--AGarRDES |
Diary

ALBERT R. MANN
LIBRARY

AT

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

THE GIFT OF

Isabel Zucker '26

CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Cornell University

Library

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.

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A GARDEN DIARY

A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 1899—SEPTEMBER 1900

BY

EMILY LAWLESS

METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON

Igo!

To THE GarpeEN’s CHIEF Owner,
Anp THE Garpener’s Frienp

A few leaves from this Diary (or something very similar),
have already appeared in The Garden and The Pilot

A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER I, 1899

ns WANDERER is man from his birth,” and

some of us who have done comparatively
little wandering in our own persons, have done
our full share of those less palpable divagations
which may be performed within a very small
compass of the earth’s surface, nay even within
the radius of a single garden chair.

The gipsy dies hard in many people, and the
dreams which have fluttered round our youthful
fancy flutter round it still, though youth may
have become a memory, and the chances of
any serious explorations be reduced to a scarce
perceptible minimum. To be a traveller in the
real and heroic sense is a very great and
a very stirring ambition. To have the hope of
wandering far and fruitfully ; of bringing home
the results of those wanderings; such a hope
and such an aspiration is one of the biggest
things that can be set before a youthful ambition.
With a disregard of probabilities, which, looking
back, I can only characterise as magnificent, such

B

2 A GARDEN DIARY

an ambition had I, in early days, set before myself.
To be a traveller on the great scale; a visitor
of remote solitudes, and practically untrodden
shores; a discoverer of undescribed forms; a
rifler of Nature’s still unrifled treasure-houses—
such was the hope, and such the happy dream.
The words “Unknown to science” floated in
those days before my youthful fancy, and were
to it a shibboleth, as other and more obviously
stimulating words have been to other youthful
brains. Fate has not willed that any such re-
sounding lot should be mine, nor was it, to tell
the truth, particularly likely that it should so will
it. To few of our race has it been given to add,
by even a little, to the knowledge of that race,
and I am not aware that any portion of my own
equipment had particularly marked me out for
this réle that I had so confidently assigned to
myself.

Luckily we learn to grow down gracefully, as
the sedums and the pennyworts do. A lot that
at ten years old seems unendurably pitiful in its
narrowness, at five times that mature age comes
to be regarded as quite a becoming lot, leaving
room for plenty of easy self-respect, and even for
a spurt or two of the purest and most invigorat-
ing vanity. As that down-growing process ad-
vances we assure ourselves, more and more
confidently, that all the really important, the
vital part of such explorations belongs to us, at

A GARDEN DIARY 3

least as much as to the explorers themselves.
If we have not thridded Amazonian forests in
our own persons with Mr. Bates, or Nicaraguan
jungles with Mr. Belt, we know all that those
indefatigable travellers have seen, done, dis-
covered, experienced, and only need to take
down their books from the shelf to be in the
thick of those experiences once more.

So too, with the rest—the botanists, zoolo-
gists, paleontologists—greater, as well as less
great. With the prince of them all one starts
once more upon that immortal Voyage of the
Beagle, which, besides circumnavigating the
world, enables one to accumulate those pro-
digious stores of observation, destined by-and-
by to make one’s own name famous to the
world’s end, and to endow that world itself
with one or two practically new departments.
With Professor Wallace, one spends years in
the Malay Archipelago, till the geography of
even the obscurer members of that bewildering
group becomes rather more familiar than that
of the next parish. With Collingwood one
pores over the rock-pools of Chinese seas, which
never before reflected human face, or at most
that of some shore-haunting Mongolian, unin-
terested in zoology. With the savants of the
Challenger one sets forth, with all the pomp of
subsidised science, upon a three years’ cruise,

in search of Globigerine, of blind Decapoda, of

4 A GARDEN DIARY

Coccospheres, of Rhabdospheres, and other long-
titled occupants of abyssmal depths. And if
one has been tempted to now and then share
the dismay felt by the youthful lieutenant, upon
being shown that single teaspoonful of grey
slop, as the result of nights of toil, which kept
the whole crew of Her Majesty’s ship from
their bunks, well, one reflected that the wise
men probably knew what they were about, and
that the teaspoonful in question could hardly
be an ordinary teaspoonful. Later, hand in
hand one has journeyed with other travellers,
some biological, others merely exploratory, or
geographical. With Stanley groped for weeks
in African forests, and been shot at by un-
pleasant little beasts with hands. With Miss
North travelled far, yet unweariedly, in search
of unknown flowering trees, and other forms of
vegetation. With Nansen, until one grew to
feel brittle as any icicle, and occasionally almost
as callous as one. With Mrs. Bishop, across
many seas, and scenes; and last of all with
Miss Kingsley, the only one of these illustrious
travellers in whose company I have always felt
entirely secure, sure that no dangerous animal
—lion, rattlesnake, cobra, shiny tattooed warrior,
German trader, or the like—would dare molest
me while under her egis.*

Yes, I have been a great explorer. The earth,

* Written in September, 1899. Alas!

A GARDEN DIARY 5

and its multifarious contents has lain below my
feet, as the Pacific was believed by Keats to have
lain below those of Cortez, and if now and then
I have been troubled by a passing doubt, a “ wild
surmise” as to whether all these places really have
been seen by my own eyes, I have made haste to
put that misgiving aside, as His Majesty King
George the Fourth was no doubt in the habit
of doing, whenever similar misgivings as to the
heroic part played by himself at the Battle of
Waterloo crossed the royal mind.

