“To the right, a flower and fruit garden not without kitchenry.
To the left a kitchen garden, not without fruit and flowers; and
both a perfect blaze of roses. Yet so capricious is our, at least, my
nature, that I feel I do not derive the fifth part of the delights
from this miscellany of Flora, flowers at every step, as from the
economized glasses and flower-pots at Highgate—so tended and
worshipped by me, and each the gift of some kind friend or courteous
neighbour. I actually make up a flower-pot every night, in order
to imitate my Highgate pleasures.”

When at the cost of untold pain and humiliation, Coleridge
made his high resolve, at the eleventh hour, to seek to reinstate

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his powers, and to save the remnant of his shattered life—it was
a garden for which the wise physician had expressly stipulated,
for he looked to a garden to complete the cure.

And I am sure that one born later—a poet too, though com-
paratively unknown—but voiced the silent thought of Coleridge
when he wrote :

*“‘ A garden is a lovesome thing,
God wot,
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Ferned Grot,
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not—
Not God! in gardens, and when
The eve is cool ?
Nay, but I have a sign,
°*Tis very sure God walks in mine.”
T. E. Brown.

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CHAPTER XII
CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA

people who, for the best part of half a century, were the
tenants of No. 5—now 24—Cheyne Row, that there is little
that is new and not generally known to record of them.

It will serve some purpose, however, to collect the existing
memoranda of the not inconsiderable part the little garden at the
back of the house played in their lives.

James Anthony Froude has been severely censured for the
manner in which, as Carlyle’s literary executor and trusted friend,
he fulfilled his task.

Some think he betrayed the confidence reposed in him, but
without entering far into that vexed question, we must in fairness
remember that, as he tells us in his preface to the ‘‘ Life of Carlyle,”
the philosopher himself, in reviewing Lockhart’s ‘‘ Life of Scott,”
had defended Lockhart from a similar charge, insisting that every
biographer should be honest, and candid; because, he says, ‘“‘ to
produce not things, but the ghosts of things, can never be the
duty of man . . . your true hero is not a white, stainless, imper-
sonal ghost-hero,”’ by which he means, of course, that every hero
is a man, with human failings as well as virtues, and that it rests
’ with the biographer to give these their proper proportion. I
scarcely think that Froude, though sometimes he may have been
indiscreet and mistaken in his conclusions, failed, on the whole,
to do this, because, speaking for myself, I must say I rose from
the perusal of the “ Life,” and afterwards of ‘‘ The Letters and
Memorials,’’ with a much greater enthusiasm.and admiration for

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S” much has been written and read of the two remarkable

GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES

Carlyle, than I formerly possessed. The ‘‘ New Letters and
Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle’? are calculated, as intended,
to raise still higher the reader’s opinion of Thomas Carlyle; but.
I think that, in vindicating the philosopher in his Introduction,
Sir James Crichton-Browne is not infrequently unjust to Mrs.
Carlyle. ‘‘ The course of true love never did run smooth,” which
applies equally to married, and unmarried lovers. These two
gifted people were genuinely devoted. Who can read the letters
that passed between them to the end of their long, wedded lives,
letters never intended for the eye of the public, and doubt it?
But, unluckily for perfect harmony, they were temperamentally
too much alike. Both were highly-strung; victims of a peculiarity
of physical and mental organization that influenced their thoughts
and actions; both were emotional, and, unfortunately, equally
endowed with hot tempers, as well as mental gifts. Here perhaps
the resemblance between them ended, for the character of their
mentality, and their outlook, and aspirations, were different.
Mrs. Carlyle longed for children and she was childless ; his children
were the offspring of his genius. She herself was not without the
ambition, and, as her letters show, the capacity, to excel in litera-
ture; yet she generously and cheerfully immolated her talents
in that direction on the altar of her husband’s genius, ‘‘ because,”’
says Froude, “‘ she honoured his character, she gloried-in his fame,
and she was sure of his affection.”” She was the first to recognize
the merit of ‘‘ The French Revolution,” and it is touching, as well
as amusing, to find her celebrating its accomplishment by treating
him to a bread pudding, of which he remarks, ‘‘ he consumed it
with an appetite got by walking far and wide.”

Although sufficiently capable in business affairs, Carlyle was at
heart a mystic. ‘‘ The word God,” says Froude, ‘‘ was too awful
for common use, and he veiled his feelings in metaphor to avoid
it.” On the other hand, Mrs. Carlyle was eminently practical ;
an excellent and active housekeeper, who, even with the narrow
means at her disposal, made light of domestic difficulties that.
would have appalled most women brought up as she had been,
in comparative ease and luxury. No one, we are assured, calling
at Cheyne Row in the days of their poverty, could have told
whether the Carlyles were rich or poor. The house was well-
furnished, the drawing-room even elegant. The little garden at.

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CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA

the back was carefully tended, and her own dress was always
tasteful. She had been born into a refined home, a home that
she was well fitted to adorn, whereas he was a peasant-farmer’s
son. ‘* But, though unpolished,” says Froude, ‘‘ he was a gentle-
man in every fibre, never to be mistaken for anything else.”
Though he professed to be unsociable, when he went into company,
—although he might suffer from sleeplessness and indigestion after-
wards—he received, as well as gave, pleasure, for he was one of the
best of living talkers: ‘‘ Wise, tender, scornful, humorous, as the
inclination took him.”

If his dislike to society was a pose, he could drop it when the
occasion demanded. As early as 1839, when his mother-in-law,
Mrs. Welsh, was staying at Cheyne Row, he, writing to his own
mother, good-humouredly describes how “‘ Jane audaciously got
up a thing called a soirée one evening . . . it really went off in
a most successful manner, though at midnight ‘I’ smoked a
peaceable pipe, praying it might be long before we saw the like
again.”

Mrs. Carlyle was charming, witty, brilliant, but had a hasty
temper, and a tongue that could sting. “‘Do you know, Mrs.
Carlyle, you would be vastly more amiable if you were not so
damnably clever,” said the elder Sterling once to her; and Carlyle
wrote on one occasion: ‘‘ Thanks, thanks to thee, my good wife—
though very hot-tempered one.” y

But it was a case of ‘‘ the pot calling the kettle black.” His
own nervous irritability was excessive; he was bilious, dyspeptic,
a bad sleeper, and acutely, even abnormally, sensitive to sounds.
A barking dog, a crowing cock, were his bétes noires, and the sound
of a piano next door, in his hours of work, drove him nearly dis-
tracted. In this respect many of us can sympathize with him,
and he certainly seems to have suffered more than his share from
this sort of nerve-racking, and unnecessary annoyance; and
though his mother, for whom he cherished the warmest filial affec-
tion, described him as ‘‘ Gi ill to deal wi’,” his was no case of chronic
bad temper, and in his happier moods he was a most charming
companion : but through lack of self-restraint, he was often given
to express himself in extravagant language (‘‘ London,” for example,
“was an accursed, dirty, deafening distraction of cockneydom ”’).
Happily his own very keen sense of humour sometimes saved the

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situation, and he would stop short in the midst of a torrent of
denunciation, and burst out laughing at the absurdity of his own
invective. The philosopher who can laugh, particularly at his
own expense, is a very human one, and Carlyle himself had once
said that ‘‘ when he called out ‘ murder,’ he was not always killed.”

Mrs. Carlyle herself, if less violently demonstrative, yet both
wrote and spoke, as one may say, in italics. Froude, who liked
her well, said she was “‘ intense in all things ;”’ therefore, we may
take as the passing jest of a wife proud of her husband, though it
was quoted by Froude as tragically significant, her remark to a
friend: ‘‘My dear, never marry a genius!” She loved her
‘‘ genius” truly, and in spite of friction, was his real helpmeet,
shielding him to the end of her days from a thousand hindrances
to his work and quiet, such as ordinary mortals humbly doing
their own bit of unimportant creative work in circumstances
equally unfavourable, have to put up with.

Writing in 1837, she tells him that she “ cried over his letter
three or four hours... . I wanted to kiss you into something
like cheerfulness,” she said, ‘‘ and the length of the kingdom is
between us; and if it had not been, the probabilities are that,
with the best intentions, I should have quarrelled with you rather.”
But, as Crichton-Browne points out, “‘ it is those who love intensely
who are intolerant, and brisk affections are scarcely less apt to
clash than quick tempers.”

Carlyle’s work was to him as a religion, and as he could not
write when anyone was in the room, sometimes he and his wife
only met at meals; and so he temporarily forgot even the woman
whom he had set up, as it were, on a pedestal to be worshipped,
but worshipped undemonstratively, when she would have much
preferred a caress. At other times he was tender, thoughtful, and
anxious. He had numerous “ sport” names for her—‘‘ Jeannie,”
“* Jeanikins,” his ‘‘ necessary evil,” and others, but ‘‘ Goody ”’
was the favourite one; once he speaks of himself as “‘ Good”
-(“ Good,” he prettily explains in a footnote, being masculine for
““Goody ’’). When ‘“ Jeannie”? was absent, he seems to have
written to her almost daily, long, brilliant letters, very wonderful
coming from one whose business was literature, and who must often
have been physically weary of the pen; and he was restless and
anxious, unless she wrote constantly, and fully, in return.

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CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA

Carlyle’s. admirable conscientiousness in refusing to use his gifts
in support of what he did not thoroughly approve, a line of conduct
in which his wife nobly seconded him, kept him poor for many
years; but, through his thrift, and her excellent management,
“the extremity of poverty never came near them.”

““T mean to write according to my strength,” he writes to his
brother in 1834. ‘“‘ As to riches, fame, success, and so forth, I
ask no questions. Were the work laid out for us but the kneading
of a clay brick, let us, in God’s name, do it faithfully, and look for
our reward elsewhere.” He finds no encouragement in the book-
selling world, for at this time the author of “ Sartor Resartus ”’
was an unpopular person with the reading public. ‘‘ On July 26,
at ‘Sunset’ ”’ (an ominous hour), he writes in his journal, “ nothing
can exceed the gravity of my situation here. ‘Do or die’ seems
the word; and, alas! what to do?... no periodical editor
wants me; no man will give me money for my work. Bad health,
too . . . despicable fears of coming to absolute beggary, etc., etc.,
besiege me.’ But he never entirely despaired, and a month
earlier he had written: ‘‘ Surely as the blue dome of Heaven
encircles us all, so does the providence of the Lord of Heaven. He
willewithhold no good thing from those that love Him! This, as
it was the ancient psalmist’s faith, let it likewise be ours. It is
the Alpha and Omega, I reckon, of all possessions that can belong
to man.”

Sir Leslie Stephen truly says “ that Carlyle was too often judged
by his defects, and regarded as a selfish and eccentric misanthrope,
with flashes of genius, rather than a man with the highest qualities
of mind and character, clouded by constitutional infirmities.”
For alas! ‘ The fierce light that beats upon a throne” beats also
upon the home of genius, betraying all the little flaws and imper-
fections that escape remark when they are seen on commoner clay.

To my mind, therefore, what men have called a tragedy, was
no tragedy at all, and the dingy, old house in Cheyne Row, though
it saw tragic moments, is coloured rosy-red with romance—romance
that did not end, as is the way with most fiction, with marriage
rejoicings, the union of the Haddington belle with the peasant’s
son; but romance that followed them throughout the rough and
tumble of their early days in Annandale and Edinburgh, through
the struggles, and disappointments, and joys, the growing fame,

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the bereavements and difficulties, the successes and losses, of forty
years, each marking, as with a milestone, that difficult road of life
down which, for the most part, they walked together, hand in
hand.

Of bereavements and passionate grief, the old house at Chelsea
has seen much. When she lost her mother, and he his. And what
an episode was that, what a shock, what a stunning blow, what
an irretrievable calamity, must have appeared to them, the acci-
dental destruction of the precious manuscript of the first volume
of the “French Revolution”! A work of art, be it picture,
sculpture, or book, once destroyed, cannot be recreated exactly
in the same form. The germ of the idea for the book, or the
statue; the design and motive for the painting, may still exist, but
its evolution in each case will inevitably be different; for when
once the effort is spent, not all the industry in the world can recall
just the mood in which it was begun, or the enthusiasm for
creation—like unto the enthusiasm of early youth, that, sur-
mounting all obstacles, carried us forward to achievement. “ It
is gone,” wrote Carlyle in his journal; ‘the whole world, and
myself backed by it, could not bring it back; nay, the old spirit,
too, is fled.”’ é

Carlyle’s own description in a letter to his wife of Chelsea and
Cheyne Row eighty years ago, is interesting reading now: “ We
are called Cheyne Row (pronounced Chainé Row) and are a genteel
neighbourhood ; two old ladies on one side, unknown character
on the other, but with ‘ pianos.’ The street is flag-pathed, sunk-
storied, iron-railed, all old-fashioned and tightly done up; looks
out on a rank of sturdy old pollarded (that is beheaded) lime trees,
standing there like giants. . . . Beyond this a high brick wall;
backwards a garden, the size of our back one at Comely Bank,
with trees, etc., in bad culture ; beyond this green hay-fields and
tree avenues, once a bishop’s pleasure grounds; an unpicturesque
yet rather cheerful outlook.” He describes the house in detail,
ending up with: “‘ On the whole a most massive, roomy, sufficient
old house, with places, for example, to hang, say, three dozen
hats and cloaks on, and as many crevices and queer old presses
and shelved closets (all tight, new painted in their way) as would
gratify the most covetous Goody—rent, thirty-five pounds—I
confess I am strongly tempted.”

260

osnozy pup napuvy fo ML\ 2 ASNOH ATA TA¥O

CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA

Chelsea, that he calls “a singular, heterogeneous kind of spot,
very dirty and confused in some places, quite beautiful in others,”
with its memories of Sir Thomas More, Steele, and Smollett, was
even more fascinating in pre-embankment days than it is now.
Cheyne Walk was at that time a wide highway, with boats lying
moored, and a smell of shipping and tar. Up and down the broad
river darted myriads of canoes manned by “‘ white-trousered, white-
shirted Cockneys,’”’ and beyond lay the peaceful villages, and
beautiful green undulations of Surrey, “‘ a most artificial, green-
painted, and yet lively, fresh, almost opera-looking business,”’
wrote Carlyle; for though he professed dislike of the avowedly
picturesque, he was not insensitive to it, and, fresh from the silence
and solitudes of Craigenputtoch, he was clearly attracted; but
he left the decision to his practical wife. ‘‘ Revolve all this in thy
fancy and judgment, my child,’”’ he wrote to her, “ and see what
thou canst make of it.”

The removal to Number Five, “a right old, strong, roomy brick
house,” took place in the summer of 1834, when the cherries were
ripening on the tree in the garden. Carlyle cheerily describes it :
“* A hackney coach, loaded to the roof and beyond it with luggage
and the passengers, tumbled us all down at eleven in the morning.
Chico, the canary-bird, struck up his lilt in the very London streets
wherever he could see green leaves or feel the free air. There we
sat on three trunks. I, however, with a match-box, soon lit a
cigar, as Bessy (who pro tem. was acting as maid) did a fire, and
thus, with a kind of cheerful solemnity we took possession by
raising a reek, and even dined in extempore fashion on a box covered
with some accidental towel.”

In the strip of garden at the back of the house, which the drawing
shows as it is seen to-day, Carlyle now set to work. Slips of jessa-
mine and gooseberry bushes, brought from Scotland, were planted.
Mrs. Carlyle tended two tiny leaves plucked from her father’s
grave, which, ‘“‘ after twelve months in the garden at Chelsea
declared itself a gooseberry bush!” But the old gardener, when
asked if it could be got to bear, said, “‘ A poor, wild thing! No,
if you want to have gooseberries, ma’am, better get a proper goose-

berry bush in its place! ‘ The old Goth!’” Long, long after, in
1863, three little gooseberries appeared on the bush. Great was
the exultation. ‘‘ But, alas!’ she wrote, ‘‘ whether through too

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much staring at them, or too much east wind, or through mere
delicacy . . . the three bits of gooseberries, instead of growing
larger, grew every day less, till they reached the smallness of pin-
heads and dropped on the ground! I could have cried when the
last one went!’’ She was more fortunate with the ivy that she
brought from her mother’s house at Templans—ivy that still
clothes the old brick wall at Cheyne Row.

I fancy they employed no regular gardener during the years of
their poverty. Carlyle himself kept the grass trim and tidy, and
in 1837 he writes to John Sterling: ‘I have done nothing of
late but dig earth and rubbish in the little garden so called.”

“The little garden so called” was to Carlyle a refuge “‘ from the
irrational, inarticulate spectacle of the streets”’; but he elsewhere
says their tumult is becoming to him “a kind of marching music
as he walked along, following his own thoughts, undisturbed by it.”
Gardening, however, was better exercise and recreation for him than
walking, insomuch as he could not both think and dig. And he
hated London, which he designated as ‘‘ The Devil’s Own with
its dirt and noises.”

In an entry in his diary in the dog-days of 1838, he tells how heat
and indigestion making sleep impossible, he went downstairs in his
‘nightshirt to smoke in the “back yard.” ‘It was one of the
beautifullest nights; the half-moon clear as silver looked out as
from an eternity, and the great dawn was streaming up. I felt a
remorse, a kind of shudder at the fuss I was making about a sleep-
less night, about my sorrows at all, with a life so soon to be absorbed
into the great mystery above and around me. Oh, let us be
patient! Let us call to God with our silent hearts if we cannot
with our tongues.”

Once again, in a very hot August, many years later, unable
to sleep, and Mrs. Carlyle away, he descended, at 8 a.m., to the
garden, “‘ and smoked a cigar on a stool.”” The same soft mood
again inspired him as on the earlier occasion: ‘‘ Have not seen so
lovely, sad and grand a summer weather scene, for twenty years back.
Trees stood all as if cast in bronze, not an aspen-leaf stirring ; sky
was a silver mirror, getting yellowish in the north-east, and one
big star, star of the morning, visible in the increasing light.”

Earlier in that same year (1857) Mrs. Carlyle’s health had begun
to fail, and he had induced her to go to Scotland. Writing to his

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brother before her departure, he says: ‘‘ Meanwhile she is very
busy ornamenting the garden, poor little soul ; has two china seats,
and speculates even upon an awning or quasi-tent against the
blazes of July that are coming.’’ One of the seats here mentioned,
made of blue glazed earthenware, may be seen in the drawing on
page 260, and was probably the identical stool upon which Carlyle,
in his wife’s absence, sat watching the coming of the dawn on that
early summer morning nearly sixty years ago.

Mrs. Carlyle was fond of pets, the most extraordinary of these
being a leech. ‘“‘ Chico,” the canary that had accompanied her to
Cheyne Row, took unto himself a wife, and “‘ his two bright yellow
young ones, as soon as they were fledged,’”’ so we learn from the
* Reminiscences,”’ ‘‘ got out into the trees of the garden and vanished
to swift destruction.’ The successors to Chico, if not his posterity,
together with her little dog ‘‘ Nero,” were confided to Carlyle’s
care in his wife’s absence in 1857, with strict injunctions to look
after them. Several references to birds and dogs in his letters at
this time show how scrupulously: he fulfilled his trust. He made
Nero more than ever his companion in his evening strolls, gave
chickweed to the canaries, for which they said, ‘“ Thank you

kindly, as plain as could be sung... . Nero came into the
garden, stationed himself on the warm flags to inquire about
dinner.” When Jeannie returned after two months’ absence,

‘there was joy in Nero, and the canaries, and in creatures more
important.”