To have been so far, and to have seen so
much is good, but to have retained a lowly spirit
with it all is even better. To be able, with
Alphonse Karr, to set forth on the five hundred
and first tour round one’s garden, brimming with
expectation, and all the certainty of new dis-
covery. To be as thrilled over the alternations
between the nut-tree walk in winter, and the
alpine heights in summer, as ever the family of
the Vicar were over those between the blue
parlour and the brown. These are the things
that really carry a traveller comfortably forward
in an easy jog-trot towards his predestined bourne.
And if there happen to be a pair of such tra-
vellers, a pair of such explorers, and if each of
them carries his or her own wallet, or knapsack,
and if those two travellers part often, yet often
come together again, then what an opening up
of budgets takes place! What a retailing of

6 A GARDEN DIARY

adventures ; what a comparison of discoveries ;
what a vastly extended sense of the round world,
and of all the fulness thereof! That there are
really great journeys to be performed, great
events in life, and great adventures to be met
with, I am quite willing to concede; also that
there are very small journeyings, very small
events, and very small adventures. But the odd
thing is that no one seems ever able to decide for
one finally and authoritatively which is which!

A GARDEN DIARY 7

SEPTEMBER 4, 1899

ies has been wet, and is now fine again, con-

sequently our view of the downs exhibits
those tones of vinous purple, shading into indigo,
that in moments of patriotic expansion I am apt
to call Irish. I do not think it is quite friendly
of our neighbours, especially those who live upon
the ridge above our heads, tq smile so significantly
whenever that word ‘“‘view” happens to slip out, as
it did just now, in alluding to our new possession,
and its prospects. For what, after all, is a view?
The question seems to suggest a reference to
the dictionary, and here is Webster, ponderous
in brown calf. ‘‘ View. 1st. Act of seeing, or be-
holding ; sight ; survey ; examination by the eye.
and. That which is looked towards, or kept in
sight; an appearance; a show.” Well, have we
not something to look towards, to keep in sight,
some appearance, some show? For that matter,
so, it may be urged, has the habitant of the “two
pair back,” or the rustic whose prospect is limited
to a survey of his or her neighbours’ under

8 A GARDEN DIARY

garments, —those “short and simple flannels of the
poor” hung to dry in silhouette against a back
fence. The truth is it is not at all desirable to
be so haughty. I will not go so far as to say
that it is unchristian, but it is certainly unbecom-
ing, for are we not all fellow-creatures? What
if you can command seven counties from your
windows? What if on one particular morning—
to me incredible—you did see three ships cross
Shoreham gap? What if from your garden chair
you can be regaled by a fantasia of changing
lights and shadows? be lapped into peace upon
summer afternoons, or stirred by the drama of
battle clouds, flung into blackness by a storm ?
Well, if you can, be glad of it, but for pity’s
sake abstain from bragging! ‘Gi God thanks,
and say no more o’ it.” Believe me it is not even
commonly lucky to be so proud, and I speak with
some little authority upon that subject.

For as regards this matter of views, I too have
been haughty to the point of insupportableness.
I too have believed that the possession of wide
prospects argued some peculiar, some ineffable
superiority in myself. There was a time when
nothing short of an entire ocean, none of your
petty babbling channels, but the whole thunder-
ing Atlantic, sufficed for my ambition. In those
days only upon the largest combination of sea,
sky, mountain ; sea-scape, land-scape, cloud-scape,
did it seem possible adequately to exist. As for

A GARDEN DIARY 9

a mere rustic landscape, as for a confined one,
as for a humdrum English one, above all as for
a landscape within fifty miles of London, why
the mention of such things merely moved my
commiseration! Those were the days when to be
called upon to leave what is sometimes uncivilly
called the ruder island, and to repair, even
temporarily, to the more prosperous one, seemed
a fall and a degradation hardly to be measured
by words. When the contraction of the horizon
seemed like a contraction of all life, and of all
that made life worth having. When the remem-
brance that one would have to wake in the
morning with no dim blue line to greet one,
appeared, to a patriotic, a self-respecting being,
to be a wrong and an indignity hardly to be
endured without revolt.

Such an attitude is, I now hold, inbecomine
in mere mortals, and, like other vaulting ambitions,
is apt to precede a fall. The man who starts in
life determined to be either Cesar, or nothing,
frequently fails to become Cesar, whereas with
regard to the other alternative, the gods are quite
capable of taking him at his word. Happily,
life is for most of us a liberal education, and the
narrowing of the horizon comes to be endured
with a philosophy born of other, and more serious
deprivations. It may even be open to question
whether any man or woman ever yet was made
the better by the possession of a noble view?

10 A GARDEN DIARY

That he or she ought to have been made so is
quite true, but as a matter of fact, have they?
We are moulded out of exceedingly stubborn
stuff, and are not often ennobled, I suspect,
by the landscapes that surround us, any more

able similarity. Much the same sort of clouds
and sunshine, much the same sort of nights
and days, much the same sort of summers and
winters, visit alike the tamest and the wildest
of them. Even the more dramatic and exciting
fluctuations—snow, and hail, storm, and lightning
—exhibit a greater impartiality than might have
been expected. The gale that has just unroofed
your lordly tower, has equally swept the tiles
off our humble porch; in the same way that
moralists are fond of assuring us that sickness
and sorrow, loss and pain, old age and death,
fall equally upon the homes of beggars and of
kings.

Never having belonged to the last of these
classes, I cannot take it upon me to answer for
the discomforts that pertain to it. With regard
to the other, though I have often seen myself
figuring, or upon the point of figuring, amongst
its sad and tattered ranks, the impression has
never been a particularly agreeable one, and I
prefer, therefore, not to dwell upon it. It was

A GARDEN DIARY II

moreover the subject of landscapes, | think, not
of either kings or beggars, that was under dis-
cussion? But that is the sort of thing that is
always happening! Of all the unsatisfactory
stock to keep, ideas are in my experience the
most unsatisfactory; equally whether they are
winged, or entirely wingless ones. As for a
diary—which, to be of the slightest use, ought to
act as a kind of crow-boy, or goose-girl, to them,
and keep them in order—on the contrary it seems
merely to follow their waddlings and gyrations
with the most foolish, and unnecessary submissive-
ness. The result is that one starts intending to
fill a page with one subject, and before one has
got very far one discovers that in reality one is
filling it up with quite another!

12 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 6, 1899.

WE often say to one another that it is im-
possible that we can have been only two
years and a half in possession here, so greatly
has the scene changed in that time. Those two
and a half years have done the work of many,
or so it appears to us in our innocent vanity.
Where I am now sitting three years ago stacks
of raw planking rose out of the trampled briers
and bluebells. The house stood roofed, but
the inside was horrible. The reign of the
Hammerer had spread to every creature with
ears. Even in my own little nursery-garden
—chosen in the first instance as the most re-
mote spot—the sound of it went far to extinguish
the nightingales. Now quietude and a sense
of comparative settlement has stolen over the
scene. Indoors, when the windows are open,
the birds have it all their own way. Outdoors
there is still much to be done, much to be
harmonised and regulated, but the first sense
of newness and desecration has, I think, wholly

A GARDEN DIARY 13

passed away. This then seems to be an ap-
propriate moment for inaugurating a sort of
running commentary upon the garden and its
surroundings ; setting forth what the spade
has already done, and what the spade has still
to do; what we possess in the way of plants,
and what we still visibly lack; laying bare
above all our failures and blunderings in the
clearest of colours, with an eye, it is to be
hoped, to their rectification. Such a record;
honestly kept, must be a highly improving one
to look back upon. A man’s proper short-
comings, writ out fair in black and white, should
contain very edifying reading for that man him-
self, whatever it might be for anyone else. The
worst is that, like other amended sinners, we
may come to burn in time with the zeal of the
missionary. Not content with our own private
flagellations and exhortations, we may sigh to
exhort and to flagellate others. Hence doubtless,
that vast and increasing host of garden books,
which so greatly decorate our bookshelves.

Yet after all a garden is a world in minia-
ture, and, like the world, has a claim to be
represented by many minds, surveying it from
many sides. If it takes all sorts to make a
world, it must take a good many varieties of
gardeners to exhaust the subject of gardening.
Assuming the said gardener to be of the right
sort, naturally we accept his exhortations thank-

14 A GARDEN DIARY

fully. Assuming him even not to be quite of
the right sort—a mere harmless fumbler and
bungler—still ‘twere rash to assume that he can
teach us nothing. Just as every garden—every
real garden, owned by its owner — provides
lessons for other garden owners, so even the
written equivalent of such gardens, as long as
they are genuine ones, not bits of confectionery
tossed up to look pretty on tables, may claim
the same praise. So frequently has this of late
been brought home to me by experience that,
give me only a writer who has faithfully toiled
with his own spade, her own trowel, and I am
ready to accept a new book at his or her hands
every week in the year!

A GARDEN DIARY 15

SEPTEMBER 8, 1899

Cys indefatigable old Cuttle has just come
to tell me that the new water-lily pond
leaks, and that I must send for the bricklayer,
in order to upbraid him. I am sometimes asked
whether Cuttle is our gardener, and am always
rather at a loss what to answer. Hardly, I
suppose, seeing that he declines to take much
notice of any of our flowers, with the exception
of the roses, for which he has a passion. When
he came to us three years ago it was merely “on
job” from the builders. Our grounds, as grounds,
had not then begun to exist. Cuttle stuck the
first spade into them then and there, and from
that minute their existence began. Since then
he has grown to be more and more intimately
identified with them, and that to such an extent
that I find it difficult now to disentangle the one
from the other. Followed by his obedient
satellite and shadow, he ranges at large over all
that lies between their holly-guarded boundaries.
His spade, pick, axe, billhook are masters of all

16 A GARDEN DIARY

that come within their reach. Walks, and shrub-
beries, lawn, and flower-beds began within a
short time of his appearance to emerge as if by
magic out of their primal chaos. Order grew
out of disorder; symmetry to be evolved, and
light to break in upon the very duskiest of our
entanglements. We have a habit of telling our
friends that we ourselves ‘“‘made” these grounds,
but our part in the process has in reality been
chiefly to sit still, and point our wands. It is
Cuttle, Cuttle alone, who has been their real
creator.

For sheer, beaver-like, apparently instinctive
industry I have never in my life known his equal.
For rooted self-opinionatedness not, I must add,
very often. How he contrives to get through
the amount of work he achieves in the course of
every day, still more how he induces his sub-
ordinates to do the same, remains a perennial
marvel to me. Possibly—seeing that my garden-
ing experiences have hitherto lain a long way to
the west of Surrey—my standard as regards
manual labour is not of the highest. That our
Cuttle is a typical Surrey labourer I decline how-
ever to believe, though theoretically that, and
nothing loftier, is his status. Early in our ac-
quaintance he discovered my ingenuous surprise
over his prowess. Far from this suggesting to
him that less activity would serve the turn, it
seems to have only spurred him on to fresh and

A GARDEN DIARY 17

ever fresh assaults upon my astonishment. That
there have now and then been inconveniences
in this excess of energy I am free to confess, but
that is hardly Cuttle’s fault. If, for instance, I
remark that such or such new work had better
be begun next week, my remark is usually re-
ceived by him in apparently unheeding silence.
Next day however, when I return to the charge,
I am told with a smile of pity that the work in
question is already done. As I have just hinted
this sometimes places me in a position of some
little embarrassment. Naturally the work pro-
duced at such high pressure rather represents
Cuttle’s ideal of what it ought to be than mine.
To show anything but delighted surprise would
be to prove oneself utterly unworthy of such
devoted service, and it is only therefore by de-
grees, and in the most circuitous and disingenuous
fashion, that I am able little by little to reinstate
my own ideas upon the more or less mutilated
ruins of his.

In these early days of September, we stand
once more at a new parting of the ways. Within
the next six weeks all the essential part of what
we hope to see accomplished by next summer
must be at all events prepared, or it will be too
late. Three chief undertakings at present en-
gage our energies. First there is the new little
water-lily pond, and its outer environment of bog.
Secondly there is the “glade,” which, beginning

c

18 A GARDEN DIARY

at the upper portion of the copse near the house,
runs somewhat steeply downhill to its lower end.
Thirdly there is the “long” grass walk, which
passing first along the last named, is eventually
to traverse the whole of the lower portion of the
copse, a distance of some six hundred yards,
crossing as it does so the region of the tallest
bracken, emerging for a while upon a gravel
walk, which skirts the fence of our nursery-
garden, thence, through another stretch of copse,
and between two tall heather banks, into a fresh
tract of birches and sweet chestnuts, till it finally
attains the gate opening out upon the little com-
mon at the top.