The stone flags mentioned here are still much in evidence at
Cheyne Row, and give a certain old-fashioned touch to the garden,
redeeming it from the commonplace. One must cross them to
pass from the lobby door to the bit of turf doing duty for a lawn.
Their presence there in lieu of gravel or flower-bed, explains why
Carlyle sometimes referred to the plot of ground “as the “ back
area,” or “back yard,” and occasionally apologetically, as “ the
garden so-called.” They help to give the “ old black house,” as
he termed it, though the bricks are rather grey than brown or black,
that pleasant air of Georgian or Queen Anne distinction, which
clings to it, and an interest even independent of the claim of
Carlylian associations.

Carlyle liked to see them spotless. One December day he him-

self turned to and scrubbed them. ‘I decided,’’ he wrote to his
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wife, ‘‘ not to walk, but to take water and ascrub-brush and swash
down into some degree of tolerability those greasy, clammy flags
in the back area. I did it without rebuke of Anne. I said she
couldn’t do it in her present state of illness, and on the whole
proceeded, and found it decidedly hard work, for three-quarters
of an hour. Some ten or twelve pails of water with vigorous
scrubbing did, however, reduce the affair to order, whereupon I
washed myself and sat down to breakfast in virtuous peace. ‘ Dirt
shall not be around me,’ said Cobbett, ‘so long as I can handle a
broom.’ ”

It is a pity that Carlyle did not always turn to violent exercise
of this sort, instead of losing his temper and making his unselfish,
clever, but fiery little wife uncomfortable, when things went
wrong; and when cocks and hens, street organs, and neighbours’
pianos, interrupted his work and his rest.

But he did not; and therefore it is tragi-comic to read the com-
ments of both husband and wife in their letters, on the painful
subject of the ‘‘ demon fowls.”” Tragic that a man of genius should
be so disturbed and no redress be obtainable, comic as to the cause,
which was a “‘ two-and-sixpenny worth of bantams.’’ Comic, too,
in the theatrical deduction that ‘‘ The cocks must either withdraw
or die!’’ He would, indeed, have cheerfully shot them, but he had
no gun, and could not have hit themif he had had one—the more so,
as he says, he “‘ seldom saw the wretched animals,”’ because they
were just on the other side of the garden wall, and the pear tree
intervened. If the reader will look at the picture of the garden
and back of the house, he will realize the absurdities of the position
proposed. The author of “ Sartor,’ with a blunderbuss, taking
aim from his bedroom window at a moving quarry! But the
matter was serious enough, in all conscience, for the birds were so
very close, and they ‘‘ screeched,” and they ‘‘ crowed” from
midnight to morn. ‘‘ What is to be done?” wrote Mrs. Carlyle
to her mother. ‘‘ God knows, if this goes on he will soon be in
Bedlam, and I too. . . .”’. She wrote piteous appeals to the next-
door neighbours, but they were returned unopened. She sent
for the maid, but she would not come. In the law there was no
help. ‘‘ People,” she wrote, ‘‘ may keep wild beasts in their back
yard if they care to do so.” This was in 1842, and the annoyance
seems to have gone on with intervals for twenty years, alternating

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CARLYLE HOUSE, CHELSEA

with the piano-practice on the other side. Mrs. Carlyle’s diplomacy,
however, was not altogether without effect, and there were lucid
intervals; but in 1853 the “‘ cocks were springing up more and
more—till it seemed as if the universe were growing into one
huge poultry yard.” After this, her feminine tact prevailing,
matters mended, and the poultry were all removed, ‘‘ to the last
feather,” on a certain Saturday afternoon. Even after this, on
more than one occasion Mrs. Carlyle was recalled home from
a visit, to settle the cock-crowing question that at length reached a
climax.

In his desperation Mr. Carlyle had had some thoughts of buying
the lease of next door, and turning out the tenants, human and
feathered, neck and crop; but instead of measures quite so drastic
and expensive, a soundless room was built at the top of the house
costing one hundred and seventy pounds, the roof being, as it were,
lifted over it. Comparative quiet was thus obtained, but the room,
which must have been very cold in winter, was found to be too hot
in summer, and during that season Carlyle formed the habit of
descending to the garden, where he generally worked very com-
fortably under the shade of a sort of tent, his books and papers
being on a butler’s tray beside him; but on one occasion he
caught cold, ‘ sitting in the sweep of the wind under the awning.”

The cock-crowing nuisance reasserted itself in 1865, and caused
Mrs. Carlyle to lie awake at night devising means to meet it.
The neighbours fortunately were more amenable than those of
earlier days, and they were not unwilling to oblige, particularly as
by this time Carlyle had become famous. So the offending chan-
ticleer was shut up in a cellar, and the hens were to evacuate the
garden premises at Christmas—on hearing which, Carlyle clasped
his wife in his arms and called her “ his guardian angel.”

I have enlarged upon the topic of the fowls, because they were
a garden grievance, but I have only touched upon the annoyances
caused by the street-organ and piano nuisances, since, strictly
speaking, they have no place in this book ; suffice to say, that the
young lady next door was so obliging as to postpone her practising
until after two in the afternoon, and that Carlyle was duly grateful.

If we look back through the nebule of half a century to that
little house in Chelsea, we see that certain personages detach
themselves3from the quiet surroundings of the dwelling and the

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garden. They are both articulate, and inarticulate. First there
are the master and mistress, who are indeed highly articulate ;
secondly, the little dumb pet Nero; and thirdly, more mistily and
changefully, the maid-servant for the time being. The servant
problem would seem to have been almost as acute and difficult
in the mid-Victorian era as during the social upheaval of a great
war, and the Carlyles had a vast and trying experience of maids-
of-all-work. ‘‘ Anne,” “Sarah,” ‘Little Charlotte,” and “ Big
Charlotte,’ the former a worshipper of Mrs. Carlyle, follow one
another with bewildering rapidity. There was a simple-looking
Scottish lassie, who did not know her work, but who had a pleasing
physiognomy, and therefore might be teachable, but was not,
and who, moreover, after two days, broke forth into “‘ bottomless
lying,” and drank the cream on the way up to the drawing-room.
While Mrs. Carlyle was telling her husband of her delinquencies,
the charwoman burst in with the information that “‘ our simpleton
was off at 10 p.m., bag and baggage, plus a sovereign that had just
been advanced to her.”

In 1860, when the lean times were over, Mrs. Carlyle set up a
second servant, but said it was just like “‘ taking lodgers into one’s
lower story. Often in the dead of night I am seized with a wild
desire to clear the house of these new-comers ; and take back my
own little Charlotte, who is still hanging on at her mother’s in a
wild hope that one or other of them may break down, and she be
reinstated in her place.’ Mrs. Carlyle’s bright letters when from
home to this young girl, who became cook-general at No. 5 in 1858,
when she was only fifteen, have recently been discovered and
published.

“Oh, little woman, little woman! I wonder how you get on
there all by yourself in that highly-genteel seven-roomed house
(as the retired cheesemonger would describe it). . . . Tell Nero,
with my dear love, that I fervently hope he is not overeating
himself! and to the sparrow give in my name a good-sized
worm!” She warns her against “‘ a certain person who is always
at the elbow of an idle girl,” to which the maid replies: ‘‘ Me and
Nero are quite well and happy . . . the sparrow is doing very well,
and, Dear Madam, I will do my best to keep that certain person
’ at a distance from my elbow.”

Mrs. Carlyle does not, it is true, warn her husband not to overeat
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himself, but in 1868, when life ‘‘ in the valley of the shadow of
Frederick the Great ’’? had become for her too dreary and mono-
tonous, and she was haunted every day by the Prussian’s ghost,
she went away to friends for a little change, and wrote, entreating
Carlyle ‘‘ not to sit up till two, nor take a sixth cup of tea, nor
commit any indiscretion in the management of himself.” And she
had previously concluded another letter with: “Oh! please do
go to bed at a reasonable hour, and don’t overwork yourself ; and
consider you are no longer a child.’”’ All of which is both touching
and amusing, for Carlyle at this time was sixty-eight. No wonder
she was weary, for “‘ Frederick the Great ” took six years in which
to get itself written—as ‘“‘ Cromwell” had taken five. In 1864,
when the house would appear to have been redecorated, she writes
charging him to “‘ tell the maids not to rub on the clean paper with
their abominably large crinolines, and not to put back the chairs
against it, as is their habit.”

Mrs. Carlyle was, indeed, a notable housekeeper. She usually
waited until she could get her husband away before she made an
“earthquake ” in the house. She then set the girls “‘ raging and
scrubbing,”’ and ordered all the feather beds and pillows out on to
the grass to get aired. On one occasion after she had done so, it
rained pretty continuously, and the beds only went out to come
back again, ‘‘ having,” she wrote, “ all to retreat into the lobby,
where they lie appealing to posterity.”

Nero, the little dog, bulks largely in the annals of No. 5, Cheyne
Row. ‘He is part and parcel of myself,” Mrs. Carlyle wrote to
her husband. ‘‘ When I say ‘I am well,’ it means also ‘* Nero is
well!’ Nero c’est moi, mot c’est Nero.” Perhaps all Mrs. Car-
lyle’s friends did not share the passion for dogs which made Nero’s
successor the innocent cause of his mistress’s death—for when she
went from home on a visit, Nero had sometimes to be left behind—
his dignity, like hers, must be kept up, and he should not go, she
said, ‘‘ where he is de trop.” So Mr. Carlyle took what care he could
of him in her absence; he liked the little animal well enough,
but I think it was a case of ‘‘ love me, love my dog,” with him, for
he said he was ‘“‘a real nuisance and absurdity in the house.”
When she was seeking health in Scotland, Nero was wont to accom-
pany him in his nocturnal rambles, and returned home, wrote
Carlyle, ‘‘ the joyfullest, dirtiest little dog we may wish to see.”

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On one occasion Nero ran away at the bottom of Cadogan Place
Eleven o’clock struck. ‘‘ Time to go home to porridge, but the
vermin was wanting. ...I had to go back as far as Wilton
Crescent. Then the miserable quadruped appeared, and I nearly
bullied the life out of him, but he licked my milk-dish at home with
the same relish.’”’ Nero bore no malice, because he knew from
experience that what his Master himself described as “‘ his sul-
phurous moods, were very closely related to tenderness.”
‘* Always,”’ he writes, “‘ on his coming home he trips up to your
room till I call him back. I wish he would give it over, for it makes
me wae. I have been mainly under the awning all day, and got
my sheets, three of them, corrected. God help thee ever, dearest ;
whom else have I in the world? Be good, be quiet ” (she was to
rest) ‘“‘ and write!’ Another time she is at home, he is absent,
and no doubt the little dog missed the evening rambles, for she wrote
that ‘‘ he was well, notwithstanding that he gets no exercise beyond
the garden.”

Once, when Carlyle returned home somewhat unexpectedly,
there was no one to receive him but Nero, who ‘‘ barked a welcome,
and the cat, who sat reflective, without showing the smallest
emotion.”” He was “‘ obliged to Nero, he forgave the cat.” On
this occasion the improvement his wife had made in the house
enchanted him; he exclaimed: ‘“‘ Oh, Goody, incomparable
artist Goody! It is really a series of glad surprises . . . my bonnie
wee artistikin.”

Poor Nero, run over by a cart, recovered to a certain extent, but
developed asthma, and asthma and old age rendered his little life
a misery. Mrs. Carlyle made him a little red coat, and he ‘“‘ kept
the house with her.”” She goes from home, and returning, for the
first time in eleven years, misses his welcoming bark. But Nero
was not yet dead as she feared, and was even a little better, for he
ran up the long kitchen stairs to greet her, but “‘ the more he tried
to show his joy, the less he could do it ” and a bad fit of coughing
arrested him. Mr. Carlyle suggested a little prussic acid—but
about the same time was overheard talking to the dog in the garden.
“* Poor little fellow,”’ he said, ‘‘ I declare I am heartily sorry for
you. If I could make you well again, upon my soul, I would.”

Years after he appended a note to a letter which referred to
Nero’s death. “‘ Poor little, foolish, faithful dog. . . . The wreck

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of poor Nero who had to be strychnined by the doctor, is still
memorable, sad and miserable to me. The last nocturnal walk he
took with me, his dim white little figure in the universe of dreary
black, and my then mood about Frederick and other things.”

‘‘ What is become of that little, beautiful, graceful life, so full
of love and loyalty and sense of duty,’ wrote Mrs. Carlyle.
‘“‘ One thing is sure, anyhow, my little dog is buried at the top of
our garden, and I grieve for him as if he had been a little human
child.”

But Mrs. Carlyle might have written differently if she had ever
had a child to lose. She must have sighed for one sometimes, when
Carlyle’s bilious outbursts were frequent, or, when all going
well, he was work-engrossed, or on the other hand, could produce
nothing to satisfy himself im many long months. One day he
brought all that he had written into the room where she was
peacefully darning stockings, “‘ and it was up the chimney in a fine
blaze ”’ before she knew what he was burning.

There was, I think, a good deal in common between Michael
Angelo and Thomas Carlyle. Each got rid of his superfluous
energy, or drove away painful thoughts, by dint of hard, bodily
exercise ; and just as A. J. Symonds tells us that a contemporary
describes Michael Angelo when well over sixty, hewing away at a
block of marble ‘‘ in a sort of fury ’—so we have seen Carlyle clean-
ing flags before breakfast, with a will; both, too, had long periods
of inertia, in which the brain was lying fallow, a state of unconscious
preparation for future effort, but inexplicable to their friends ;
and Carlyle sometimes openly declared that “‘ he preferred to ripen
and rot for a while.”

When the sun shines athwart the turf in the little ‘“‘ garden so
called” at the back of No. 5—and, leaving the grey old house in
shadow, penetrates the vine leaves that drape the wall to the right,
and turns them to a veil of gold—the place where Carlyle dwelt for
forty strenuous years has still its moments of positive beauty, for
sunshine glorifies everything. At other times—although very
neatly tended by the kindly Scottish caretaker, whose intelligent
interest and pride in her great countryman, helps many a visitor—
it is rather dreary. The ivy that came from Mrs. Carlyle’s early
home, still mantles the old buttressed wall to the left, but in common
with the surrounding trees, it is darkened by London’s smoke,

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and the walk on the opposite side, which may once have been yellow
gravel, is now an ambiguous, purply-grey of nondescript composi-
tion. It would be well if “‘ the Trust’ could stand the expense of a
few gay flowers to enliven a spot that fifty or sixty years ago must
have been bright and pretty enough. For here Carlyle sat and
dreamed in the early summer dawn, and worked beneath his awning
in the July “ blazes.” Here “‘ Jeannie” directed her maids, or
weeded or watered, while Nero frisked about her, the happiest of
little dogs. It is, or should be, hallowed ground ; how many great
thoughts germinated here, we shall never know. Although Carlyle
professed to dislike art—the art of the days of Maclise and Creswick—
for he knew nothing of his great contemporary and neighbour,
Turner, who breathed his last a stone’s throw from No. 5—nor of
Millais, in Millais’ greatest days—and though a tour in search of the
picturesque had no charms for him, he was yet unusually sensitive
to the appeal of nature in all her moods. That this was so, is
obvious to any reader of the ‘‘ Journal,” and particularly of the
earlier letters, written from Scotland; but it was the blossoming
tree in his London garden that inspired the words written in April,
1851. ‘* Birth of a cherry in the spring of the year, birth of a
planet in the spring of the eons. The All producing them alike,
builds them together out of its floating atoms, out of its infinite
opulence. The germ of an idea lies behind that.”

Little Nero is buried at the end of the garden, immediately behind
the point from which I took my drawing. It was the month of
the outbreak of War in 1914 that I began it, and troops of lively.
Americans—as yet unable to secure a passage back to their country
—came, drawn by legitimate interest, to visit the house and garden,
and to look at the little stone raised by Mrs. Carlyle’s loving hands.
‘* Ah, poor little Nero’s grave!’ exclaimed one and all—then,
finding the ground occupied by a lady and a camp-seat, they stared
at me instead ; and all but the bravest beat a hasty retreat.

‘“* Tell Sir George,” wrote Mrs. Carlyle, in a very wet summer,
under date August 20th, 1860—‘‘ I planted the cowslips with my
own hand, and have not needed to water them; the heavenly
watering-can . . . having saved me the trouble. I gave them the
place of highest honour (round poor little Nero’s stone).”’

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fy op Mloag Suryooy Mepirsg yt ? ISQOH LLOOSNTHM

CHAPTER XIII

KELMSCOTT HOUSE, UPPER MALL.
HAMMERSMITH

ROWN of brick, square of frontage, solid and comfortable-
looking, but externally by no means ‘‘ The House Beau-
tiful,” of which its most celebrated occupant dreamed, the

Georgian mansion in which William Morris died, stands facing the
river, and separated from it only by a narrow roadway, and a row of
noble elms. :

The spectator who stands opposite the house, has on his right a
somewhat squalid area of small cottages, dingy courts, and narrow
passages ; in the rear is a large and beautiful garden, separated
from the slum by high brick walls, and by Hampshire House ;
the latter is an early Georgian residence, now a workmen’s social
club, founded long after Morris’s death, but carried on on lines of
which he would have strongly approved.

The interior of Kelmscott House. is not remarkable, but the
five windows of the drawing-room command a fine prospect of
two of the Thames reaches; to the right the eye is carried past
Chiswick Eyot, towards Kew and Richmond, and to the left,
through the piers of Hammersmith Bridge to Putney and Fulham.

The house and garden had a history or ever “ the idle singer of
an empty day ” stamped upon them, as he could not fail to do,
the impress of his own strong individuality. So long back as
1816—as a plaque on the outer wall records—Sir Francis Ronalds,
the inventor of the electric telegraph, resided there, and laid down
in the garden eight miles of insulated wire “‘ charged with static
electricity and worked by electrometers and synchronized discs

at either end.” It was the first electric communication ever
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practically used, and portions of the apparatus are, I believe, still
to be seen at South Kensington.

Ronalds offered the invention to the Admiralty of the day,
but my Lords rejected it on the ground that as the war with France
was just concluded, they had no use for it—curious reading in our
eyes at the present time.