One somewhat serious problem underlies these,
as indeed all similar little enterprises. How far,
one asks oneself, may the natural conformation
of any given piece of ground be legitimately modi-
fied?—the most difficult, in my opinion, of the
many small problems which confront the gardener.
The lamentable declivities, the yet more terrible
acclivities, which abound in a certain type of
garden we all know; objects calculated to bring
the blush of embarrassment to all but a hardened
visitor’s cheek. Like other adornments it is less
their artificiality than their deplorable lack of Art
that so distresses us. These indeed are sad
warnings, and, remembering them, it is well to
misdoubt our own judgment, and to ask our-
selves whether it were not better to abstain

A GARDEN DIARY 19

altogether from any attempts at modification,
which might lead to results so humiliating and
so disastrous ?

There are however more encouraging omens.
Anyone who has observed how casual, how purely
accidental are many of the natural variations of
surface which nevertheless give us pleasure, has
a right to ask himself whether the spade may
not be allowed to produce in a few days what
sun, wind, rain, and similar agents can achieve
in a few years. I am inclined to think that it
may, only it must be a spade with eyes, and if
possible with a brain behind it, and both are
unusual with spades. In any case wisdom ex-
horts us to proceed very cautiously and modestly
with all such changes. To be sure that in the
first place they are called for, and in the second
that they will suit with the features of our ground,
and the scene in which it is set. Else, if we
neglect these precautions, we too may come to
swell the ranks of those who have made the very
words “landscape gardening” and “landscape
gardener ” sounds of terror to all discriminating
and nature-loving ears.

One of the least unsatisfactory ways of modify-
ing one’s ground, and relieving its monotony, is,
it seems to me, the “glade.” Glades may of
course be of many forms, and may suggest many
ideas. They may pierce through the dusky heart
of a wood, or they may lie nakedly and stonily

20 A GARDEN DIARY

open to the sky. They may be furnished with
trees, with bushes, with heather, with grass, or
with alpine plants. On the whole the easiest
glade to create, and certainly one of the plea-
santest when made, is the grassy one. Even a
perfectly level bit of ground can be induced with
care to pass by gradations into a grassy glade,
though where there is some natural slope the
matter is of course very much easier. In that
case all that is necessary is to add a sufficiency
of earth on either side of the upper part of our
incline, leaving the lower to merge by insensible
degrees to the natural level. The essential point
is not to miss the right moment for the sowing
of the grass seed. This month of September is
in this soil unquestionably the best month in the
year for that purpose. August is apt to be too
hot, October may be frosty, while spring sowings
are in my experience exceedingly delusive. If
the summer that follows them is wet, all goes
well. Seeing however that each summer since
we came here has been more thirsty than its
predecessor, it were hardly the part of prudence
to rely upon that.

It has been a satisfaction to us to find that
a moderate upturning of the soil does not
apparently disturb those inmates of it that we
wish to retain. Bluebells and bracken both have
their roots at a depth to which the spade in these
operations need not penetrate, while to super-

A GARDEN DIARY 21

imposed earth they appear to be quite indifferent.
The spring that followed our first operations of
this kind bluebells flowered better than usual,
as if glad to be freed from some of their trouble-
some neighbours, especially probably that pest of
copses, dog mercury. The introduced bulbs,
which now share the ground with them, are
mostly of the taller kinds, daffodils predominat-
ing, and for these the fact of the soil being all
newly upturned is an advantage. Our present
plan is that the sides of the glade shall remain
permanently uncut, or cut at most once or twice
a year, the central, or walking space, being kept
regularly mown. The bulbs, being at the sides,
will thus not suffer. Moreover the considerable
difference of height between mown and unmown
grass is bound to give height and emphasis to
our little glade. As in the similar case of
planting rock gardens, such considerations may
seem to some poor devices. Yet upon the
successful carrying out of them depends the
whole of that “general effect” which is all that
such critics probably heed. We are not, after
all, Nature’s mandatories, and our little slopes
are not Alps, or even alpine meadows. If we
can attain to so much as a suggestion of the
sort of thing we dream of we may rest content.

20 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER II, 1899

ERE on the bench beside me is a basket-

ful of plants, not garden ones by any
means, but weeds, mere ugly weeds, detested,
and detestable, which, having pulled up, I was
about to throw away. And, sitting down for a
moment before doing so, I chanced to turn over
two or three of them in idle mood, and in so
doing have been captured unawares, as I have
often been before, by the wonder, the mystery,
of those ordinary processes of nature, which we
all of us know so remarkably well, and which
we certainly as a rule take such uncommonly
little heed of.

Matthew Arnold has somewhere counselled us
to let our minds dwell upon that great and
inexhaustible word “ Life,” till we learn to enter
into its meaning. It was a critic’s and a poet’s
counsel, but it might still more appropriately
have been a naturalist’s or a botanist’s. Life
is indeed one of the unescapable mysteries, a
mystery that expands and grows as we consider

A GARDEN DIARY 23

it, even as the hosts of heaven seem to grow
and multiply as they recede before our straining
gaze. For, if we even put aside the more
active animal world, and look merely at the
comparatively placid vegetable one, is it possible
to think of it for a moment without being over-
whelmed, as it were stunned, by the vastness
of its effects; by the complexity of its untiring
energy? To take only one of the results of
that energy. It is the plants of the world,
especially those which we are in the habit of
calling its weeds, which constitute its great
restraining forces. The operations of inorganic
nature tend for the most part towards oblitera-
tion; towards the rubbing down of landmarks,
towards the effacing of all individuality in the
landscape. Water, tumbling as snow, hardens
into ice, and rasps away continually at the
surfaces of the mountains. Rivers scrape off,
and carry away with them, every particle of
earth that they meet with on their journey to
the sea. As for the sea, we know that its one
object ever since it came into existence has
been, day by day, and at each returning tide,
to encroach upon, and devour more and more
of the heritage of its brother the earth. Seeing
that the land we live on occupies only about a
third part of the superficies of the globe, it
follows that the whole of what is now dry land
could easily be disposed of below the water ;

24 A GARDEN DIARY

indeed it has been ascertained that were it thus
neatly tucked and tidied away, the level of the
ocean would be only altered by less than a
hundred feet. It is due mainly to the untiring
vigour, to the extraordinary binding power of
plants, that this consummation has been averted.
Their office has been to hinder a tendency which,
even if it had not ended in the submergence of
the whole earth, would at least have washed and
pared away its irregularities to one deadly
monotonous level. Trees and bushes do much
in this direction, but it is the little clinging
weeds, which as gardeners we detest, and would
so gladly annihilate: these crowfoots—why not,
by the way, crow/eef ?—with their crowding
roots; these knotgrasses, these clinging bind-
weeds,—it is such as they, backed by sea-spurreys,
and bents, and by reeds and rushes innumerable,
that do more to keep the waters of the globe in
order, and to maintain dry land, than man, with
all his dykes, dams, embankments, and such like
accumulations, since first he began to strut or to
caper over its surface.

But the journey which lies before one’s thoughts
when once they embark upon this river we call
“Life,” is indeed too big for them even imagina-
tively to attempt. Our boats are so small, and
the river so wide, that one soon loses sight of
shore. Even if, abandoning these perplexing
living things, one falls back upon the mere in-

A GARDEN DIARY 25

organic forces of the world, what a prodigious
amount of energy here too comes into play!
Nature everywhere eternally building up, and
with apparently no blind hand, but with a most
clear, definite, and shaping policy. It is good
for us to escape now and then out of our own
hot and fussy little rooms, into these larger,
cooler spaces; yet, if a wholesome, it cannot be
said to be entirely a gratifying experience. For
how soon, even in the simplest of such matters,
does one arrive, like the people in the Pelgrim’s
Progress at a place called “Stop”? How soon
does thought practically cease, and one remains
dumb and gasping, like some poor dull beast,
in a mere, vacant-eyed daze of wonder? “The
mind of man”—it was one who knew what he
was talking about that said it—‘‘is an indifferent
sort of musical instrument, with a certain range
of notes, beyond which, upon both sides, there
is an infinitude of silence.”

26 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 12, 1899

“ Epic of Weeding has still to be written!
It should be undertaken in no light or frolic
vein, but with all the gravity that the subject
demands. What I should wish to see would be
either a careful scientific treatise by a competent
authority, or, what would perhaps be still better,
a great poem, which, like all the highest poetry,
would go straight to the very soul of the subject,
and leave the votary of it satisfied for ever. To
the earnest-minded Weeder, most other occupa-
tions seem comparatively subordinate. Blank is
that day some portion of which has not been
devoted to faithful weeding. Blank is that night
in which, as he lays his head upon the pillow, he
cannot say to himself that such, or such a piece
of ground has been thoroughly cleared, and will
not require to be done again—for quite a fort-
night!
One disadvantage it certainly has, but then
it is one that it shares with all the other higher,
and more absorbing pursuits. If inordinately

A GARDEN DIARY a7

pursued, it tends to grow upon its votary, until
everything else becomes subsidiary. What was
originally a virtue, may thus in time come near
to growing into a vice. Of this danger I am
myself a proof. There have been moments—
not many, nevertheless some—when I have found
myself sighing for more weeds to conquer. Worse,
I have had the greatest difficulty on more than
one occasion to keep myself from pouncing upon
my neighbour’s perfectly private chickweeds and
groundsels, which I have happened to catch
sight of across a fence!

I notice in myself, and have observed in
others, a lamentable lack of accuracy as regards
the proper names of weeds. Even some that I
know the best, and hate the hardest, I really
cannot put any name to. Now this is not as
it should be. Everything, however detestable,
has a name of its own, and that name ought
to be used. You may not like a man, but that
is hardly a reason for calling him ‘‘ What’s-his-
name,” or ‘‘Thingamy.” It is true that in the
West of Ireland it is regarded as a very unsafe
thing to mention any of the more malignant
powers by their right names. The SzdZ, for
instance, if spoken of by their proper title, in-
variably fly at you, and do you a mischief. The
only way of avoiding this peril is to use some
obscure and roundabout designation, which is
not their real name at all. I do not know

28 A GARDEN DIARY

whether the same mode of reasoning has ever
been held to apply to weeds. If so, I cannot
say that the plan appears to me to answer. At
least I can safely swear that I have never called
one of them by its proper botanical name in my
life, yet they rush in on us from all sides, and
persecute us none the less impishly.

There is one particularly diabolical individual,
which has clearly marked this garden as its
prey, and marches continually to and fro of it
like a roaring lion. What its correct name is
I shall in all probability never know, though I
have carefully cross-examined several botanical
works on the subject. It has narrow fleshy
leaves; a mass of roots, constructed of equal
parts of pin wire and gutta-percha; the meanest
of pinky white flowers, and a smell like sour hay.
It is not the leaves, the flowers, the roots, or
even the smell, that I so much object to. It
is the capacity it possesses of flinging out off-
shoots of itself to incredible distances, which
offshoots no sooner touch ground than they begin
to weave a kind of ugly green net over every-
thing within reach, enmeshing it all into as dense
a mass of leaves and roots as is the parent plant.

Although I am no nearer extirpating it than I
was before, since yesterday I have at least been
able to name it, a satisfaction which many a poor
Speaker must have been thankful for, especially
in an age grown too picked and tender to allow

A GARDEN DIARY 29

of even the most obdurate obstructor being de-
spatched to either the Tower, or the Block.