How long Ronalds resided at Hammersmith I do not know ; but
he died in 1878, at the advanced age of eighty-five. After him
came Dr. George Macdonald. The son of a Scottish farmer, he was
the direct descendant of one of the families who suffered in the
famous massacre of Glencoe—a fact which may have helped to
colour his mind with romance, and to tinge it with religious fervour.
Anyway, he was a successful portrayer of Scottish peasant life in
fiction, and a pioneer in a charming by-way of literature, since
traversed by other men with even greater results. Through the
medium of his popular novels, and sincere verses (marked as they
were by strong religious feeling), he made a powerful appeal to a
large section of the serious reading public. He also wrote delight-
fully for children, and was for a time editor of Good Words for the
Young ; and he published a fascinating “‘ faerie romance ”’ called
‘* Phantastes.”’

He had many children, and during his residence at the river-side
dwelling at Hammersmith, the garden must have been lively with
their glad voices, so that the name by which he called the house,
‘‘ The Retreat,’ was rather a misnomer. William Morris changed
it to ‘‘ Kelmscott House ’’—thus linking it with his beloved country
home on the Upper Thames, thirty miles from Oxford. The latter
place he himself describes in 1871 in a letter to his friend Faulkner,
as ‘‘ a heaven on earth, an old stone Elizabethan house like Water
Eaton, and such a garden! close down to the river, a boat-house
and all things handy.” His biographer, Mr. J. W. Mackail, tells
us that during twenty-five years he found in the beautiful old house,
a peace and joy that no other place gave him, and his attachment
to it deepened as years went on, became indeed passionate, because
‘‘ with him the love of things had all the romance and passion
that is generally associated with the love of persons only.” It
became to him as he himself said, in one of his letters, ‘“‘ the type
of the pleasant places of the earth, and of the homes of harmless,
simple people, not over-burdened with the intricacies of life; and,

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as others love the race of man through their lovers or their children,
so I love the earth through that small space of it.”

Again: ‘““Ome! Ome! How I love the earth, and the seasons,
and weather and all things that deal with it, and all that grows out
of it—as this has done! The earth and the growth of it, and the
life of it. If I could but say and show how I love it!”

He did say it in his poetry, he did show it in his art; for, just: as
all his decorative designs have their origin in natural forms, so, too,
his narrative poetry is highly picturesque and descriptive of Nature.
But though all the world to him was, indeed, an “‘ earthly Paradise,”
he loved his native land best, and next to it, Iceland and Scandi-
navia, and he never really got far away from England and the North.
What could be more English in description and sentiment than the
following lines, taken, almost at random, from the “ Story of
Rhodope ”’ in ‘‘ The Earthly Paradise ” ? :

6e

March was it, but a foretaste of the June

The earth had, and the budding linden-grove

About the homestead, with the brown bird’s tune

Was happy, and the faint blue sky above

The black-thorn blossoms made meet roof for love,
For though the South wind breathed a thought of rain,
No cloud as yet its golden breadth did stain.”

If we substitute for the words “ linden-grove”’ their English
equivalent, ‘‘ an avenue of limes,’’ we have a very true picture of
an early English spring. Yet Rhodope was a “‘ Grecian-speaking ”’
maiden, dwelling in the sunny south. When Morris was in Italy
he expressed his admiration for the wondrous beauty of St. Mark’s
at Venice, but he found a visit to Torcello, ‘‘ where he was once more
among the hedges and green grass and singing birds, a great rest.”’

Indeed, he was never really happy away from green pastures
and brown earth, and both the decadence and restorations of the
silent water city, grieved him and weighed upon his spirits, which
only rose when he went on to Padua and Verona. The truth was,
that his heart was in the thirteenth century, and that he delighted
in medizvalism and all things Gothic; ancient and Renascent art
having for him but little attraction.

All the same, whether founded on classic or Scandinavian Stories:
every page in his long narrative poems—written always in felicitous
language—offers a subject to painters, but whereas he excels in

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describing the moods and aspects of inanimate Nature, he makes
no: attempt to strike a note of real human tragedy ; for as before
mentioned, he cared less for people than for things, and Socialist
and Idealist though he was, valued the type, more than the indi-
vidual man. Hence he was not concerned with idiosyncrasy,
mentality, and the hidden springs of human actions ; nor yet with
the forces, spiritual, and sensuous, that move men and women,
to do right and to sacrifice, to suffer and to sin. The affinities and
repulsions, the relations of the sexes, the social problems yet
unsolved, as they touch individual lives, and all those elemental
human passions that, before the war, bulked so largely—I think
too largely—in current fiction, have no place in his poetry, for they
did not interest him at all. Consequently the reader follows the
adventures of his heroes and heroines much as we watch the dumb
actors in a kinematograph show—they are not fiesh and blood
realities ; they are far removed from the cosmic upheavals, the
tragic happenings, and also from those complexities of daily and
domestic life that, in the middle of a world-war, are not the least
of our present troubles; and we look at them from the outside
only.

Morris was a man of fiery temper, great physical strength, and
remarkable energy ; so restless that his friends say he could never
sit still for long, but must be always springing up and pacing the
room like a caged lion. The contrast, therefore, between his poetry
and himself is one of the most extraordinary things about him ;
and one might have expected to find in his writings some self-reve-
lation of his temperament ; something of the ruggedness, and the
vigorous style of his great contemporary, Browning ; perhaps, too,
something of Browning’s power of creating strong and entangling
situations, and of his dramatic force ; but, strange to say, the man
who designed so many intricate and beautiful patterns (all founded
on natural objects), who rose at sunrise to weave them with his own
loving hand into a lovely tapestry of colour and line, setting up for
the purpose a loom in his bedroom at Kelmscott House, troubled
himself but little about plot in his epics. Unlike the old Greek
tragedians, unlike Shakespeare, unlike Browning, too, he cared
nothing for the interplay of passion and circumstance, for the inter-
minglement of tragedy and comedy in the warp and woof of human
existence. Life, as he paints it, is never a resistless torrent, carrying

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along with it men and women, struggling still, though battered and
well-nigh spent; a torrent that, in its wild onward rush to the
misty ocean of futurity, may sometimes, it is true, wash them into
‘a safe and gentle backwater—but oftener dashes them against the
rocks to an untoward fate. His conception of life, as shown in
“The Earthly Paradise” at all events, is rather that of a placid
stream, flowing smoothly between flowery banks, and watering
some lotus-eating land in which it seems always afternoon.
Chaucer—to whom physically as well as mentally he was said to
bear a resemblance—was professedly Morris’s model—for the age
of Chaucer was to him the Golden Age—but though after Chaucer
he is the greatest of story-tcllers, his poetic genius has more affinity
with that of Keats, whom he called “ one of his masters,”? and
admired more than any modern poet. He is always musical and
often dreamy ; the lovely lines that end “‘ The Earthly Paradise ”
—adopted for the front cover of this book, because they so exactly
explain its purpose, are typical of Morris at his best, though he has
written many others of which the sentiment is as true, and the
language as choice. Nevertheless, his sweetest stanzas have not
the haunting melody, the rich suggestiveness, to be found in such
lines of Keats as those beginning :

“ Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird !”’

Nor so far as I know, from a reading that has been necessarily
limited, is there anything in the whole range of Morris’s poetry
which has the splendid imagery, the languorous beauty of diction,
and at the same time the fervour, the depth, and the suppressed
passion, of that dream within a dream, “The Eve of St. Agnes,”
when :

ce

See ages long ago
These lovers fled away into the storm.”

It is much to Morris’s credit that his meaning is always clear ;
and that if in his verse there are no passages that, owing to their
incisiveness, wisdom, and originality, have passed into proverbs,
becoming ‘‘ familiar in our mouths as household words ”—neither,
on the other hand, are there any worrying obscurities, such as we
encounter in Browning. He makes, it is-true, no heavy demands
on the intellect, or the emotions, and though I cannot see that it is
necessarily the province of poetry to do the former—it should

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sometimes touch the heart, and his does not thrill or move; while
even in his vigorous translation into verse from the Icelandic, he
never terrifies. But he certainly charms and soothes; hence, an
hour spent with him in “ The Earthly Paradise ’’—the best-known of
his poems—is infinitely restful ; is an hour well spent.

Morris wrote copiously, composing reams of polished verses ;
these he made a practice of afterwards reading to his friends. On
one occasion he produced seven hundred lines in a day. But he
under-valued his gifts when he said: “ That talk of inspiration is
sheer nonsense, I may tell you that flat; there is no such thing ;
it is a mere matter of craftsmanship ;”’ and again: “If a chap
can’t compose an epic while he is weaving tapestry, he had better
shut up ; he’ll never do any good at all.” For it could only have
been under the stimulus of a mood, an insistent call to express
himself in verse, rather than in prose or the decorative arts, that he
could possibly have poured out his melodious narrative in such
unstinted measure. It must, however, be remembered that his
poetry is objective, not subjective, and that ideas and images
suggested by outside things, are naturally more numerous than
those deeper thoughts that spring unbidden from the brain and
heart.

Although Morris wrote so flowingly, his range in subjects and
centuries was limited by his own choice. ‘“‘In the scheme of
‘The Earthly Paradise,’’’ says Mr. Mackail, ‘“‘ the two corner-
stones are the Greek and the Northern epic cycles, the two greatest
bodies of imaginative narration which the: world has produced.
The stories which he chose out of both are told by Greeks and by
Norsemen of the later Middle Ages.” Some additional material
was derived from Oriental and European sources ; but outside the
medieval period Morris never went! He delighted in the old
ballad poetry as he did in Chaucer, but he knew little of Elizabethan
literature, and many of our English classics interested him not at
all. Besides this, he was in no sense cosmopolitan, and therefore
sabes could it be said of him, great story-teller though he was,
that :

“‘ Each phase of many-coloured life he drew,
Exhausted worlds and then imagined new.”

Morris had early conceived a passionate admiration for Rossetti.
who held the comfortable doctrine that it was the business of half
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the world to paint pictures, and of the other half to buy them!
Rossetti admired Morris’s poetry, but urged him to become a painter
on the plea that “if any man has any poetry in him, he should
paint, for it has all been said and written, and they have scarcely
begun to paint it.” For two years or more, therefore, Morris
worked hard at drawing ‘and painting, but he never became a
painter. Had he done so, his claim to be in the first rank—whether
pre-Raphaelite or not—would have been inevitably challenged,
whereas as a decorative artist he was unique: there is but one
William Morris !

Owing to Rossetti’s influence, and his own natural bent that way,
there is much of Romanticism in his earlier poetry. His ultimate
preference for the heroic and epic form of verse, first showed itself
when, about 1869, the Rossetti influence waning, his Icelandic
studies seriously began. In 1870, in company with Mr. Magniissen,
the Icelandic scholar under whose guidance he had been studying
the Icelandic heroic literature, he went to Iceland, calling, en route,
at the lonely Farée Islands.

““God made the world, but the Devil made Iceland,” says a
Danish proverb ; and in Iceland, “‘ burst up, the geologists say, by
fire from the bottom of the sea, swallowed many months of the
year in black tempests, yet with a wild, glittering beauty in summer-
time; towering up there; stern and grim in the North Ocean
with its snow Jokuls, roaring geysers, sulphur pools and horrid
voleanic caverns; like the waste chaotic battlefields of frost and
fire ; where of all places we least looked for literature and written
memorials—the records of these things were written down.”

The literary remains of which Carlyle here speaks, were the Eddas,
or religious poems of Scandinavia, together with the Sagas, that
dealt with the wanderings, deeds, and adventures of the Vikings ;
all of which were fortunately preserved for posterity in Iceland, by
the Norwegians who colonized it a.p. 872. At that period Harold
Fairhair uniting all Norway under his sway, some of the mal-
contents among his new subjects, among them many of the best
and bravest of the race, fled to Iceland for independence and
shelter, carrying with them the religion of Odin.

It flourished there until the introduction of Christianity, about
the eleventh century. And even then the Icelanders seem to
have been but half-hearted converts to the new faith, for not only

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did they stipulate that they should be baptized in the hot springs
in cold weather, for which we can scarcely blame them—but we
hear of sea-kings, nominally Christians, who never put to sea or
engaged in any serious undertaking, without invoking the aid of
Thor.

Halfred the Skald (or poet), when he accepted Christianity,
announced that he should never speak ill of the old gods, nor cease
to celebrate them in his songs; and no doubt the Christian doctrine
of humility and forgiveness, was a bitter pill to the heroes of many a
deed of valour and vengeance; one can picture the flash of scorn
in the Viking’s blue eyes, when first told that if his enemy smote
him on one check he was to turn to him the other; that if he stole
his coat, he was to give him his cloak also.

Before the awakening of the literary spirit in Iceland (one of the
effects of the introduction of Christianity) the scattered Sagas which
so commended themselves to William Morris, and the poems called
collectively the ‘“‘ Elder Edda” or ‘‘ The Edda of Saemund,” a
certain learned Icelandic Priest of the eleventh century, had been
passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation,
by the Skalds. Grotesque and obscure though they are, having
lost much in translation—because the peculiarly alliterative form of
the verse is difficult to translate into English poetry—yet many of
the songs of the ‘“‘ Elder Edda” are full of a wild and original
beauty.

The Sagas were prose epics, and the finest, though they deal with
events and people belonging to the tenth and eleventh centuries,
were not written down till the thirteenth century, William Morris’s
favourite period.

But it was not alone the period that commended itself to him ;
physically and temperamentally, he was the true descendant of
those Norsemen whose heroic literature he so delightedly un-
earthed. The man who could drive his head against a wall, so as
to leave a deep dent in the plaster, bite almost through the wood-
work of a window frame, and who, on one occasion, in illustration
of the manner in which passengers landing from a cross-channel
steamer staggered beneath the weight of luggage, to the horror and
amusemcnt of his audience, tucked a chair under each arm, and
lifted the coal-box with his teeth, might well have drawn the sword
of Odin from the heart of the Branstock tree, as Sigmund the

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Viking succeeded in doing, after all the other heroes had tried in
vain to remove it.

Very handsome in his youth, according to the testimony of Sir
Edward Burne-Jones, in later years, Morris’s picturesque head, with
its leonine locks and somewhat ragged beard, might well have
served his friend for the model of a Viking of old, had that great
painter drawn any of his subjects from a Scandinavian source.

His hair was remarkably beautiful, fine, yet also very thick and
curly—and therefore, among his intimates he went by the name of
‘““ Topsy ’—‘‘ Tops” for short. It was so strong that he used to
amuse his children by letting them take hold of it, and then lifting
them by means of it from the ground. His hands were broad,
fleshy, and rather short and clumsy; yet they executed the most
delicately minute work with unequalled precision and celerity.

He had a ruddy complexion and a rocking walk, and, we are
told, might easily have been mistaken for a sea-captain, in his
loose suit of blue serge and soft felt hat; and once when he was
‘* walking down Kensington High Street a fireman from the brigade-
station stopped him and said : ‘ Beg pardon, sir, but were you ever
Captain of the Sea Swallow ?’” This was long before the period
when he so frequently donned the blouse of the French workman ;
but even in his Oxford days his unconventionality led him to wear
purple trousers. ‘‘ Morris went to Jones’s on Sunday night,” runs
a note in a friend’s diary, when, after leaving Oxford, he and
Burne-Jones shared rooms in Bloomsbury, ‘“‘ and his hair was so
long, and he looked so wild, that the servant who opened the door
would not let him in, thinking he was a burglar,” and at a much
later period of his life, when he one day went in his blue blouse and
without a hat, as was his wont, from his workshop in Queen Square
to lunch with his friend, Faulkner, a few doors off, the new house-
maid who let him in, went downstairs to the kitchen in some
perplexity, describing him to the cook as the butcher.

In one of his own lectures on Art he sensibly remarks upon the
absurdity of modern masculine attire, usage condemning a man to
wear two coats where one would suffice ; a front one, or waistcoat,
that has no back, and over it another that has no front !

But indifferent to appearance though he, Morris, was, and though
it is said that he never looked really peculiar except when con-
ventionally dressed, he yet strove at times to adapt himself to

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circumstances, At one period of his life he had to attend the
meetings of a board of directors, and actually kept a tall hat for
the occasion, At the end of four years he resigned his directorship
and solemnly sat down upon the hat, which was never replaced !
His little daughter one day found it, and asked her mother what
the strange object was, and whether Papa ever wore it.

I myself once heard Morris lecture; it was towards the end of
his life, on an occasion supposed to be big with possibilities for the
revival of the arts in this country—the meeting of an Art Congress
in Liverpool. His delivery, so far as I recall it, was not effective,
and I cannot recollect what he said, but I remember well his appear-
ance—his sturdy figure, his artisan-like dress, and his cheerful,
kindly, rubicund face. Artists, and those men of light and leading
whose work came at all within the scope of the conference—from
the President of the Royal Academy downwards—had accepted
the cordial invitation of the sanguine and enthusiastic promoters
of this festival of the Arts, and crowded to the sea-city of the north
to take part in the proceedings. I remember well certain grandiose
prophecies to the effect that Liverpool, proudly standing on the
banks of Mersey, would become, to the present age, what Venice,
mistress of the seas, had once been, 7.e., the commercial centre of the
fine arts.

The congress was to inaugurate a new era, and to be the first of
many similar meetings. Alas! for the futility of human hopes,
the thing was repeated once at Edinburgh, where Morris attended
and afterwards stated, I think in a letter, that only Walter Crane
and he himself spoke to any purpose: after that it fizzled out,
and nothing more came of a very praiseworthy undertaking. But,
in the meantime, the first occasion was a considerable success. Sir
Frederick Leighton presided, and the various sections met, each
under the presidency of a man distinguished in his own branch
of art; papers were read, and the discussions that followed them
were interesting if not always illuminating. As a social event it
was noteworthy. Hospitality, always great in Liverpool, was
unbounded ; civic and private entertainments were the order of
the day and night. To this great gathering of people came many
genuinely earnest in the cause of art; came the dilettanti, and the
simply curious ; and those who followed, because their superiors
in the social scale set the fashion ; came too William Morris. On

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his appearance there was some surprise. ‘‘ Could this robust per-
sonality, this practical, breezy-looking, sailor-like, artisan-like sort
of person, be really the famous decorative artist, the poet who
styled himself ‘ the idle singer of an empty day.’ Then, the rumour
that had identified him with views inimical to the public weal, was
well founded. For he had discarded the stiff collar, frock-coat,
and silk hat, then held to be de rigueur, and his unconventional
costume reminded his audience that he had made himself very
‘prominent on the Socialist platform, and correct and conservative
‘Liverpool was then the last place in which his advanced views
would be acceptable.

I think there was some such fluttering of the dove-cotes, but
he was well received, and well he might be, for among those
invited to attend there was none greater than William Morris !
For some thirty years he had been preaching to the world
the cult of beauty as a vital necessity in man’s environment,
and in the common things of daily use; and he had been
already hailed as the good genius who had brought the useful
arts of life to a new birth. The movement to redeem the world
from the crass vulgarity of the Mid-Victorian age of crimson
flock papers, imitation oak, wax flowers, and Berlin woolwork—
from the depressing effect of decoration misapplied in architecture
and the lesser but allied arts, was rapidly spreading, a quarter of a
century ago, even in districts removed from London. So it was,
at least, among the professional and upper-middle classes; I
myself was personally familiar with several homes of the wealthier
Liverpool merchants, that were already ordered and decorated
after the fashion, or by the firm, of Morris and Co. But so far the
movement had made little or no progress in a lower stratum of
society ; for it was argued that while the deplorable degradation
of the working classes continued, it was impossible and indeed
ridiculous that they should themselves aspire to the ‘‘ House
Beautiful.”’ Morris, however, with a nobler creed, held, and
justly, that the degradation of architecture and the subsidiary
arts of decoration, was at once the cause, and the effect, of the whole
degradation of life. He held too—but here I cannot follow him—
particularly as his attempt to put theory into practice absorbed
so much of his invaluable time, and deprived the world of many
of the fruits of his genius—that only by becoming apparently one

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of themselves, might the capitalist and wealthy employer of labour
hope to benefit those beings less fortunate than himself. Hence
the artisan’s blue shirt, that, on one occasion at least, he wore
at the Congress. But why, one is inclined to ask, should a
strong and original genius, on an occasion like that described,
run counter to the harmless prejudices and customs, of the
class to which he himself actually belonged, when those whom
he desired to serve, could in no wise benefit by his action ?
He might, if he chose, in his passion for work, and urged by
his resolve to let nothing be done in his workshops that he
could not with his own hand do himself, rise at daybreak, and
be at his loom ten minutes after waking. Sharp work certainly,
but he wasted no time over an unnecessary toilette; for he
never looked in a mirror, and indeed would not have one in
his bedroom, or in any of the downstairs rooms. In his own
house and garden, he might dress as he pleased; and at Queen
Square or Oxford Street show his chintzes and papers to
customers, himself making out the bill to purchasers, in any
costume, that his taste or common-sense, suggested as appropriate.
It might be wise to mingle with his workmen and with his fellows
on the Socialist League to all appearance one of themselves, but
surely it was unnecessary to appear before an audience of his
equals looking like a working man, for he was not a working
man except in the restricted sense of being an indefatigable
worker.

Everybody present knew this; knew that he was well-born and
wealthy ; had been educated at Marlborough and Oxford, and
had originally intended to enter the Church; that a visit to the
Continent, where he fell in love with the grand Gothic churches
of France, made him resolve to become an architect—that he
entered Street’s office and remained a year; that, urged by
Rossetti, he had had thoughts of adopting painting as his profession,
but that, after all, impelled by the overmastering wish to make
things, and make them well and beautifully—the selling of them
being of secondary importance—and aware that to do so on any
extensive scale would necessitate co-ordination of labour, he became
a manufacturer. It was also common knowledge that he had a
lovely house on the Upper Thames, and a comfortable London
residence with a large and charming garden at Hammersmith.

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His may have seemed to some people “the pride that apes
humility !”

But it was not so! In his passionate sympathy with the labour-
ing poor as a class (he was not interested in them as individuals),
he felt himself to be one with them, and he desired to show this
to the world at large. For it was his personal possession of beauti-
ful things, and his happiness in work, by both of which he felt
his own life to be desirable, that awoke in him the altruistic longing
to bestow the like upon those who, though themselves unconscious
of their degradation—were leading lives entirely devoid of sweetness
and light, and refinement and education; many of them being
raised but little above the brutes. ‘‘ He felt ashamed,” he said,
when he contrasted their lot with his, and the dreary, unrelieved
drudgery of their daily labour with his own happy working hours.
“As I sit at my work at home, which is at Hammersmith,” he
said, addressing a school of science and art, “I often hear some
of that ruffianism go past the window of which a good deal has
been said in the papers of late . . . as I hear the yells, and shrieks,
and all the degradation cast on the glorious tongue of Shakespeare
and Milton, as I see the brutal, reckless faces and figures go past
me... fierce wrath takes possession of me—till I remember,
- as I hope I mostly do, that it was my good luck to be born re-
spectable and rich, that has put me on this side of the window
amongst delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the
other side in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor shop,
the foul and degraded lodgings.”

Morris, if he could, would have had erased from the dictionary
the dreadful words “‘ rich and poor.” Carried away by a sense of
the burning injustice and inequality of life, we find that he even
faced “‘the thought” that true civilization may have to be
reached through the destruction, and not the transformation of
the existing order. Yet it should always be remembered to
his credit, when moderate men who love and revere him as an
artist, assail him for his violent socialism, that it sprang quite
naturally in the beginning out of his noble desire to see other
men’s lives happier and healthier, and the world they dwell in
more beautiful.

To Morris’s keen appreciation of venerable, historic, and beautiful
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things, we owe the movement to preserve, rather than to restore,
old buildings.

In 1877 the idea materialized into the ‘‘ Society for the Pro-
tection of Ancient Buildings,” popularly known as “ The Anti-
Scrape,” a word of Morris’s own coinage. From that time it did,
quietly and unostentatiously, much work of inestimable value,
counting among its working members many enthusiastic and
promising young architects—-keen to protect the “sacred monu-
ments,” as Morris deemed them, of “the nation’s growth and
hope.” Some of these were among the first to answer the call to
the colours, and crossing the Channel at the beginning of the
European War in August, 1914, they had the exquisite pain of
witnessing, with their own eyes, the ruthless and wanton destruction
in Belgium and France, of many of the noblest memorials of mediz-
val architectural genius. But their work at home has merely
been postponed, for I feel sure that ‘“‘ The Anti-Scrape ” has
still a future before it in the happy day, so certainly coming,
when the arts of peace shall emerge from the horrid welter of
war.

But above and beyond aught else, William Morris was a great
and original genius in all the arts that are decoratively applicative
to domestic life.

Poet, dreamer, social reformer—all this he was—but as Mr.
Mackail well says, speaking at the moment of his poetry—‘‘ the
faculty of design in its highest form was the quality in which
Morris’s unique strength lay,’ and the remark is even more ap-
plicable to his art than to his verse.

I do not think with Mr. Clutton-Brock, the author of a charming
monograph on “ William Morris’s Work and Influence,” that the
latter made itself widely felt on the Continent. Though he
passionately admired the French Gothic (the first intense pleasure
of his life was his introduction to Rouen Cathedral), yet he himself
was essentially English in all he thought and did, and the almost
severe simplicity of effect at which he aimed in much of the work
he produced, was alien to the genius and sentiment of the Latin
races: it certainly was entirely opposed, in its orderly restraint,
to the prevailing taste of Germany, as shown in the heavy, florid,
rococo decoration that I remember to have hated a dozen years
ago in Berlin, and elsewhere. ,

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But for us at home Morris has done nothing less than totally
alter the aspect of our domestic environment. He has put a new
face on those externals that all unconsciously help to mould
character, and to direct the trend of man’s evolution, externals that,
in the mid-Victorian era—until the advent of Morris—were inex-
pressibly heavy, ugly, and depressing.

Some ridicule was brought upon the movement soon known as
“‘ estheticism,” by the extravagances of some of its votaries ; people
laughed with Gilbert and Sullivan, at the absurdities of the “ very
intense young man—”

‘‘ The greenery-yallery Grosvenor Gallery
Foot-in-the-Grave young man,”

at the apotheosis of the lily and the peacock-feather ; and at those
feminine devotees of the new art cult, who, arraying themselves
in loose draperies of sage-green, dirty yellow, or cloudy-blue, fondly
imagined that they looked as though they had just stepped out
of a picture by Rossetti or Burne-Jones.

Never were people more mistaken, Burne-Jones’s finest works
glow with sumptuous colour, so too do Rossetti’s ; while to Morris
a muddy-green was of all tints most abhorrent. He did not alto-
gether object to sage-green, but the rusty red and peacock blues
only prevailed in his fabrics whilst he was without a dye-house of
his own, and was tentatively feeling his way to the production of
the indigoes, madder-reds, and yellows obtained from a scentless
species of mignonette called Weld. His unerring eye for colour
enabled him ultimately to harmonize all these even in juxtaposition.

Curiously enough, as Mr. Mackail mentions, these dingy colour-
ings were associated with his name long after he gave them up.
A customer of rank calling one day at Oxford Street turned over
the beautiful Hammersmith carpets (then produced in bright,
clear colour) dubiously. They were not what he had intended
to purchase. ‘‘ Are these all?” he asked. Being answered in the
affirmative, he said, “‘ But I thought your colours were subdued ? ”
This was more than Morris, whose hot temper had been rapidly
rising, could stand. He exploded on the spot.

“If you want dirt,” he exclaimed, “ you can find it in the street.”
The offended great man departed, and never troubled Morris and
Co. again.

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The coal-tar dyes had wrought havoc with what I may call the
palette, of the textile artist—and Morris, wishing to return to the
disused vegetable dyes, carried his researches back even to the
age of Pliny, and many old Herbals—notably Gerarde’s, to which
I have elsewhere referred, and which was a favourite of his boy-
hood—gave him substantial help.

Morris’s first experiments with the dye vats were all made with
his own hand, with the help of an errand boy from his glass-painting
workshop. Want of space in London soon compelled him to
continue his experimental efforts for a time at Leek in Derbyshire
—but neither carpet nor silk-weaving could be carried on on any
considerable scale, until he was able later to set up dye-works of
his own at Merton Abbey. His greatest difficulty was experienced
in his attempt to revive the almost lost art of Indigo dyeing, and
Prussian Blue had taken its place in the manufacture of textiles,
long before the introduction of aniline dyes. This was because
success in the preparation of indigo was so exceedingly uncertain ;
if the exact moment when fermentation has reached a certain point
he missed, the vat becomes useless, and as it is said that scientific
tests cannot be employed, the dyer, in order to judge when that
moment has arrived, has only experience, and his own keen sense
of smell, to guide him. Even after the first processes have suc-
ceeded, the yarn must not be allowed, in the act of dipping, to
come in contact with the air. In an essay on dyeing, Morris himself
says ‘“‘ that the setting of the blue vat is a ticklish job, and re-
quires, I should say, more experience than any other dyeing pro-
cess,’ but to a man of Morris’s temperament this difficulty became
only an incentive to further effort—and we are told that at the
time his hands were always ‘‘ unwashably blue.”

But not alone dyeing, but everything else that was done or
made in his workshops, he had first learnt to do himself. After a
visit to the Low Countries as early as 1856, he had adopted or
modified for his personal use, John Van Eyck’s motto—‘ Als ich
kanne’”’—‘‘ If I can’”’—and in an early prose romance in which
he half-consciously describes himself, he says, ‘‘ I could soon find
out whether a thing were possible or not to me; then if it were
not, I threw it away for ever, never thought of it again, no regret,
no longing for that; it was past and over to me; but if it were
possible, and I made up my mind to do it, then and there I began

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it, and in due time finished it, turning neither to the right hand
nor the left till it was done. So I did with all things I set my hand
to.”

It was in this way that, when under Rossetti’s influence, he
at one time had resolved to become a painter—but soon, as we have
seen, gave up the idea, finding that not in that line lay his genius.
In his subsequent career as a decorative artist and craftsman,
everything done in his workshops was tested, tried, and examined
by himself; whether carpet-weaving, tapestry-weaving, chintzes,
wall-paper, or stained ‘glass. His chintzes were primarily intended
for wall-hangings, to be used instead of paper—but people would
not have them.

His industry and consequent output, were astonishing. Seventy
or eighty designs for wall-papers, and nearly forty for chintzes,
were produced by him during the years he was in business. Woven
stuffs, and stamped velvets, silk damasks, carpets and tapestries,
occupied him in turn. “ He carried on his business as a manu-
facturer,”’ says Mr. Mackail, ‘“‘ not because he wanted to make
money, but because he wanted to make the things he manufac-
tured . . . in every manual art which he touched he was a skilled
expert ; in the art of money-making he remained to the last an
amateur.”

A great painter once said to me, when sitting before an unfinished
picture on my easel—and gazing with kind eyes thoughtfully at it,
‘ Ah, Jessie, an artist’s greatest reward in his work, is his pleasure
in the doing of it.””, The words sank into my mind, and I have never
forgotten them.

To Morris all work was pleasure; one of his dicta being that
“no work that cannot be done with pleasure in the doing, is worth
doing,” which is only another way of saying, less comprehensively,
that the work can not be well done unless the worker’s heart be
in it. The aphorism is broadly true, but must be accepted with
modification ; it applies of course in a special manner to the Arts,
to craftsmanship, to literature, to scientific research, to inventions,
to the instruction of youth—and in short to avocations innumerable
—wherever brain power, skill, initiative, and perseverance, are
essential to achievement. But it is obvious that the dustman, the
scavenger and the sweep, for example, can find no positive pleasure
in their occupations, yet they are hygienic and necessary, and

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therefore worth the doing; and surely one born with a natural
taste for science, for music or for painting, yet condemned by
circumstance to work for which he has no particular aptitude,
need not fail to make it ‘“‘ worth the doing,” nor even to find a
modicum of satisfaction in it.

Experimental work delighted Morris, who cared less for the
end attained, than the end unattained.

I think all true artists show that feeling ; and, like Morris, spare
no pains in the doing. Mr. Mackail, referring to a piece of cabbage-
and-vine tapestry, executed at Kelmscott House, at which he
sometimes laboured nine or ten hours a day, remarks “ and this
was the work of a man who had a hundred other things to attend
to, and was never in a hurry.”

But when Morris felt a thing to be good he left it, he did not seek
to make good better—he did not want to gild refined gold, to paint
the lily. This may have been partly the secret of the stupendous
amount of very varied work that he accomplished in a life that
terminated at sixty-two.

Another explanation was the great physical strength—and
resulting unflagging energy—that enabled him, after sound and
dreamless sleep, to rise, like a giant, refreshed, to the engrossing
task of the moment, and to continue working at it all day ; another
lay in the rare ability to detach himself from one piece of work
whilst still interested in it, and to turn with freshness and en-
thusiasm to another. He thus found sufficient recreation in the
change of occupation ; but if he needed any further relaxation,
he sought it, indoors, in back-gammon, cribbage and draughts, out
of doors in angling, or in the good old game of bowls, for which the
lawn at Kelmscott House offered excellent opportunities.

Although Morris soon gave up his youthful intention to become
an architect, yet architecture, using the term in its widest sense,
was his mistress, for he held that painting and sculpture were
but component parts of architecture, and had only intelligible pur-
pose when employed decoratively in relation to an entire archi-
tectural scheme.

The ‘‘ sister arts,’ in his view, were not sisters at all-—sisterhood
implying equality. Architecture was the mistress art, and sculpture
and painting merely her agreeable handmaidens, very useful
adjuncts to her state, when kept in due subordination. ‘‘ He

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knew well enough,” says Mr. Clutton-Brock, ‘“‘ tnat Michael
Angelo and Velasquez were great men, but he judged the art of
an age rather by its cottages, and cups and saucers, than by its
great pictures.”

Morris, it is true, may never have exactly stated this, in words,
but the elaborate character of his designs for wall-paper and
hangings, which really renders paintings unnecessary, are, it seems
to me, practical and ocular proof that this was his belief. He
appears never to have regarded a wall as the natural setting for
pictures, which is the way in which painters regard it, and he
valued pictures only so far as they helped the decorative scheme.
They might, of course, conceivably, serve an ornamental end,
and conduce to a desirable tout ensemble, but not more successfully
than any well-designed wall-paper. Pictures indeed, so Mr.
Mackail allows, gave to Morris the uneasy feeling that their decora-
tive value was out of proportion to the labour expended upon
them ; and he would have preferred that the faces in Burne-Jones’
paintings should have been less highly finished, less charged with
concentrated meaning and emotion; and this notwithstanding
that Burne-Jones was not a dramatic painter. Much as he appre-
ciated Fra Angelico, Van Eyck, and Holbein, ‘‘ his three greatest
admirations among the painters of past ages,” he would willingly
at any time have exchanged the National Gallery and everything
in it, for the illuminated books in the British Museum, illuminating
being one of the arts in which, quite early in life, he had become
proficient.

Thus, in Morris’s scheme for the ‘‘ House Beautiful,” he left
no room for pictures, large, or of cabinet size ; nor for fine original,
or excellent reproductions of great masters, nor for etchings or
engravings. The easel picture was ignored, or rather I should say
forgotten. He would have had people hang their walls with
tapestries; for those who would not or could not do this, he de-
signed wall-paper of wonderful beauty and originality, but his
earlier patterns for these—for example, “‘ The Daisy’ and the
‘“* Pomegranate ’’—delicate and simple though they. are, are very
‘“ spotty ’’ when regarded as background. His more ambitious
and intricate later designs are open to what, from my point of
view as @ painter of pictures, is the very serious objection that
they are complete in themselves, and so attractive and interesting,

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that the eye is bound to follow and admire them to the exclusion
of anything hung upon them; and that, while there is not a
painting in the world that would not suffer partial eclipse from
the restlessness of the elaborate wall pattern behind it, the rhythm
of the flowing and continuous design of the paper is itself disturbed
and broken up, by the introduction of the picture.

It must, therefore, be conceded by even his greatest admirers,
that Morris’s theory and practice in wall decorations were inimical
rather than helpful, to what is generally known as high art—and
it is not altogether surprising that his wall-papers, beautiful as
‘they are, have more or less gone out of fashion.

Though not its founder, Morris was a distinguished member of
the “‘ Art Workers’ Guild,” which now, after many years of vivid
life, during which it has counted in its ranks numerous artists and
handicraftsmen of note, is as much alive as ever.

In natural sequence to this there followed ‘The Arts and
Crafts Exhibition Society,’ which Morris did not found, but which
he soon actively supported. Space does not admit, nor does,
properly speaking, the scope of this book allow me to more than
briefly mention these, and other developments of ideas connected
with the improvements of art, and of the condition of the workman,
which, as a matter of fact, had originated years before with Ruskin,
as Morris, whose admiration for the great teacher and author, was
sincere and deep, would have gladly acknowledged.

About 1890 the Kelmscott Press started working on the Upper
Mall in a cottage contiguous to Kelmscott House. To revive the let-
tering of the best periods, ¢.g., the perfected Roman type as seen in
the admirable work of the Venetian printers of the fifteenth century,
seemed to him as worthy of vast expenditure of time and labour
as was anything else he had taken up and carried to perfection.
He was tremendously excited about it; the designing and cutting
of the letters, the quality of the specially-made paper, all absorbed
his attention. He himself went down to Little Chart, near Ashford,
with Mr. Emery Walker, to superintend the making of the paper,
and characteristically took off his coat and tried to make a sheet
with his own hands, and at the second attempt he succeeded in
doing very creditably what it is usually supposed must take a
man several months to master.

About this time Morris, disapproving of the anarchist tendencies

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of a large section of the Socialist League of which he had been
the moving spirit, seceded from it, together with some of his
personal friends and neighbours, and formed an independent
branch called the ‘‘ Hammersmith Socialist Society,” the object
of which was to spread the principles of Socialism peacefully.
The meetings took place twice a week until, some time after Morris’s
death, the affair came to a natural ending. They were held in
the large room built out of the stable and coach-house in which
he had first set up the carpet looms, on which were woven under
his immediate eye, the beautiful Hammersmith carpets.