It was Cuttle who provided me with that satis-
faction, and it is not one of the least of the many
debts that I owe him.

‘What can be the name of this thing, I wonder,
Cuttle?” I said, rising exhausted from an effort
to hinder a fresh colony from enmeshing and
strangling a line of ‘“ Laurette Messimy ” which
had been recently planted upon the top of a
slope.

“I’m not sure as I can tell you its proper
name, ma’am, but about here we calls it ‘Snaking
Tommy.’”

Admirable Cuttle! ‘“Snaking Tommy” of
course! The instant I heard it I felt convinced
that in that preliminary naming of all plants
and animals performed by Adam in the garden
of Eden, that, and no other, must have been
the name bestowed upon this. It is true some
theologian might assure me that there were no
weeds in the garden of Eden, but that I think is
not particularly likely, because, whether there
were weeds in that garden or not, there are
certainly no theologians in this one. Moreover
we all know that the snake was there, to
everyones immeasurable discomfort. And if
the snake, why not, let me ask, ‘“ Snaking
Tommy ”?

30 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 14, 1899

Epes. it may be in other gardens,
seed-sowing, I find, to be the very centre
and kernel of this one. The sowing of seeds
is apt to be accounted merely a matter of the
raising of a due supply of annuals, salpiglossis,
nicotiana, lobelia, nemophila, clarkia, bartonia,
godetia, ‘‘and a long etcetera.” With us it is
the permanent, the perennial occupants of our
flower-beds which must either be grown from
seed, or else not grown at all. This fact was
early impressed upon our minds, and in a very
summary and effectual fashion, such as Nature’s
fashion of instilling indispensable truths for the
most part is.

It was three years ago, and we were a pair of
destitute garden-owners. We had however good
friends, with large gardens. The connection was
perfectly self-evident. Without a moment’s hesi-
tation the basket went round. The response was
noble. Plants came to us from North, South, East,
and West, especially West. Alas for those plants !

A GARDEN DIARY 31

They were just what we wanted; they were
moved at the right time; they were packed with
care; they were not unreasonably long on the
road ; they arrived to all appearance in excellent
health ; they were received with all the respect
they deserved, and their wants provided for as
far as our poor knowledge of those wants enabled
us to cater for them. Never were elaborate ar-
rangements less handsomely rewarded. Seasons
returned, but never have to us returned those
plants so generously bestowed, so hopefully
planted. In my private garden-book a list of
them still exists, and a very black list it is to
refer to. There they stand, as they were written
down in all the pride of proprietorship. Un-
happily a later entry shows a large round O
standing out prominently against nearly every
one of them. Now a round O in that book
signifies Death.

From this disaster we arose chastened gardeners.
It was determined that no more guileless plants
should be brought to such a fate ; no more kindly
owners exploited for so inadequate a result. Re-
membering the good, dark, comfortable earth from
which most of those plants came ; sadly surveying
the very different earth to which they had been
consigned, the cause of their doom could hardly
be called mysterious.

Friendly gardens, unless labouring under our
own disabilities, being thus excluded, the question

32 A GARDEN DIARY

remained how were the flower-beds to get them-
selves filled? Only one answer to that question
has ever presented itself to the professional
gardening mind, and that is “Send to the nur-
seryman.”

Now that nurseryman may or may not be an
excellent one. Ours, as it happens, may fairly I
think be called so. Good or bad he is never
a functionary to be approached without defer-
ence, at least by those in whose eyes Thrift
stands for something in the battle of life. ‘“ But
common plants are so cheap” one is often told.
Very likely, they may be ; indeed, judging by their
catalogues, nurserymen stand habitually aston-
ished before the spectacle of their own moderation.
An average herbaceous plant—a lupin, or a lark-
spur, let us say—costs as a rule about ninepence.
It may sink as low as sixpence, or it may rise as
high as a shilling. Anybody, it will be argued,
can afford sixpence; some people have been
known to spend a whole shilling without wincing.
A very short walk along any ordinary garden
border, calculating as one goes the number of
sixpennyworths it would take to fill it, will be
found an excellent corrective for such _light-
heartedness. I made such a calculation myself
only the other day, and the result was an
eminently sobering one.

Seeds on the other hand are honestly cheap.
There are expensive seedsmen, but generally

A GARDEN DIARY 33

speaking, threepence is the price of a fair-sized
packet of the commoner perennials, and sixpence
for one of the scarcer kinds. This initial differ-
ence is, however, an infinitesimal part of the real
one. It is the magnificent possibilities, the vast
fecundity of those sixpences, as compared with
the others, which is the real point. Not one
plant, but dozens of plants, often hundreds of
plants, may be the result of a single successful
sowing, nor is the time lost by such sowings
nearly as great as people seem to imagine.

But the number of plants to be had in the
course of a year by this means is only part of
the advantage to be gained by it. The great
advantage is that by so doing one’s plants
become acquainted betimes with the qualities
of the soil in which they find themselves, and,
so getting acquainted, they reconcile themselves
to it, as we most of us do reconcile ourselves
to any environment, however little naturally to
our taste, which has compassed us round from
babyhood. To come to details. Alpine plants,
though small to look at, are for the most part
tolerably dear to buy. If a man, “whatever
his sex!” loves his alpines, is determined to
have them, has a fairly big alpine garden or
border to fill, but will not be at the trouble of
rearing them from seed, then I shall be rather
sorry for that man’s pocket. A few of them
—notably the Androsaces—are not amiable in

D

34 A GARDEN DIARY

the matter of germination, and these therefore
require a mother-plant or two to begin upon.
Others, of which the gentians may be taken as
a type, are unendurably slow in appearing,
though, if a safe place can be found for their
seed-box, and it is then forgotten, the time
passes! The great majority of alpines, fortu-
nately, will grow perfectly well from seed, even
ultra-fastidious ones, such as Silene acaulis, or
Ramondia pyrenaica, which for that reason rank
high in nurserymen’s catalogues, doing perfectly
well with care, and, of course, at a fiftieth part
of the cost.