Until his removal to Merton Abbey, Morris was not able to
weave carpets larger than twelve feet square, for the space at his
disposal did not allow it. He designed them entirely himself, begin-
ning as one does in setting to work on a picture, by making a small,
careful design—in his case to be enlarged by assistants on point
paper, divided into minute spaces, each representing a particular
bit of the carpet, or the proposed painting. The designs he coloured
carefully himself. When finished he sometimes spread the carpet
out on the lawn at Kelmscott House, in order that he might judge
properly of the effect. The drawing at the opening of this chapter
shows on the right the red-tiled roof of the apartment in which
the carpet looms were set up. ,

Everybody knows Morris’s famous rule, ‘‘ Have nothing in
your house that you do not know to be useful, and believe to be
beautiful.”” He could quite conscientiously stretch it to include
not alone carpets and embroidery, and wall-paper and stained
glass, and metal work, but tapestry also; and he did so, for when
he had mastered one art, he immediately hungered to wrestle with
another ; and by and by he set up a tapestry loom as well as a carpet
loom—the first tapestry loom being that which, as we have seen,
he put up in his own bedroom at Hammersmith. His ambition
was to revive the splendid and famous Flemish and French tapestries
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Arras, round which at
this very moment, the middle of April, 1917, surges the tide of
the most terrible war in history, was in the earlier part of the
fifteenth century the centre of the peaceful industry, and from it
wall-hangings came to be known as “ Arras.” Other Flemish
cities, notably Brussels, soon surpassed Arras in the manufacture.
The greatest artists of the time designed for them, indeed the

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workers were bound by law to employ only professional painters
in the more important features of the design, though they were
permitted to introduce flowers, grasses, and such subsidiary
decoration of their own invention. Morris, an artist in every other
respect, was not very successful when he attempted to draw
figures and animals, and therefore while the conventionalized flowers,
fruit, and so forth, are of his own designing, he left the others to
Burne-Jones and to Philip Webb, who had been Edmund Street’s
senior clerk when Morris had been articled to that architect—and
who was succeeded, in Street’s office, by Norman Shaw.

Morris thought that the house should be to the man what the
body is to the soul—the outward and visible sign of life itself; and
that was a quaint notion of his that “ the garden, if not a part of
the house, should be in a sense the clothing of it.” He never
graduated as an architect, he never built a house, he scarcely
remained any time in Street’s office. It would seem that his
architectural knowledge ‘‘ just growed,” as did, by her own account,
the body of the original Topsy, his namesake; he did not value
himself upon it, but he took real pride in his knowledge of gardening,
and of flowers, and fruits, and vegetables; ‘“‘ we are told that he
knew all their ways and capabilities.”

It is this fact that renders the garden on the Upper Mall so
interesting to us, for though it never held the place in his affections
occupied by that of Kelmscott Manor, or even by that of The Red
House (his first residence after his marriage), still Morris, being
what he was, an ardent lover of nature, ‘of the earth and
the seasons and the weather, and all that grows out of it,”’ the
garden on the Upper Mall and “‘ the growth of it” could not fail
to bring moments of joy into his existence.

Circumstances prevented him from residing altogether at the
beloved home on the Upper Thames, but he liked to think that
the river that ran under his windows at Hammersmith, had passed
the meadows, and grey gables of Kelmscott : and more than once
a party of summer voyagers went from one house to another by
water, embarking at their own door in London, and disembarking
in their own meadow at Kelmscott.

Writing in 1875 to his wife, then in Italy with his daughters,.
about the time when he took the house, he describes the situation
as being “‘ certainly the prettiest in London (you may scoff at this

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KELMSCOTT HOUSE

among the olives beside the midland sea). . . . The house could
easily be done up at a cost of money . . . the garden is really
most beautiful. If you come to think of it, you will find that
you won’t get a garden or a house with much character unless
you go out as far as the Upper Mall, and I don’t think that either
you or I could stand a modern house in a street. . . .”

This praise of his London garden is not exaggerated. There is
only a small plot of ground in front ; with two scrubby bushes of
box, so far as I remember—on either side of the front door. ‘‘ It
neither ‘clothes’ nor gives grace to the house,” but at the
back stretches away, almost to King Street, Hammersmith, the
loveliest and most extensive town-garden that it has fallen to
my lot to describe and to depict. I do not, of course, compare
it with the “ princely gardens,” to repeat once more Bacon’s
famous phrase—but with those usually attached to the middle-
class Londoner’s home.

Strictly speaking, at Kelmscott House there are three gardens, each
opening out of the other—connected, however, by an encircling walk.

A wide, smooth lawn, much used for tennis and bowls, and
shaded by splendid trees—among them a fine tulip tree—is the
principal feature of the first garden. A row of terra-cotta vases,
almost large enough to hold a small man, therefore sometimes
called the “‘ Ali Baba” pots, which are Italian oil jars, used in
importing olive oil, cuts off the lawn at the lower end. When I
saw them, they were filled with scarlet geraniums, as seen in the
drawing ; it was remarked significantly that “ of course they were
not there in Morris’s time.’”’ No doubt they were held to be
vulgar by the worshippers of the sunflower and the lily; and
vulgarity indeed is too mild a term applied to geraniums when
they are contrasted with a garish yellow; but that Morris
himself considered them as altogether beyond the pale, and that
he started the prejudice against them, seems almost incredible
in face of his efforts to get pure, bright dyes in his vats. His
infallible eye for colour enabled him to harmonize everything,
even tints inherently discordant; and he could not have failed
to realize the preciousness of a dash of scarlet—which is as valuable
sometimes as a touch of black—in a decorative scheme—but then
Morris would never have contrasted it with calceolaria-yellow ;
and that is exactly what the ordinary garden-lover does !

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This first enclosure leads to another abounding in old-fashioned,
sweet-scented flowers. Here there is a mulberry tree of great
age; and at the farther end a highly picturesque, rather tumble-
down conservatory which has still, suggestions of quite aristo-
cratic beginnings ; and over this sweet peas stacked in rows, and
tall hollyhocks standing in battalions, seem to mount guard. I
am speaking, be it remembered, of the Kelmscott House garden as
it was some three or four years ago. Since then it has changed
hands, and as the new owner has, with lamentable vandalism,
pulled down the red-tiled wing, formerly coach-house and stables,
in which Ronalds made his first experiments in telegraphy, and
Morris installed his carpet looms and held Socialistic meetings—
he has probably replaced the pretty old greenhouse with a spick
and span new one. Alas, the founder of the “ Anti-Scrape”’ is
no longer here to utter a word of protest !

This part of the enclosure shows some disposition to change its
character and to deviate into the ways of a kitchen-garden ; but
the result of this irresolution is delightful; it always is, when
cabbages and Canterbury bells, and mint and mignonette, claim
kinship as being all part of the same vegetable kingdom !

The kitchen-garden proper, however, is beyond all this. It
straggles down almost to King Street, Hammersmith; a postern
door—that shuts with a spring—in the old buttressed wall—gives
upon a narrow passage called euphoniously Hog Lane—and this
by devious ways leads to the shops and the trams, and the bustle,
of the outside world.

But within, all is charming and peaceful enough—it is but
slightly overlooked, and like the middle garden, it also boasts a
mulberry tree. Is the plant very slow growing? if so, these
Kelmscott trees must be of great antiquity—for each now greatly
exceeds the dimensions of a ‘“‘ bush,” and pray remember that it
was a mulberry bush, not a mulberry tree, round which, in the
“luxury of vain imagination” (for never was either shrub or
tree present), we have all danced in childhood “on a cold and
frosty morning.” In any case, the game is as old as the tree.

I mentioned elsewhere that according to tradition, Queen Bess,
but more probably King Jamie, fired with the ambition to estab-
lish the silk industry in this country, caused many mulberry
trees to be planted near London, and it is true that there is scarcely

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an old garden in Hammersmith, Chelsea, or Chiswick, that does
not rejoice in the possession of at least one.

One cannot suppose that the Kelmscott specimens were among
those planted so long ago by royal command—but they are their
direct descendants. The mulberry is a beautiful tree, growing
picturesquely ; it has large handsome leaves; the fruit, when
newly-gathered, is most delicious—and the berries, ripe and unripe,
red, black and green—appear simultaneously on the boughs. We
must prize those we have, for unless we mend our ways, and plant
for posterity as our ancestors did for us, the mulberry-bush in
common with many other trees, may in a generation or two
become extinct—for nobody plants it now !

It. was natural that this town garden should compare unfavour-
ably with that on the Upper Thames in the heart of the country
—but certain entries in Morris’s letters and diaries, show that he
found pleasure in it. é

In 1882 he wrote from Hammersmith, “ Well! one thing I
long for will certainly come, the sunshine and the spring. Mean-
while we are hard at work gardening here, making dry paths
and a sublimely tidy box-edging; how I love tidiness!”’ Per-
haps he meant the remark for a joke; anyway, it is amusing
coming from one who appears to have been notoriously untidy.

““ Both the Hammersmith and the Merton gardens,” he writes
in September, 1866, ‘“‘ are looking very nice just now ’’—Merton
Abbey being the picturesque Surrey works, seven miles from
Charing Cross, to which he had removed his plant for dyeing,
weaving, and cotton-printing. This was according to a plan he
had long entertained—for he felt that ‘“ this world-without-end,
for-everlasting hole of a London” was not the place to do more
than carry out experimental work in. But though he abused
London, he was typically a Londoner of the middle-class—and
being a poet and an artist to boot—his native city at times made
strong appeal to him. His Hammersmith garden—with its brown
brick walls, and smoky environment—illustrated his own text,
when in May, 1891, he wrote, ‘“‘ The blossom is splendid—London,
in the older parts like the Inns of Court, really looks well in the
springtime, with the bright, fresh green against the smoky old
walls. Spring over, it becomes London again, and no more an
enchanted city ;” a day or two later he adds, “ The weather is

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beautifully bright and quite hot. The pear and cherry blossom
are going off, and spring will soon have slid into summer, though
the lilac is to come.”’ With greater brevity he expresses the same
idea in ‘‘ The Earthly Paradise ”’ :

“When April tide was melting into May.”

It was characteristic of Morris to remark upon the weather.
‘“‘It is a hottish close morning,” he wrote once in June, “ rather
dull with London smoke; I have just been down the garden to
see how things were doing, and find that they are gettingon. Not
so many slugs and snails by a long way, and the new-planted things
are growing now; the sweet peas promising well, the peonies in
bud, as well as the scarlet poppies.”

This habit of close observation, his joy in work, and nature, and
in growing things, his intense vitality, and untiring energy, explain
how it was that William Morris accomplished in a generation
nothing less than the renaissance of the practical and decorative
arts.

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LEIGHTON HOUSE: The Studio Balcony, from Garden

CHAPTER XIV
LEIGHTON HOUSE

HIS book professes to tell all about gardens, gardens either
famous for their beauty, or for their associations with the
celebrated men and women who have walked in them.

Let me here say at once that in this concluding chapter, I am
not going to talk very much about the garden of Leighton House,
but a great deal concerning him who directed its laying out, and
owned it.

And in giving my personal experience of one phase of Lord
Leighton’s character, and in bearing testimony to his kindliness,
his helpfulness, his interest in the rising generation of artists, and
his self-sacrificing devotion to his high duties and to Art—TI shall
be shedding some light on the secret of his vast influence in his
lifetime.

The ideal president of any society of eminent scientists, scholars,
literary men, or artists, must be a many-sided man; in his own
profession sufficiently distinguished to command the respect and

confidence of his fellows, though not of necessity—as was the case
with the august first President of the Royal Academy—incontest-
ably the greatest among them. The ideal president must combine
in his own person many and various qualities that meet but rarely
in one individual. Were it not so, now that the glamour of Lord
Leighton’s presence has been removed, and the singular charm of
his winning personality is no more than a memory, there are
many among the younger generation of artists and critics of to-day,
who might wonder how it came about that, for the greater part
of a quarter of a century, he influenced the destinies of art in this

country, and was for seventeen years its official representative.
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Even those most strongly opposed to his method, manner, and
style—if they judge him only from the amount, and the serious
quality of the work he left behind him—and consider how far he
carried out his own ideals—will generally be found to admit that
if there were greater painters in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, there was no greater all-round artist, and certainly there
was no other who, by common consent—owing to a rare union of
intellectual and physical gifts—seemed so marked out by nature
for his great position—was born to be President of the Royal
Academy. .

Singularly handsome, of distinguished presence, genial in
manner, speaking fluently many tongues; a much-travelled man
who had lived long in several Continental cities ; a thoughtful and
eloquent speaker, and moreover a ready one—for I myself have
heard him speak at a moment’s notice, effectively and well—
Frederick Leighton had the high-bred air, and the accomplishments,
of a finished courtier. But the charm of voice and smile, the
graces of manner and of mind, that attracted all who came near
him, were not learnt in courts—for though of gentle blood, he
was not high-born ; and the President’s courtliness was the out-
come of a courtesy that was innate.

Born at Scarborough in 1830, he was the grandson of a man who,
during two reigns, had been physician to the court of St. Peters-
burg. His father also was a medical man, one who might have
made in medicine a greater mark than he did, had not a cold caught
at the outset of his career, just after he had taken his Edinburgh
degree—left him partially deaf. Frederick was the eldest child,
an only son; he had two sisters, one of whom, the late Mrs. Suther-
land Orr, made some mark in literature; the remaining sister.
Mrs. Matthews, survives him.

The family seems to have been of a roving inclination, for we
hear of them as resident for a time in Florence, Rome, Paris, anc
Frankfort ; and the cosmopolitan tastes and habits thus acquired
by the young Frederick, no doubt stood him in good stead in the
part he afterwards so admirably played in London society; fo!
though insularity may assist in forming the individuality of an artis’
who is destined ultimately to become a pillar of a national schoo
of painting—it is by no means an asset in the equipment of on
whose business it is to represent that school in the world at large

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Leighton’s artistic bent displayed itself early; he was a very
small boy when he first went on the Continent with his mother,
who was at the time out of health; and he was but ten years old
when he took drawing lessons in Rome. Although he already
showed signs of talent, Dr. Leighton did not encourage his desire
to become an artist; indeed, in those days many parents held
Art as a profession, in abhorrence, regarding its followers as but little
better than vagabonds, or strolling players. That this is not so
now, we owe primarily to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who, in his own
person, first established the claim of Art to be a career for gentle-
men—but it was reserved for Frederick Leighton finally to raise
the social status of artists generally; and he has elevated the rank
of a craftsman in the fine arts—should he care to assume it—even
to what it had been in the days of Titian, Rubens, and Vandyke
—who were courtiers, ambassadors, and the companions of kings.

Leighton was in Italy, and was only fourteen, when his father
consulted Hiram Power, the sculptor, in Rome—touching his son’s
career. ‘‘ Shall I make him an artist ?”’

** Sir,” replied the American, ‘‘ you have no choice, he is one
already, and he may become as eminent as he pleases.”’

Thus the boy obtained his heart’s desire, but it was a desultory
sort of art training that—in the intervals of his regular education,
now began. He who afterwards did so much to awaken and keep
alive an ideal of beauty amid the grime and smoke of London—
derived his own passionate love of that beauty from his early
Italian surroundings. But the actual and existing Academies of
Art in Italy, were sadly decadent; and Florence was -a bad place
to begin in, for the boy there picked up mannerisms that it took
long years to undo. But fortunately, his general education having
been begun in Frankfort, he returned there to continue it, and
came under the corrective and formative influence of Steinle, an
artist little known in England—but to whom as a master—though
he studied also in Brussels and Paris, Lord Leighton always
confessed the greatest obligations.

In 1852, when twenty-two years of age, Leighton proceeded to
Rome, where he was well received by the English colony, and
where his long friendship with the Brownings began. Thackeray,
who was there at the time, was so greatly impressed by the young
artist’s promise, that on his return to London, meeting Millais,

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of whom and of his Pre-Raphaelite brothers all the Art world was
talking, he exclaimed: “ Millais, my boy, I have met in Rome
a versatile young dog called Leighton, who will one of these days
run you hard for the Presidency.”

Leighton’s first picture of any importance, “The Cimabue
Madonna,” was painted in Rome; and being exhibited in London
in the Academy of 1855, attracted great attention, and was pur-
chased by the Queen for six hundred pounds. Yet it does not
appear that its success established the painter’s position. The
critics, we are told, were puzzled by him, and did not know where
to place him. Holman-Hunt and Millais were known, and had
made their mark—but ‘who was Leighton?” The question was
answered in the sixties, when, after an interregnum during which
the artist again visited the Continent—there appeared year after
year at the Royal Academy, works revealing a passionate love of
beauty, an unrivalled feeling for form, and glowing with southern
colour.

Leighton, it was clear, was a worshipper of classic art ; indeed,
founded himself upon it, yet owed much to French influences—
to Bouguereau, Géréme, and Robert Fleury. The critics were
divided; though classed by Ruskin as the true successor of
Correggio—while certain French writers on Art missed in his style
“some attractive British singularity,’ others discovered in him
qualities essentially English. It was not, however, until some
years later that one of these wrote: ‘‘ La Grandeur de la com-
munion humaine, la noblesse de la paix, tel est le théme qui a
le plus souvent et le mieux inspiré M. Leighton. Et cela il ne l’a
pas trouvé en France, ni ailleurs. C’est bien une idée anglaise.”

In the heyday of Lord Leighton’s artistic and social success, no
disturbing and anarchic forces arose, to bewilder the Art-loving
public, and bring despair into the hearts of most serious painters,
as they have done of late.

It is true that “‘ flung straight on to the bosom of Nature, where
safety is,” as Lord Leighton once finely said in another connec-
tion, the Pre-Raphaelites had done much to break down the
‘barbed wire of conventionalism, and had even forced an entrance
into the sacred enclosure of the Royal Academy. But it was a
very mild and modified Pre-Raphaelitism that obtained a footing
there; for there was something in the atmosphere of the Royal

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Academy in those days—as there is apt to be more or less, in the
atmosphere of every academic body—that had a deadening effect.

Besides which, Holman-Hunt, Madox Brown, and Rossetti, remained oan

sternly outside—Burne-Jones—a sort of younger son of the Brother-
hood—though elected an associate—an honour, I believe, not of
his secking—only exhibited there once, and sent his best work
elsewhere. And after entering the Academy, Millais himself—
who certainly possessed genius, and will live when most of us are
forgotten—in sundry notable portraits, in ‘‘The Boyhood of
Raleigh,” and other examples of his exuberant middle period—
examples that are satisfying till compared with his youthful efforts
—broke entirely away from Pre-Raphaelite principles. A certain
devolution from them was to be expected—and for some years he
betrayed no decline in painting-power—rather the reverse—but
his work ceased to show the intensity of intellectual vision—the
emotional and dramatic force, and the passionate admiration for,
and close loving study of, nature, of ‘‘ The Huguenot ” and similar
subjects, while it lacked the subtle meanings—carried through
every inch of the canvas—to be found in that noblest of British
pictures, ‘‘ The Blind Girl,” well worth a pilgrimage to Birmingham
to see !

These pictures, and others by the Brotherhood, though they
did not lead to a revolution in Art—had effected what sincerity
and earnestness will more or less always effect in the most con-
servative society. Before Frederick Leighton appeared upon the
scene—Pre- -Raphaelitism had sent a revivifying breath of fresh
air through the closed and musty chambers of Burlington House
—and had blown away the cobwebs of a century of conventional
art; and though this had passed, and to some extent the dust had
settled again—yet the windows were left open for the admission of
a healthy realism, and later, of a broad and sane impressionism—
using the word for the moment in the narrow sense in which it is
usually applied. Both of these had originated in this country,
and only came back to us from France ; for if it be doubtful how
far our own Constable inspired the great French landscapists and
the French nature school—none will deny that Turner was the
first great Impressionist. Mr. Charles J. Holmes, perhaps the
chief authority on Constable, thinks that his influence on French
Art has been exaggerated, and that the Impressionists when they

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sought after the secret of painting air and sunshine, looked to
Turner rather than to Constable.

It is, however, a cardinal doctrine of my artistic faith—that
every sincere painter—be he pigmy or giant, unconsciously gives
us in his picture, his personal “impression” of the things he
paints, and of their relative value in his eyes—and that, therefore,
‘‘ impressionism ” in its wider sense, is nothing new; for as long
ago as the days of Titian, Tintoret, and Rembrandt (I am leaving
Velasquez out of count, because he is always claimed by the
avowed Impressionists)—all great artists recognized more or less
the vast importance of selection and emphasis in Art, of the just
subordination of the lesser to the greater, and were therefore
‘“‘ Impressionists,” though they did not entirely eliminate all
detail.

The happy result of all this was, that, by the time Frederick
Leighton was established in London, there had already been a
slow but steady broadening of Academic sympathies, and a welcome
slackening of Academic rules—shown not only in a wider tolerance
of new styles and methods—but in the admission of women to the
training in the Fine Arts given in the schools at Burlington House
—those schools in which Lord Leighton’s interest was always
great. I think it is right here to pause to express the gratitude
that all women artists ought to feel to the courageous lady, Laura
Herford by name—whose act had first led to the opening of the
door of the Academy Schools to her sex. Aware that a woman
was then ineligible as a student, she sent in the required specimen
of work, concealing from the authorities that it was not by a
man. It was accepted—and although I am ignorant of the details
of the story—I know that she so urged her claim that she was
admitted as a probationer, and in due time, as a student. I have
often thought that she, the only woman in that place—must have
endured a good deal of discomfort and ridicule, and perhaps of
veiled opposition—for, as I found out to my cost, a good many
years later—young men—even embryo artists—are not always
chivalrous. Iam not aware that she even made her mark in a
profession which it is possible that she never seriously intended
to follow--her aim may have been merely to prepare the way for
others—but her niece, Helen Paterson—better known as Mrs.
Allingham, has most certainly done so.

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I do not know how long it was after this that permission was
given for thirteen women students—Helen Paterson and the late
Edith Martineau among them—to work in the schools, but as this
took place in the days when the Royal Academy occupied rooms
in the National Gallery—and was cramped for space—the number
working there at one time never exceeded the proverbial baker’s
dozen.

Yet notwithstanding that they were so greatly in the minority,
a young American lady—Louisa Starr, afterwards Madame Canziani
—first woman to win the gold medal for historical painting over
the head of her more favoured fellow-students, had proved, before

~the Academy removed to Burlington House, that women were
capable of becoming good painters.

It was in the seventies, after the migration to Piccadilly, that
the restrictions as to number were abolished ; but for a long time
after this women were debarred from attendance at anatomical
lectures, and denied the study of the figure from life—a branch of
art-education that is of first importance, and for which, in the case
of the men, every facility was afforded. In my time we were
limited to drawing from the antique, and painting drapery on the
lay-figure, to still-life, copying old masters, and to painting heads
from the costume model in the Upper Painting School. There, of
course, we had the benefit of the instruction of the greatest artists
of the day.

I have heard it objected to the Academy training that the change
of masters monthly, must confuse the student ; Millais, Calderon,
and Pettie, for example, in my time, advocating the practice which
seeks to get at once as near to nature as possible ; Leighton, recom-
mending an elaborate preparation, by under-painting; but in a
multitude of counsellors there is wisdom, and a student of capacity,
while learning something from each, may be trusted to adopt the
practice that suits him best, bringing all to the test of his own
experience : not many of us, I think, adopted one dear old Acade-
mician’s recipe for flesh-painting, which, whether the model posing
were a brunette or a blonde, was invariably ‘black, white, and
indian red.”

These reminiscences of very happy days, are leading one by a
very circuitous route to the garden of Leighton House; but Lord
Leighton’s last words were, “‘ Give my love to the Royal Academy,”

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and of the Academy the schools are an integral part ; and since the
interests of the students were very near his heart, some further
reference to them may be pardoned by the reader. When I was
there the butt of the Painting School was a tall, thin, old man, un-
kempt, and unshaven, of whom tradition said that he had been there
sixty years, having in his youth gained some prize that carried with
it a life-studentship. However exaggerated this report, he was
there, to my knowledge, long after I left—wearing, I am told, the
same shabby, grey, coat, his sparse, grey locks no whiter, his grey,

colourless face no cleaner—than he was in my day, when, as I

distinctly remember, he was grey from head to foot! He always

contrived to be in time to secure the best view of the model, and to-
set up his easel where he could reserve a clear space between it and
the window. Then, having dabbed some paint on his canvas, he

would run backwards to judge at a distance of the effect, glance at

the model, rush forward again, and implant another splash of
pigment on the study, which somehow, nevertheless, never advanced

at all; and he always used the same old canvas over again. He

took no notice of anybody, and nobody interfered with his runs to

and fro, for everybody gave him as wide a berth as possible; the

men played practical jokes upon him, and left pails of water, soap

and a towel near him. All this took place in the days when both

sexes worked together in the costume-painting school, and the

girls showed their disapproval of Mr. P—— by drawing their skirts

aside when he came near them; but he remained superbly

indifferent, and superlatively dirty! He looked eighty, though he

was probably a quarter of a century younger, but he seemed to us,

to even the kindest-hearted, an apt example of the survival of the

unfittest. Nevertheless, it was round this curious specimen of
fossilized humanity, that the late Mr. de Morgan has kindly thrown

the mantle of romance, and made his dry bones live. It is impossible

to read “‘ Alice for Short,” without perceiving that the character
of Verrinder, whose devotion to his insane wife is a touching episode

in. the story, was drawn from life, and that the original was “‘ Old

p—.” If his history were really what de Morgan makes it,

and had we known it, there was not a student among us but would
have looked kindly on the old artist.

At that time the R.A. Studentship, now shortened to five years,
lasted to seven, if anyone cared to stay so long, which rarely
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LEIGHTON HOUSE

happened. Among the characters of the Schools when I was there,
was a certain Annie Little—Little was not her name, but it will
serve. In comparison with most of us, she was old when she was
admitted, which was at the time I was. If she had ambitions
they were not satisfied, for she never succeeded even in passing out
of the Antique school, but finished her seven years’ training there.
Whereupon she once more sent in the specimen works required,
was re-admitted, and began the routine of study all over again!
Visiting the Schools one day, long after I had ceased to work there,
I was greeted by the little, pale-faced, elderly lady, who had first
been a probationer when I was, and who was still patiently slaving
away at chalk drawings of the Discobolus and the Antinous.
Whether she died in harness or not, I do not know. I hope she
did, if the rules allowed of it, for wherever her nominal home may
have been, she was happiest within the Academy walls.

In competition with the men for the very few prizes open to both
sexes, the women, in my time, were handicapped by their limited
training. I felt this severely when—the only girl-competitor—
I successfully tried for the Gold Medal for Historical Painting, a
biennial prize, and in those days, at any rate, very highly coveted.
I think it carried more outdoor prestige then than now, when so
many of the best male students finish their training abroad, or did
so before the war.

I recall the genuine and unselfish joy among the students of my
own sex, and the ignoble annoyance of the men, who with one or
two exceptions, promptly sent me to Coventry. Long afterwards
T learnt on unimpeachable authority, that that night, in their absurd
wrath at the success of a girl, a mere tyro, as they considered me—
for I had but very recently passed into the Upper Painting School,
and to the majority of the more advanced students was unknown—
the men students smashed a cast in the schools—either a statue or
a bust. Their attitude was unjust, as well as ungenerous, because
the voting for the students’ prizes by the Academicians, is by ballot.
I think and hope that a better spirit among men towards women
now prevails, and did so even before the war; but I am not quite
sure that it does, for as yet there are no women lawyers in this
country. However, a generation and a half ago there were no
women doctors, so there is hope for the woman attorney, and
barrister—the more so as ere long the women’s vote will make itself

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felt ; but is there any at all for the woman artist, who has not yet
received official position ?—for since Angelica Kauffmann, no one
of my sex has passed within the sacred pale of the Royal Academy,
although I could mention at least half a dozen women whose work
during the last twenty-five years—if measured by the masculine
standard—ought to have carried them in; they have not been
geniuses, it is true; but the ranks of the Academicians would be
sadly depleted if all who are not geniuses walked out.

At the period of which I have just been speaking, the would-be
woman artist had advanced a very little way, even on the road to
equal educational rights. The step taken by Laura Herford led,
it is true, straight to the closed door of the Academy Schools, which
was now set partly open; but here someone within must have
cried “‘ Halt!’ In vain we begged for fuller opportunities for
study. It was the year before mentioned, when the women, still
largely in the minority in the Schools, and permitted to compete for
but few of the premiums, had done well ; two silver medals, as well as
the gold, falling to our share. On the principle that half a loaf is
better than no bread, we asked for a partial removal of our dis-
abilities, and that at least we might be allowed to study from a
half-draped model. I had been made to head the petition, and back
came the reply to me : “‘ Unanimously condemned as inexpedient.”’
Therefore we had to supplement the very excellent training we had
so far received, with the best practice from the life that we could
obtain elsewhere.

I enlarge upon this subject, not only because it may be not
without interest to those who care for the fortunes of British art—
to consider the difficulties that long beset the path of the woman
who was ambitious to become more than a mere amateur—but also
because I think those who have freely enjoyed—and others who
now enjoy, what came too late to be of use to us, already launched
as we were on our careers as exhibiting artists—owe something of
their good fortune to our pioneer efforts, and most of all because I
am convinced that it was mainly the influence of Lord Leighton—
as he afterwards became—that so fortunately brought about the
change. No doubt Philip Calderon—both before and after he
became Keeper, deserves some of the credit—for I remember how
strongly he always insisted that every draped figure in a costume
picture should first of all have been carefully drawn from the nude.

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That Millais felt the disabilities under which the women in my time
laboured to be very unjust, I am sure, for he did what he could to
mitigate the injustice. I well remember an occasion immediately
following on my admission to the Upper Painting School, when he
was the “ Visitor ’ for the month—and that the model he provided
was a beautiful little boy of some eight or nine years old—graceful,
lithe, and nearly nude. The innovation was chiefly for the benefit
of the women students in the class.

The pose was a kneeling one, and the child moved a good deal, and I
recall how—on this my first attempt at painting the figure from the
life—wrestling with the difficulties of flesh-painting in oil, and keep-
ing the drawing correct at the same time—I made the boy’s curly
head rather too large. When the great master came round to me,
he detected this at once, saying sympathetically : ‘“‘ I know, it’s just
like having a tooth out, but—it must come out,”’ and out it came!

Millais was a wonderful personality ; he had a handsome presence,
a genial, breezy, almost jovial manner, and a kindly smile; and he
had a humorous way of putting things, with a touch of fun which
was very effective.

I never knew him very well, not nearly so well as—in the same
relation—that of master and pupil—I came, soon after, to know
Leighton ; but he never forgot anyone, or one’s work; he would
come out of his way to speak of it—of that I might give instances
pleasant to look back upon, but they would be out of place here

In the light of that early remark of Thackeray’s, before quoted :
“*Millais, my boy, I met in Rome a versatile young dag called
Leighton, who will one day run you hard for the Presidency ”—
it is curious to remember how some twenty-five years ago, Millais
and Leighton (like Reynolds and Romney had done before them)
‘ divided” the suffrages of the town. I think now no one will
hesitate to say that Millais was far and away the greater painter,
though, as I said before, he was not a greater all-round artist.
But it seems to me that while Millais had more than a touch of
native genius, Leighton had greater accomplishment. However,
to enlarge upon this would only be to repeat in extenso what I
briefly said at the beginning of the chapter, touching the great
President’s versatility—we are still too near them both in point of
time to judge either fairly; at present both have suffered that
partial and temporary eclipse which I have elsewhere remarked as

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so frequently following the removal from among us of those who
have played a conspicuous part in their day; and this is more
particularly true of artists, and literary men; for work that is
scientific and practical in its purpose, can be brought to the test
of experiment; and science is essentially progressive, and not
subject to the fluctuation of taste, and the caprices, of fashion. It
is otherwise with the fine arts, and the generation succeeding
Leighton and Millais, has witnessed in some quarters—and these
actually defended by the Press—the violation of every canon of
art by which taste might be guided and controlled. High ideals,
and a reverence for nature and the great achievements of the past,
have given way to a passionate desire to be original at any cost,
and to a clamorous self-advertisement. Looking back to the
condition and prospects of the Arts in the years immediately
preceding the great war, one realizes that we had then reached an
era of esthetic topsy-turvydom—that if art has anything to do
with morals, and I think it has, was significant of much that has
happened since. The sinister pictures that amused the thought-
less, bewildered the inexperienced, and caused deep resentment and
fears for art, in the breasts of the serious thinker—seem to me to
have been the fitting foreword to the vision of the world as we now
see it; a world in which international law has been wantonly
violated—much as the rules of Art have been, and in which horror
succeeds horror. Is it too fanciful to say that the malign influence
of Nietzsche, spread over a continent, found visible expression in
Post Impressionism, and Futurism ? That as anarchy and cruelty
were openly preached by the man—so anarchy and frightfulness
appear in the pictures ?

Fortunately for Lord Leighton himself, though perhaps less so
for the arts, in the heyday of his artistic predominance and social
success, the anarchic influences that have since disturbed that
small section of the world that takes genuine interest in Art, had
not made themselves seriously felt. Revolutionary symptoms
had indeed appeared from time to time; and of these Mr. Philip
Calderon, Keeper of the Royal Academy from 1887 to 1898
—makes amusing mention in a letter he wrote to me in 1892—
from which I shall have occasion to quote. These symptoms of
extravagance, however, were kept in check until the close of his
career, by the President’s controlling influence and correct taste.

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LEIGHTON HOUSE

But, although Post Impressionism and Futurism were as yet un-
born, a certain unrest in artistic circles—chiefly outside the Royal
Academy—unmistakably existed. It was an unrest bequeathed
by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood ; an unrest of spirit, method,
and outlook, that was all to the good, and in which some dis-
tinguished members of the Royal Academy as well as the President,
deeming any sort of movement to be better than stagnation—
must have rejoiced. It expressed itself in a profound discontent
with Victorian art in all its manifold forms.

In the last chapter we saw its awakening in the realms of the
decorative and industrial arts, in William Morris’s various activities.
In the fine arts it worked by means of an attempt to destroy, or
at least to weaken, the supremacy of the Academy, by means of
a counter attraction. The Grosvenor Gallery was opened! Here
Sir Edward Burne-Jones and his followers, and other innovators,
came to their own; here even Watts the idealist, also a few more
of the Academicians who disliked the conventionalism and much
of the meaningless prettinesses to be met with at Burlington
House—elected to exhibit.

It was a praiseworthy effort ; but in the long run it failed, though
supported by society and fashion—as any such attempt to reform
from outside an institution so firmly established in popular
favour as the Royal Academy was foredoomed to fail; and there-
fore the shillings of the public continued to drop chiefly into the
cash receptacles in the Piccadilly turnstiles! Nevertheless, it was
followed by the New Gallery ; and with a broad-minded President
at Burlington House, its results were far-reaching. Closely in
touch with the Continent as Leighton was, and cognizant of all
new movements there—it was during his reign that, throwing over
the hide-bound traditions of the Maclise, Redgrave, and Creswick
period, the Royal Academy became gradually less conservative,
until, at the present moment it includes in its membership the
best men from every school; but as yet no woman. Short of
Post Impressionism and Futurism, I think all modern groups are
represented and receive fair play. Indeed, the swing of the
pendulum is now to the other side, and it is rather the exponents
of the older methods and aims in art, who now complain and with
good reason—not of the Royal Academy, but of the unfair attitude
of the Press towards them. Art criticism has passed almost

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entirely into the hands of a few, a very few, able men of strong
predilections, and stronger prejudices. These men hold, and quite
legitimately hold, their own views on the province and practice
of the arts both of painting and sculpture, but unfortunately
they are partisans rather than critics. Yet I believe that the
clever, and very enthusiastic writers who sign their names to articles
filled with laudatory passages on this or that leader of some very
advanced clique, or who advocate the latest fad or craze brought
over from abroad by speculative dealers, honestly feel the admira-
tion they express for works which, in spite of their supporters’
ubiquitous efforts to convince—are not convincing, either to common
sense, or to artistic intelligence.

And remember, no man can be a fair judge of art; fit, that is,
to lead a pliant and uninstructed public—the public which, after
all, supplies the artist with his bread and cheese—who is not sym-
pathetic as well as critical—who is a special pleader; who is
incapable of laying aside for the moment his own preferences,
pet aversions, and pet theories—even his personal independent
convictions, and of contemplating and judging a work of art from
the standpoint of the artist himself. In doing so he may rest assured
that the artist is more dissatisfied with it than ever he can be
—though for different reasons—because it is no mere platitude to
say that a true artist never attains to his ideal.

‘* What is art ?”’ is a question never yet satisfactorily answered.
And it is one that every fair-minded man whose business it is to
translate the artist to the public, should ask of himself. For one
thing it is a means to the expression of a man’s idiosyncrasy ; his
mentality, his emotions, his attitude towards nature, and his
outlook on life—and so varied is this idiosyncrasy, that within
certain felt limits—beyond which no man may go and call himself
artist, men “‘ gang their ain gait,’ and no man should say them
‘nay.’ The Royal Academy itself has had room at one and the
same time for a Tadema and a Brangwin, and outside it might
recently be found, almost contemporaneously, men of such diverse
aims and practice, as Holman-Hunt and Augustus John, Whistler
and Burne-Jones—yet each has his place in the firmament of
art, although of some of them it may be said that whether they
are fixed stars, or passing vaporous meteors, the world is not yet
old enough to know.