Details like these have a sordid ring, and |
have to remind myself that it is upon the
successful wrestling with them that one’s ultimate
failure or triumph wholly hinges. Thrift, more-
over, is the badge of every proper-minded
husbandman, and it is according to the thriftiness
of his husbandry that Nature rewards his labours.
“ But Nature,” I hear some caviller exclaim,
‘‘Nature is herself the most reckless of spend-
thrifts. She is the very mother, grandmother,
and great-grandmother of extravagance. She
squanders her treasures as the rain - clouds
squander their raindrops, and tosses her wealth
abroad like dust upon the desert air”! True,
she does do all this, but I am not aware that
she ever specially desired that her children
should follow her example. ‘What are your

A GARDEN DIARY 35

poor little savings? your petty extravagancies ?”
we might imagine her saying, “that they should
be likened to mine?” Further, by an odd
paradox, it is upon her wastefulness that our
thrift rests most securely. We possess say one
solitary plant of some given kind, and we find
that with that single plant her lavishness has
freely provided us with the material of a
hundred, possibly many hundred others. There
is scarcely a plant we can name that by some
means or another—by division, by layers, by
seeds, by cuttings, or by some other equally
simple variation of the garden craft—may not be
multiplied almost without limit. Truly there is
something staggering about such fecundity, and
the brain of even the strongest gardener might
be expected to whirl as he contemplates it.
Following in imagination the history of almost
any flowering plant—yonder pimpernel astray
on the gravel will do—giving it only time
enough, a fair field, and not too many rivals,
and we shall find that it has gone far towards
peopling every waste place within reach; nay,
if the process could be continued long enough,
by the mere law of its organic existence its
descendants are capable of reddening their entire
native countryside for a dozen miles around.

36 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 16, 1899

pew forms of frailty are more lamentable
than vanity, and few variations of vanity
have for some time back seemed to me more
stamped with puerility than garden vanity. Can
anything be imagined more childish, or less
worthy of a reasonable human being, than for
A or Z to pride themselves on the fact that
whereas Horificus globuratus fl. pl. flourishes
like a weed in their gardens, it entirely refuses
to grow in those of B or X, despite the fact
that B and X have remade the greater part of
their borders, in a spirit of slavish emulation?
The same argument applies, even more forcibly,
to other details, such as the making of cuttings,
or layers, the carrying of tender plants through
the winter, the satisfactory growing of vegetables,
and so forth; operations which ought to be
approached in the largest and most enlightened
spirit, and never for a moment made the subject
of mere petty self-satisfaction, or of a narrow and
arrogant self-laudation.

A GARDEN DIARY 37

This point being thoroughly settled, I now
proceed to draw out a list of plants grown suc-
cessfully from seed by ourselves during the last
three years; premising that this is only our frs¢
list, chiefly of rock-plant seedlings, and that I
shall have another, much longer, and much more
important one to draw up when the right time

comes !

Alyssum alpestre.

Fr montanum.,

saxatile.
Anemone Blanda.

3 Japonica,

is fulgens.
Aquilegia alpina.

, coerulea.

a canadensis,

5 Jaeschkaui.

i vulgaris.

» vulgaris var.gran-

diflora alba.

Arenaria montana.
Antirrhinum (various).
Armeria Laucheana.

» vulgaris,

» vulgaris var.rosea,

» vulgaris var. alba.
Aster alpinus.
Aubrietia deltoides,

i Freebelli.

i Leichtlini.
Campanula Carpatica.
garganica.

»”

Campanula pumila.

és turbinata.

35 rotundifolia.

» rotundifolia var. alba.
Cerastium tomentosum,
Cheiranthus alpinus,
Dianthus alpinus.

is czesius.

+ cruentus.

= deltoides,

» deltoides var. albus,
Draba aizoides.
Dryas octopetala,
Erinus alpinus.
Erysimum pumilum.
Erodium Manescavi,

‘i macradenium.
Geranium cinereum.

4 sanguineum.

3 striatum.
Gentiana acaulis.

verna,
Geum montanum.
Gypsophilla prostrata.
Helianthemum (various).

38 A GARDEN DIARY

Heuchera sanguinea.

Ionopsidium acaule (an-
nual).

Linaria alpina.

» anticaria,

» cymbalaria.
Linum alpinum.
Lychnis alpina.
Myosotis alpestris.

azorica,
Meconopsis cambrica.
Ononis rotundifolia.
Oxalis floribunda.

Phlox amcena ‘
hens

» setacea :
easier.

» subulata
Potentilla nepalenses.
Papaver alpinum.
6 nudicaule.
» Var. miniatum.
: pilosum.
Primula Cashmeriana.

Primula cortusoides.
denticulata.
japonica.

- rosea (self-sown),
Ramondia pyrenaica.
Ranunculus montanus.
Saponaria ocymoides.
ocymoides var.

splendens.
Saxifraga (various; divi-

sion easier).
Silene acaulis.

”

”

”

» alpestris.
» schafta.
Statice maritima.
es » var.carnea.
i » var. alba,

Thymus (various; division
again easier).

Tunica saxifraga.

Veronica prostrata.

Vesicaria utriculata.

From this list I have carefully omitted all our

defeats.

Victors I observe, invariably do so!

A GARDEN DIARY 39

SEPTEMBER 25, 1899

ci gardener seems to pass amongst his kins-
folk and acquaintance for a rather feeble, but
more or less meditative sort of man. His trade
is held, I perceive, to be productive of some of the
milder forms of philosophy. Like the angler he
enjoys a rather supercilious consideration on that
account from his more violently active brethren.
“You are such a patient fellow,” they say.
“You don’t care how long you stay pottering
over one small spot. Such quiet ways of going
on would never do for us/”
This may be the case, but I cannot say that
I have personally observed, either in myself, or
other gardeners, any tendency to exhibit more
placidity over the cares and crosses of a garden,
than over any of the other cares and crosses of
existence. As for philosophy, a certain sort of
cheap moralising a garden is certainly rather pro-
ductive of. It sprouts unheeded along the walks,
and may be extracted with greater facility than
most of the weeds. That ‘‘life is short”; that

40 A GARDEN DIARY

d

“flesh is grass”; that man groweth up in the
spring time, and is cut down in the autumn—
such innocent and obvious sprouts of morality as
these may certainly be gathered in a good many
of its neglected corners. With regard to all the
larger and more vital growths of philosophy,
I am afraid that they require to be success-
fully sought for upon wider and more strenuous
battlefields.