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Nevertheless, there are certain fundamental rules which should
guide the impartial critic, certain tests of rightness and wrongness,
which he is bound to apply. But the modern writer on art is
not impartial, and he does not apply them ; his are not the senti-
ments of the dying Gainsborough when, reconciled at the last
to Reynolds, the President, bending over him, caught the
murmured words: ‘‘ We are all going to Heaven, and Vandyck
is of the party.” He does not seek out what there is of good in
that with which he may be personally out of sympathy. He looks
only for qualities in which his own little group of painters excel,
forgetting that art is compounded of compromises, and that in the
attainment of one quality, to him of vital importance, the artist
may have had deliberately to sacrifice another, as he had a perfect
right to do! And this being so, how manifestly unfair the whole
system of art criticism is! To begin with, the lead of the Press
to induce the public to take interest in pictures at all, is very weak ;
and compared with that given to the drama and music in the course
of the year, the space allotted to art is exceedingly small ; and it
is therefore to be regretted that men who themselves are mere
dilettanti, should be able, either thoughtlessly to make an ephemeral
reputation with exaggerated praise, or to slay a well-earned one
with a contemptuous word. Possibly they are themselves good
amateurs up to a certain point, but clever sketching, is not painting
a picture, and they would fail completely if they tried to carry one
out from start to finish. If they knew as little practically of science,
or of music, as they know practically of Art, they would not venture
to comment publicly, on either.

An author, whose professional status may be no higher than
that of a score of painters whose works are ignored or venomously
attacked, is usually safe in the hands of his critic, who at least
understands the construction of books, who appreciates language,
style, and so forth, and who will not fall out with his author—as
does the art-critic with the artist—merely because the opinion
voiced, or the manner of the matter, are not to his taste.

What comfort the artist can draw from the cynical and oft-
quoted remark of Lord Beaconsfield ‘“‘ that the critics are the
men who have failed in literature or art’’-—he may draw; but
the Press is all-powerful—and the painter who belongs to another
school than the critics, who could not paint like the men he eulogizes,

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if he tried; and would not if he could; who has been true to his
own ideals, and finds that the nearer he gets to them, the farther
he is from those of his critic—must suffer in silence, and wait
patiently, as he has already done for twenty or thirty years, for
the advent of a more catholic school of art-criticism. He is
inarticulate save through his art, as most artists are—and indeed,
in the words of that wise and witty Royal Academy Keeper from
whose humorous letter—written when once I rushed into print—
I shall quote again : “‘ We must beware of the inkpot—our business
is to paint—let others talk—the men who row don’t speak; it is
the idle fellows running along the bank who shout: ‘Ha, you
duffer, why don’t you pull?’ ”

It was just the recognition of the fact that men do not all tread
the same path in reaching their goal—that though all roads are
supposed to lead to Rome, there is, in art, but one reliable finger-
post, and that is sincerity—that made Lord Leighton such an
excellent critic, and helped to make of him the ideal President.
Those who, like myself, have benefited by his wise advice, have the
best possible reasons for stating, that though his own instincts
might lead him in a certain direction, he took into account that
the natural bent of a student in whom he might conceivably
discern promise, might be in another. Earnestness and ingustry
were his watchwords. Himself an ardent lover of ordered and
classical art, cheap and merely showy work—winning easy success
but often concealing ignorance and impatience of labour—were
abhorrent to him. Possibly he did not go so far as Sir Joshua
Reynolds, who held that perseverance is genius; but he certainly
believed that however fanciful and free its ultimate application,
fine work must fundamentally depend on sound drawing and good
painting, and that these must of necessity be based on the reverent
study of Nature. In his relations with us students, and in his
lessons on composition, he refused to consider a mere ‘“ sketch ”
at all. He insisted that the design presented to him for criticism
should be clearly worked out, and if for a figure picture, should
be worked out from living models—a matter of considerable expense
to young artists, but—and I speak from experience, the lesson that
followed was well worth the outlay !

Lord Leighton was tolerant of everything except insincerity ;
but his tolerance was never put to a very severe test, for the first

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symptoms of extravagance and wilful eccentricity in British Art
showed themselves only four years before his death, and he was
out of England that autumn. The occasion was a violent con-
troversy that had arisen in Liverpool over the merits and demerits
of a small picture entitled ‘“‘ Summer,” by Mr. Homel of the New
Glasgow group of painters.

I was then resident in Liverpool, and naturally was drawn into the
discussion. A paper of mine on the subject, read at the Liverpool Art
Club, was printed by the members and published. It drew forth some
interesting replies from Millais, Watts, Holman-Hunt, and many
other leading artists, also from some well-known writers on art.

The most amusing of these letters came from Mr. Philip Cal-
deron: ‘“‘ No,’ he wrote to me; ‘the echoes of the great storm
have not reached so far, we are too far from the teapot; and to
tell the truth we in London are quite blasé about tremendous
revolutions in Art, we have had them so very often, we have passed
through Realists, Impressionists, then Vibrists, then Square-
brushists, then Smudgists, let alone the school (save the mark)
that used no palette, but a marble-topped dining-table instead.”
It was indeed true that the stir caused by the Glasgow pictures
was local and evanescent ; and Sir Frederick Leighton wrote that
having been abroad all autumn, he had “heard nothing of the
war in Liverpool, until a rumour reached me the other day, I
forget how.’’ Thus he never saw them, which is to be regretted,
since they were premonitory of much that has happened in the
world of zsthetics since his death; but I think that even if Post
Impressionism and Futurism had appeared in his time, so great
was his social influence, and the prestige of his name, that the
‘Grafton Galleries would not have been thronged by fashion as
they were in certain years before the war, when the Post Im-
pressionist pictures were the talk of the town; nor would Futur-
ism have fared any better, for whatever philosophic basis its
supporters may claim for it, its philosophy is not that of art, wherein
abstract ideas must of necessity have concrete expression.

The President, I take it, would have simply ignored the move-
ment as in no way demanding his serious consideration, or the
interposition of his authority.

Returning for a moment to the subject of the Academy Schools
in which Leighton was interested, the students, in my day—men

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and girls alike—literally worshipped him, and he deserved our
appreciation, for nobody ever made greater efforts to inspire and
stimulate. It is certain that he contrived to infuse into those
with whom he came in contact, his own enthusiasm for work.
Himself an early riser—in his studio I have understood before
eight o’clock—when Visitor at the Schools he had insisted that
the Painting-school should be opened, and the models posed, at
nine, the usual hour being ten o’clock. And he would often come
down, booted and spurred, to go round the classes, when on his
way to the headquarters of the Artists’ corps, of which he was
colonel. How little did its first commander guess that the now
famous “‘ Artists” would one day share with the “ Inns of Court ”’
—‘ The Devil’s Own ”—the distinction of training most of the
young officers in our new armies who, in the greatest war in history,
have so valiantly fought and bled on the Continent, in the cause
of their country, and the world’s freedom. But Leighton’s interests
in the students did not cease when he passed out of the schools.
In order to encourage the study of composition he set subjects
—invariably classical or historical—and invited, from the Upper
schools, all who would take the trouble to work them out to
bring their designs on a certain day, to his own beautiful studio
in Kensington. So far as I remember, though many went on the
first occasion, the students dropped off by degrees—his proviso
that he would not waste time. in criticizing rough sketches
possibly not pleasing them—but I think it was in this way that
I acquired the habit of seeking his advice in the designs for my
early pictures—and of taking to him, for criticism, the scheme
of the work I proposed to do. Composition, of course, cannot
really be taught ; the sense of arrangement, relative value of parts,
line, balance, and so forth, must be more or less intuitive; and no
one who is entirely devoid of the instinct will ever be an artist ;
but the natural sense being there, even in a small degree, it can be
cultivated. That the great President was a past-master in the
difficult art of grouping many figures, of arranging them naturally
into a homogeneous whole—his noble decorative lunettes at
South Kensington—“‘ The Arts of Peace” and ‘‘ The Arts of War,”’
far more than large ambitious canvases such as ‘‘ Daphnephoria ”
—suffice to show. In these, every part is busy—not restless, not
obtrusive—but if the application of a popular phrase much used
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now in a very different connection may be pardoned—every unit
in both designs is ‘“‘ doing its bit ’’—is connected in some way
with the whole. Everything helps to tell the story—a point
Leighton greatly insisted on.

I well remember how, in a carefully worked-out design of mine
—the subject of which was chosen by himself from “* Plutarch’s
Lives”? and the history of Coriolanus—my illustration of the
tragic moment when, exclaiming ‘‘ Mother, you have saved
Rome, but lost your son!” the hero yields to the prayer of his
mother, what he had refused to concede to his wife and others—
pleased him extremely, except in one respect. In order to fill up
a corner otherwise empty, I had introduced a boy stretched on the
ground merely as an onlooker. The introduction was immediately
condemned ; the boy had no right to be there—as he in no way
helped the elucidation of the story—rather, he diverted attention
from the central group and the moving moment. And yet the
critic abhorred small empty spaces. ‘‘ Your little mean spaces,”
he used to call them.

It was very characteristic of him that he could discern and
praise in others, qualities that we do not find in his own pictures.
For instance, he looked for feeling—i.e., emotion—in a student’s
work, because he had remarked its presence there before—and
finding it, he praised it. ‘‘ I have seen that in your work already.”’
And so I repeat what I said earlier, that because he divined un-
erringly in what direction a student’s natural bent lay—he was a
sympathizing and successful teacher; and it was the same rare
gift of understanding and of insight—the ability to take the point
of view of another, to appreciate and encourage the development
in others of qualities that some may miss in his own work—that
helped to make his success as President.

Feeling, in the sense of human emotion, does not exist in
Leighton’s own pictures—and it is a cause of wonderment to me
now—as it was in the days when I was privileged to learn so much
from him—that he seemed to value much in others qualities, that
he certainly did not strive after himself; but I think now, that
herein he showed his greatness, and his peculiar fitness for his
position. In this respect he was a great critic.

Feeling, of course, using the word in its more limited esthetic
sense—that intangible something that may exist in one portion

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of an artist’s work, and possibly not in another—which is the
unconscious expression of his own pleasure at the moment in what
he does—expressed itself in Leighton’s case in an exquisite sensitive-
ness to line and colour, to grace and sweetness, and, when under
its influence—in an unrivalled delicacy, a charm of touch and
treatment. This sort of “‘ feeling” he possessed in abundance,
and it shows in such idyllic pictures as ‘‘ Cleobaulos teaching his
daughter Cleobouline ’’—in ‘‘ Wedded,” ‘‘ The Music Lesson,”
““Winding the Skein,” and in some delicious Oriental studies—
but I cannot help wishing that he had never painted “Elijah and
the Angel,” ‘‘ Rispah,”’ and “‘ The Sea gave up her Dead!”

Sir Frederick Leighton was the handsomest man I ever knew—
perhaps more handsome as he grew older, and his hair began to
whiten—than when I first became acquainted with him. The
charm of his manner and his smile were felt by all who, having
the entrée to Holland Park Lane, flocked there on Studio Sundays.
On such occasions one saw there in the seventies and eighties,
many of the most eminent men and women of the day, he himself—
generally wearing a brown velvet coat—being in appearance the
most distinguished.

Many will remember the gallant and stately figure he presented
on the evenings of the Royal Academy. conversazioni, when, wear-
ing the gold chain and badge of his office, and supported by some
members of the Council of the year, he stood to receive the
Academy’s guests with a charming grace, at the end of the long
crimson pathway, lined breast-high with flowering plants, that
led from the staircase to the Central Hall. Behind this flowery
barrier, many of the earlier comers took their stand to watch the
arrivals, and hear their names announced by a pair of dignified
Academy servitors attired in long crimson betasselled gowns.
Somehow, the Royal Academy soirées seemed more brilliant affairs
in Leighton’s time than ever they have done since, even in those
seemingly far-off days, after his death, but before the great war,
which has put a veto on all such functions—for no President, how-
ever courtly, was ever so popular in Society and among his con-
fréres and students as he. He always stood to “ receive ” in person
from nine to twelve o’clock—never moving from his place till after
the stroke of midnight—when with a sigh of relief, he would turn
away and mingle for a while with the gay throng in the Galleries.

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I remember once watching this scene—when, somewhere about
11.80 p.m., when nearly everybody had arrived—a belated pair—
a lady and gentleman, breathless and eager—hurried up the car-
peted pathway between the flowers—clear enough by this time—
to where the President still stood, now almost alone, and deserted
by the Council. ‘‘ Oh, Sir Frederick,” they panted, ‘‘ we are so
sorry we’re so late, but we’ve been all the way down to your house
at Kensington—we thought the party was there!”

I caught his reply: ‘‘ But this is the Academy soirée!” They
must have been strangers to London and its ways—though they
evidently knew him well, and had probably made his acquain-
tance abroad—and receiving the invitation card—had mistaken
both the nature of the function, and the scene.

Leighton’s discourses, delivered to the students at the biennial
prize distribution of the Royal Academy, when the gold medals in
painting, sculpture, and architecture, and the travelling student-
ships, are awarded—his speeches at the Academy banquets and on
similar occasions, were all marked by the same dignity, finish and
evidence of punctilious care, as were his pictures. Those pictures,
in the years of which I have been speaking, were outstanding
features of the annual exhibitions, and together with Millais’ and
Alma-Tadema’s, gave to them, if not a greater distinction,
certainly a greater general interest, than they have at the present
day—notwithstanding the presence there now of much masterly
work, especially among the portraits. Yet even in his lifetime,
many people objected to the excessive smoothness and sometimes
‘ sugariness”” of the President’s style of painting; and in his
larger decorative works, and more monumental and classical
subjects—in spite of the magnificent drawing—the impressiveness
is marred by a certain want of virility in execution. Yet, as Mr.
Pepys Cockerell has said, ‘‘ Whatever judgment the future may
pass upon his own productions, the fact must never be lost sight
of that even without them, Leighton was a great man. Intellec-
tually, spiritually, and socially, he was the most brilliant leader
and a stimulator ‘of artists we have ever seen in England.”

And this is true. To young artists—the Academy students,
for whom he cared so much—one of his great charms, lay in his
accessibility ; his helpful interest in any one of them, once exerted,
never flagged. I do not suppose he ever refused to receive any

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student to whom his advice would be of real service. Personally,
I owe him much : though he was one of the busiest men in London
—if I sought his counsel, he would find time to write, with his own
hand, and make a studio appointment, usually for Sunday morn-
ing. Unfortunately, I was not resident in London at the time:
in spite of Leighton’s saying, “‘ You must be in London, and your
friends should know it,’”’ circumstances unfortunately prevented
me from being so.

Those who have only seen Leighton House as it is at the present
day—stripped of all the significant trifles that go to make up the
domestic environment of every human being, man or woman—
denuded of the pictures by other artists that once clothed the walls,
of the bric-a-brac and curios, the rare tapestries and Oriental
carpets that formerly filled it—can form but a faint conception of
its aspect in the Master’s life-time. The Arab Hall—loveliest
souvenir of the East in London, when the sun shines, a veritable
dream of beauty—otherwise so strangely out of place in the foggy
atmosphere of the Metropolis ; and the noble staircase, remain much
as in other days; for the rest, to me—the place is a tomb—little
more than the shell of a habitation, and bare of all save association.

T can recall one of the first visits I ever paid there, when the Master
himself showed me and a friend who accompanied me, all over his
beautiful home ; and pointed out the things that he most prized.

It is a long while ago—when I was quite young and still a student ;
but I remember what a lovely June morning it was, and that the
surrounding trees still wore their early summer dress of vivid green ;
that the sun shining, illuminated the pictures in the drawing-room,
where there were some fine examples of Corot, and an exquisite
George Mason—a windy picture of calves, and a girl driving them.
Also there was a Paris Bordone. Fresh from his own lessons in
composition, I had the temerity to criticize the really faulty arrange-
ment of line of the Venetian. Leighton smiled indulgently, and
conceded the point ; ‘‘ but,”’ he said, ‘‘ we are not all great Colour-
ists, like Paris Bordone,”’ and certainly the sumptuous colour of the
picture atoned for the defective composition.

I do not, on this occasion, recall much of the Studio, that occupies
the entire upper story of the house, and is about 17 feet high,
about 60 feet long by 25. I think I associate it more with later
visits. Besides, since Lord Leighton’s death I have had to deliver

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a course of lectures there on the Italian Schools of painting; and
have also attended in it many méetings of the Imperial Art League ;
so that the more recent memories have partly effaced that very
early impression.

It was characteristic of the owner to collect round him things he
required in the production of his classical subjects, and to contrive
for them copies of furniture as near the originals as might be.
I remember there was a chair with long rockers, copied, no doubt,
from an Etruscan vase or frieze. Crossing the room quickly to
fetch something, Leighton tripped over the projecting rocker and
nearly fell. ‘*‘ That comes of having Greek chairs ! ’’ he exclaimed.

From the little Venetian balcony at the East end of the great
Studio—shown from without in my drawing, and suggestive of
Romeo and Juliet—we get a charming view of the garden at the
back of the house.

Into that garden the owner presently took us. It is reached by a
flight of steps descending from the dining-room window.

The comprehensive title of this book has enabled me to include
in it the “ little garden, so called,” of the great author of “ Sartor
Resartus,’’ which played no small part in his life at Cheyne Row.
Of the garden of Leighton House, though it is very many times
larger than Carlyle’s, I can find less to tell the reader. It was
much prettier in the days I have been speaking of than it is now,
when it is rather closely built up with houses, and more or less
overlooked, overgrown, and comparatively neglected; and
Holland Park Lane is no longer a “‘ lane!”

Mr. Cockerell speaks of delightful Sunday mornings in summer,
spent in the garden, when “he sat chatting on random subjects
with the President, who in slippers, a so-called * land and water hat,’
and a smock-frock, leant back in a garden chair and talked as no
one else could. The quiet, the sun overhead, the grass under our
feet, the green trees around us, and the house visible between them,
form an ineffaceable picture of «esthetic contentment it is a delight
to recall.” He “received” every Sunday morning when the weather
was fine and warm. As mentioned already, it was a lovely
June day when I saw the garden first—my drawing of it was
made in autumn—but Leighton did not receive us in the free-
and-easy costume just described. So far as I remember he wore
a brown velvet coat, such as on after occasions I usually saw him

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wear. There were more flowers in the garden then than now—
but I cannot recall the “‘ Ali Baba ’’ pots—of which there are now
several and which appear in the drawing, though they may have
been there ; but the President probably secured them when William
Morris obtained those that are so conspicuous in the garden at
Kelmscott House. It was the month of roses, and from astandard
tree near the house, he plucked and gave to me a lovely rose. I believe
I have it still, shrivelled and faded, but intact, somewhere in the
recesses of an old writing-desk used by me in those girlish days.

And lest any should deem me foolishly romantic, let them
remember that the bond between master and pupil is a very strong
one—as strong as that which binds students to their Alma Mater,
that I shared to the full the passionate admiration that all who
came in contact with Sir Frederick Leighton felt for the man, and
that, at that time, all students, and a large section of the art world,
felt for the genius of the artist. Perhaps he was right when he
himself said—for his opinion of himself was a humble one—‘ I
am not a great painter;’’ but he was inspired by lofty ideals,
and insomuch as he was always striving to finish his work up to his
first conception, he was a great artist.

320

AFTERWORD

Tuts Book, as the Reader must long ago have discovered, deals
with gardens and gardeners discursively.

I have freely used the privilege that I claimed at the beginning
to introduce sometimes matter that might seem to have no direct
bearing on the ostensible subject, if by so doing I could interest
my readers in the men and women who made the gardens, or loved
them ; as well as in the gardens themselves.

I have not chosen for illustration by my pen or my brush, any
garden, however picturesque, that is devoid of associations, histori-
cal or biographical.

On the other hand, I have admitted some that on esthetic grounds
might well have been left out. But the steps of genius have paced
their walks; and the good and the wise have rested, and dreamed,
and thought, therein, Therefore I have introduced them ; knowing
that if the influence of Man on the Garden has been great, great too,
has been the influence of the Garden on Man.

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Swrrey.

INDEX

A

AssgorT, George, Bishop of London, 79.
Adair, Sir Robert, 185-6.

Adam, Brothers, The, 102-3, 106 et sq.
Adams, Dr., 241. =

Addison, Joseph, 26—7, 150, 176-7, 200 et sq.
Alexandra, Queen, 145 et sq.

Allen, Dr., 216-17, 226.

Allingham, Mrs., 302.

Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 310, 317.
Anderson, William, 131.

Anne, Queen, 27, 141, 147 et sq., 177, 205.
Anne Boleyn, 43 et sq., 196.

Antiquaries, Society of, 121.

Apothecaries, Society of, 119 et sq.
Arbuthnot, Dr. John, 172, 177.

Aylmer, John, Bishop of London, 71 ef sq.

B

Bacon, Francis (Viscount St. Albans), 17
et sq., 70-1, 90, 180, 293.

Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 48.

Baldock, Ralph, Bishop of London, 64.

Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 30.

Balfour, Colonel Eustace, 101 ef sq., 107 et sq.

Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London, 78-9.

Banks, Sir Joseph, 127-8, 181.

Beavan, Mr., 147.

Benbow, Admiral, 21, 27.

Berry, The Misses, 184.

Blenheim, 2.

Blomfield, Charles J., Bishop of London,
83, 93.

Boccaccio, 2 et sq.

Bolingbroke, Henry St. John, Viscount,
172-3.

Bonner, Edmund, Bishop of London, 638,
66 et sq.

Boyle, Robert, 122.

Brangwin, Frank, 310.

Bridgeman, Charles, 166.

Brougham and Vaux, Lord, 201.

Brown, Lancelot (“‘ Capability ’’), 109 ef sq.,
166.

Browne, Sir James Crichton, 256, 258.

Browning, Robert, 274-5, 299.

Burleigh, Lord, 6, 16, 48, 70-1, 86.

Burlington, Richard Boyle, 8rd Earl of,
160 et sq., 168, 229 et sq.

Burlington House, 163.

Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 195, 279, 285,
289, 292, 301, 309-10.

Busby, Dr., 190, 229.

Byron, Lord, 201, 215, 217.

Cc

CaLDERON, Philip, 303, 306, 313.
Campbell, Thomas, 176, 201, 215.
Canning George, 185, 212.
Carleton, Dr. Guy, 53.
Carlyle, Jane Welsh, 256 et sq.
Carlyle, Thomas, 85, 233, 243 et sq., 255
et sq., 279, 319.
Carlyle House, Chelsea :
life of the Carlyles at, 255 et sq.
Carlyle’s description of Cheyne Row,
260-1.
the garden, 261 ef sq., 269.
Charles I., 10, 16 et sqg., 51, 79, 148.
Charles II., 16, 19, 21, 238, 106, 140, 190,
196, 205.
Chaucer, 2, 3.
Chelsea Physicke Garden : 6, 9, 114 et sq.
its origin, 117 et sq.
under Sir Hans Sloan, 121 et sq.
visited by the great Linnzus, 125 et sq.
descriptive of the garden, 126-7, 135
et sq.
Cheyne, William, Lord, 121, 123.
Cheyne, Charles, 118.
Chicherley, Henry, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 32 ef sq., 36, 60, 95.
Chiswick House: 58, 109, 154 et sq.
its famous gates, 159, 160.
early history of, 160 et sq.
the grounds, 164 et sq., 181 et sq.
famous visitors, 171 et sq.
Christ’s Hospital, 237-8.
Christina, Abbess of Romney, 1.
Cleveland, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of,190,
192, 196-7.
Clutton-Brock, Mr., 284, 289.
Cockerell, Pepys, 317, 319.
Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, 249.
Coleridge, S. T., 86, 237 e sq.
Coleridge, Mrs. S. T., 239.
Coleridge, Sara, 250.
Compton, Henry, Bishop of London, 80 ef sq.
Constable, John, 301-2.
Cotton, Sir Robert, 128.
Courten, William, 122.

323

INDEX

Cowper, William, 182.

Crane, Walter, 280.

Cranmer, Thomas, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 42 et sq., 50, 57, 60, 69, 70.

Curtis William, 133.

D
Davipson, Dr., Archbishop of Canterbury,
45

Delane, John, 151. =

Devonshire, Georgiana Spencer, Duchess of,
128, 167, 169, 178 et sq.

Devonshire, William Cavendish, 5th Duke
of, 178 et sq.

Devonshire, William Cavendish, 6th Duke of,
181 et sq.

Dibdin, Dr., 247.

Disraeli, Isaac, 22.

Dryden, John, 190.

E

Epwarp III., 4, 46.

Edward VI., 5, 65 et sq., 97 et sq.

Edward VII., 145 et sq., 187.

Eldon, Lord, 201.

Elizabeth, Queen, 5, 8 ef sq., 23-4, 39, 46
et sq., 57, 59, 66, 70 et sq., 86, 105, 189, 191,
198, 229.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 246, 249.

Evelyn, John, 7, 16, 20 et sq., 27, 52, 58, 81,
99, 118, 120, 127, 194.

F

Farrrax, General, 200, 202.
Field, Henry, 119-20, 129, 130, 135-6.
Fielding, Henry, 233.
Fitzherbert, Mrs., 212.
Fitzjames, Richard, Bishop of London,
64-5, '73.
Fletcher, Richard, Bishop of London, 75
et sq.
Fox, Right Hon. Charles James, 179, 180,
185-6, 200, 205 ef sq., 217-18.
Fox, Christian, Lady, 205-6.
Fox, Sir Stephen, 204 ef sq., 229.
Froude, James Anthony, 255 ef sq.
Fulham Palace :
its founders and early history, 62 ei sq.
a story of the ‘‘ Monk’s Walk,” 68.
early history of the gardens, 70 et sq.
histories of the early bishops of, 72
el sq.
under Bide Compton, 81 et sq.
the moat, 82.
rare plants, 84.
description of the garden, 87 ef sq.
historic associations, 86-7.

G

GaINsBoROUGH, Thomas, 181, 311.
Garibaldi, 187.

Garrick, David, 181, 232.
Garrick, Mrs., 231.
Gay, John, 168, 172, 175 et sq.
George I., 122.
George IT., 122, 143.
George V., 187, 212.
Gerarde, John, 6, 71, 99, 115 et sq., 286.
Gillman, Dr. James, 241 et sq., 247, 249 et sq.
Gillman, Mrs. James, 241-2, 250, 252-3.
Granville, Harriet, Countess of, 184, 187.
Grindal, Edmond, Bishop of London, after-
wards Archbishop of Canterbury, 46, 70, 80.
Grove, The (Highgate), 237 et sq.
Wordsworth’s life there, 241 et sq.
descriptive of, 244 et sq.
the gardens, 251 et sq.
Gwynne, Nell, 141, 148, 205, 244.

H

Hates, Mr., 187.

Hallam, Arthur H., 250.

Hampton Court, 68, 92, 108.

Handel, G. F., 171.

Hardy, siatthew, 53.

Hazlitt, W. C., 4, 11, 15, 21, 247.

Hearne, Thomas, 10.

Henchman, Humphrey, Bishop of London,

80.

Henry I., 1.

Henry II., 12, 30, 35.

Henry V., 94 et sq.

Henry VI., 4, 95.

Henry VI1., 48, 64-5.

Henry VIII., 4, 5, 8, 9, 19, 43 et sq., 65

el sq., 69, 95 et Sq., 189, 196.

Herford, Laura, 302, 306.

Hills, Thomas, 5.

Hogarth, William, 227 et sq.

Hogarth, Mrs., 231 et sq.

Hogarth House, 228 et sq.
descriptive of the house and garden,

231 et sq. 5

Holland, Caroline, Lady, 207 et sq.

Holland, Elizabeth, Lady, 209 ez sq.

Holland, Henry Fox, 1st Lord, 205 et sq., 219

Holland, Richard Henry, 8rd Lord, 185, 200-
1, 209 ef sq.

Holland, Henry Rich, Earl of, 201.

Holland House: 58, 85, 112, 169, 173.
house and gardens described, 198 ef sq.,

218 et sq.

its early history, 200 ef sq.
Joseph Addiscn’s associations with, 202

el sq.

first contention with the Fox family,
205 et sq.

history of Elizabeth, Lady Holland,
209 ef sq.

Lady Holland’s salon, 214 et sq.
Holman-Hunt, W., 300-1, 310, 318.
Holmes, Charles J., 301.
Homel, Mr., 313.
Hooker, Sir William, 183.
Horticultural Society, 129.
Howley, William, Archbishop of Canterbury,
58.

324

INDEX

I

IncHEsTER, Mary, Lady, 200.

Iichester, Giles Stephen Holland Fox-
Strangways, 6th Earl of, 210-11.

Iichester, Stephen Fox, 1st Earl of, 205.

Irving, Edward, 250.

J

James I. of England, 5, 16, 56, 86, 119.

James I. of Scotland, 3, 4.

James II., 80 ef sq.

Jeffreys, Lord, 215, 218, 226.

Jennings, Sarah (Duchess of Marlborough),
141 et sq.

John, Augustus, 310.

Johnson, Dr., 180, 190, 248.

Johnson, Hester (Stella), 26.

Johnson, Thomas, 130.

Jones, Inigo, 102, 106, 163, 170-1.

Juxon, William, Archbishop of Canterbury,
36, 41, 50, 53, 60, 63, 79, 80.

K

Keats, John, 275.

Kelmscott Press, 290.

Kelmscott Manor, 292.

Kelmscott House (The Mall,

smith): 271 et sq.

interior and early history, 271 et sq.
William Morris at, 272 et sq.
the garden, 293 et sq.

Kennet, Dr., Bishop of London, 53.

Kent, William, 161 e¢ sq., 166 et sq., 175, 229,

230.
King, John, Bishop of London, 79, 82.

Hammer-

L

Lamps, Charles, 248, 250.
Lambeth Palace: 5, 29 et sq.
its founders, 80 et sq.
Lollards Tower, 33 et sq., 95.
Gatehouse, 37 et sq., 46 et sq.
Great Hall, 36, 38, 41, 57, 79.
State ceremonial at, 40 et sq.
historical associations, 43 et sq.
history of the gardens, 55 et sq., 112.
Langham, William, 117.
Langton, Stephen, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 31-2.
Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of London, 70, 114.
Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury,
52, 60, 63, 79.
Lawson, William, 11.
Leighton, Dr., 299.
Leighton, P.R.A., Sir Frederick, 200, 297
et sq.
Leighton House, 297 et sq.
early history of Sir Frederick Leighton,
297 et sq.
the garden, 319-20.
Louis XTV., 19, 22.
Lysons, Daniel, 26, 189, 229.

825

M

Macautay, Thomas Babington, Lord, 22
et sq., 54, 80, 190, 200, 203, 210, 214, 216,
218.

Maclise, Daniel, 309.

Mackail, J. W., 272, 276, 282, 284-5, 287
et sq.

Madox-Brown, Ford, 301.

Mann, Sir Horace, 27-8.

Markham, Alexander, Abbot, 2.

Marlborough House, 139 et sq.

early history, 139 et sq.
descriptive of, 144 et sq.
the garden, 147 et sq.

Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, 141
et sq.

Martineau, Edith, 303.

Martineau, Harriet, 246-7,

Mary Tudor, 44, 65, 67, 69 et sq., 97, 105.

Maurice, Frederick Denison, 250.

Melbourne, William Lamb, Lord, 213, 215,
226. :

Mellitus, 1st Bishop of London, 63-4.

Millais, P.R.A., Sir John, 270, 299 ef sq.,
307-8, 315, 317.

Miller, Philip, 125, 127, 131.

Milton, John, 15-16, 283.

Moore, Thomas, 201, 216-17.

More, Sir Thomas, 48-4, 51, 86, 260.

Morgan, William de, 304.

Morris, William, 272 et sq., 309, 320.

Morris, Mrs. William, 280, 294.

Morton, Cardinal, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 36 et sq., 60.

N

Norrtu, Lord, 174.
Northumberland, John Dudley, Ist Duke of,
108 et sq.

oO

O’ConNELL, Daniel, 192, 197.
Osborne, Dorothy (Lady Temple), 22 et sq.
Overbury, Sir Thomas, 160.

P

PALMERSTON, Lord, 201, 218, 226.

Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury,
42-3, 46 ef sq.; 56, 59, 66.

Parkinson, John, 133.

Pater, Walter, 166.

Paterson, Helen, 303.

Paxton, Sir Joseph, 182.

Penn, William, 200, 202.

Pepys, 20, 23, 56, 106, 140.

Percy Family, History of the, 104 et sq.

Pettie, John, 303.

Physicians, Royal College of, 122 et sq.

Piggott (Gardener), 120.

Pole, Cardinal, 5, 42, 46, 60.

Pope, Alexander, 28, 86, 108, 172 et sq., 230-1.

Porteus, Beilby, Bishop of London, 84.

INDEX

Power, Hiram, 299.
Pratt, Richard, 120.
Prior, Matthew, 190.
Probyn, General Sir Dighton, 147.

R

Raeicu, Sir Walter, 4, 5, 8, 9.

Ray, John, 85, 123.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 180, 200, 235, 299, 312.

Ridley, Nicholas, Bishop of London, 69, 114.

Robinson, Dr., Bishop of London, 82, 84.

Rogers, Samuel, 186, 216-17, 224.

Ronalds, Sir Francis, 271-2.

Rosamund, Clifford (Fair Rosamund), 1, 2,
9, 35.

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 277, 282, 285, 287,
301.

Royal Society, 122 et sq.

Ruskin, John, 19, 300-1. .

Russell, Lord John, 201, 218, 226.

Ss

SancrorT, William, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 54.
Sanders, Lloyd, 186-7.
Sayes Court, 20-1, 27.
St. James’s Palace, 139 et sq.
Scott, Colonel, 53.
Scott, Reginald, 4.
Scott, Sir Walter, 20, 172, 184-5, 201, 220
et sq., 255.
Selwyn, George, 180.
Shakespeare, 9, 12—13, 18, 90, 283.
Sharp, William, 235.
Shaw, Norman, 292.
Sheldon, Gilbert, Bishop of London, 80.
Sherard, James, 132-3.
Sherard, William, 1338.
Shipway, Lieut.-Colonel, 193, 233.
Sigella, Robert de, Bishop of London, 64.
Sloan, Sir Hans, 86, 121 e¢ sq., 181, 185, 187,
171.
Smith, Sidney, 201, 213, 215, 217, 219.
Somerset, Protector, 5, 97 et sq., 101, 114.
Somerset, Robert Carr, Earl of, 160-1.
Southey, Robert, 239, 240.
Spedding, J. D., 20.
Spenser, Edmund, 18, 70, 86.
Spiers, Phené, 162.
Starr, Louisa (Madame Canziani), 303.
Steele, Richard, 150, 177, 261.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 259.
Sterling, John, 257, 262.
Stubbs, Dr., Bishop of Oxford, 40-1, 55.
Swift, Jonathan, 26, 86, 127, 172-8, 177-8.
Symonds, J. A., 269.
Syon House: 5, 6, 33, 58.
its monastic history, 94 eé sq., 102.
historic associations, 97, 163.
its beautiful situation, 99 et sq.
interior of, 106.
the gardens, 107 ef sq.
Queen Anne at, 108.

T

TaurourD, Mr. Justice, 248.
Temple, Sir William, 17, 22 et sq., 118, 172.

Temple, Lady William, see Osborne.

Temple, William, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, 58.

a a W. M., 175, 177, 188 et sq., 299,

Thornhill, Sir James, 280, 232.

Thornycroft, Sir John, 192 et Sq., 239.

Thornycroft, Lady, 194.

ae John, Archbishop of Canterbury,
58, 60.

Tombs, John, 56.

Tradescent, John, 10, 39, 118.

Tree, Sir H. Beerbohm, 192, 195-6.

Tree, Lady, 192, 195-6.

Trevelyan, Sir George, 185.

Tunsdall, Cuthbert, Bishop of London, 65-6.

Turner, J. M. W., 222, 235, 270.

Turner, Robert, 117.

Turner, Dr., 5, 6, 99, 107, 114 et sq.

Turner, Dr. (Thackeray’s schoolmaster),
188, 192, 194.

Vv

VANBRUGH, Sir John, 86.
Vassall, Richard, 211.

Ww

WALFORD, Edward, 56, 140, 146,

Walker, Mr. Emery, 290.

Walpole, Horace (Earl of Orford), 9, 10, 16-17,
27, 88, 86, 98, 144, 161 et sq., 174, 177,
181, 185, 204, 229, 231-2.

Walpole, Sir Robert, 148 et sq.

Walpole House: 188 ef sq. ;

W. M. Thackeray and, 188 ef sq.

Barbara Villiers resides at, 190.

descriptive of house and garden, 191
el sq.

Walter, Herbert, Archbishop of Canterbury,
31, 40.

Warwick, Charlotte, Countess of, 202 et sq.

Warwick, 7th Earl of, 202 et sq.

Watson, Sir William, 118.

Watts, G. F., 200, 309, 313.

Watts, Mr., 120-1. *

Webb, Philip, 292.

Webster, Sir Godfrey, 211 et sq.

Webster, Lady,.see Holland, Elizabeth, Lady.

Webster, Harriet, 212 et sq.

Wheatley, H. B., 2, 165.

Wheeler, J. L., 131.

Wheeler, Thomas, 128, 183 et sq.

Whistler, J. McNeill, 236, 310.

Whitgift, John, Archbishop of Canterbury,
46, 51, 59, 79.

Wilhelm II. of Germany, 150.

William ITI., 16, 26—7.

Wilkie, R.A., David, 200.

Wise, Henry, 27, 108.

Wolsey, Cardinal, 66, 86.

Wordsworth, Dorothy, 239, 246, 250, 258.

Wordsworth, William, 239 et sq., 250, 253.

Worlidge, John, 11 e¢ sq.

Wren, Sir Christopher, 21, 27, 86, 140, 142
et sq.

Wyatt, James, 180.

326

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