Lessons of course may be gathered in a garden,
as in most other places. For the owner, the most
wholesome of these is perhaps that he never
really is its owner at all. His garden possesses
him—many of us know only too well what it is
to be possessed by a garden—but he never, in
any true sense of the word, possesses it. He
remains one of its appanages, like its rakes or
its watering-pots ; a trifle more permanent, per-
haps, than an annual, but with no claim assuredly
to call himself a perennial.

In no garden is this fact more startlingly the
case than in those that we have, as we fatuously
call it, ““made” ourselves. For the owners of
such a garden, the precariousness of their tenure
is the first thing, I think, that is forced upon their
attention. And the reason is simple. In older
ones, the reign of the primitive has, to a greater
or less extent, ceased, and the reign of the arti-
ficial has become the rule. The Wild still flourishes
in them, but it has become a mere pariah, a

A GARDEN DIARY 41

vegetable outcast. Chickweed on the walks,
nettles in the shrubbery, daisies in the lawn.
“What does this mean? Who gave you leave
to be here? Away with you at once, intruders
that you are!” that is the habitual standpoint.
Now in a new garden, especially a garden that
has been won out of the adjacent woodlands, the
sense of intrusion is felt—ought to be felt—to be
all the other way. It is the so-called owners who
are here the trespassers; the unwarrantable in-
truders ; the squatters of a few months’, at most
of a few years’, standing. The bracken, the
honeysuckles, the briers, the birds—these are
the established proprietors; it is they that can
show all the documents of original possession.
We may have to eject them, but at least it
should be done respectfully ; with such compen-
sation for disturbance as would be adjudged in
any properly constituted agrarian court in the
Universe.

Only yesterday these reflections were forced
upon my mind as I found myself, for the third
time engaged in a life and death struggle with
the bracken, which has once more invaded our
newly made flower borders, and threatens to
gather their whole contents bodily into its capa-
cious grasp. This is, and always must be, a pecu-
liarly humiliating sort of struggle to be engaged
in, and not the less so if one remains tempor-
arily the victor. In the first place, one is deeply

42 A GARDEN DIARY

conscious of the vandalism of trying to get rid of
an object immeasurably more beautiful than any
of the plants one thrusts it aside for. In the
second place, there is a sense of absurdity and
futility, which is strongly upon one all the time.
Mrs. Partington, in her efforts at sweeping back
the Atlantic Ocean with her broom, was hardly
a more conspicuous instance of misplaced energy
than such attempts to suppress and control the
exuberant green waves, the abounding vitality, of
our own magnificent, indomitable bracken.

Even where humiliating struggles like these
have ceased to be necessary, how slight an
excrescence this whole business that we call
ownership really is; how strong, how deeply
rooted the state of things which it has momen-
tarily superseded. Let the so-called owner relax
his self-assertiveness for ever so short a period ;
let him and his myrmidons depart for a while
upon their travels, and how swiftly the whole
fabric rushes remorselessly back to its original
condition. And why not? What can be more
absolutely to be expected? Nor need we even
stop at the garden, the farm, the house, or any
similar chattel. Even ourselves, sophisticated
little creatures though we be, in how many ways
we remain the accessories, rather than the masters,
of our environment? For a time, especially in
towns, we manage to conceal this truth from our-
selves. We pretend that we have remodelled

A GARDEN DIARY 43

matters to our liking; that Nature has become
our follower ; that our law, not hers, runs through
the planet; that we set the tune, and that she
merely plays it.

Oh rash, and hurrying ignorance! Put the
holder of so untenable a doctrine alone, for
ever so short a time, especially in the winter, in
the solitary depths of the country, and how soon
a perception of his or her own utter transitoriness
will begin to break through the thinly formed
crust of the new, and the superimposed. Let him
lift his garden latch, and step out beyond it into
the open country. Let him saunter alone in the
woods after dusk. Let him walk across the
solitary, blackened heather. Let him look down
upon the floods, lace-making over the lowlands.
Let him—without taking so much trouble as this
—merely lean out of his window after dusk, amid
the thickening shadows, and he must be of a
remarkably unimpressionable turn of mind if the
sense of his own shadowiness, his own inherent
transitoriness, is not the clearest, strongest, and
most convincing of all his sensations.

Thus vanity provides its own solution, and
the little inflated soul is driven into puncturing
its own proudly swelling balloon. We discover
—sometimes with no little dismay—that it is
not alone in our flower-beds that the wild and
the tame, the temporary and the permanent,
the real and the artificial, meet, jostle, and rub

44 A GARDEN DIARY

shoulders together. Sir Primitive is a remark-
ably difficult person to escape from. His blood
still courses unheeded through our own veins,
and he is as much a part of ourselves as he is a
part of the most sophisticated of our plants or
our animals. We may imagine that we have
left him behind us, and outgrown his teachings,
and the very next day something will occur to
show us that he is at our elbows all the time,
as strong, as fresh, and as absolutely unaffected
by any little modern innovations as he ever was.

A GARDEN DIARY 45

v2

SEPTEMBER 26, 1899

ye although undoubtedly our ancestor, Sir

Primitive stands a good way back on the
family tree, and other influences have grown
up since his time to disturb his teachings. The
fear of becoming too tidy, for instance, does not
at first sight seem to be a very reasonable fear.
It has not been imputed to many people as a
failing, especially to those who happen to have
been born to the westward of St. George’s
Channel! Nevertheless there are moments when
a wild passion for tidiness, a perfect thirst and
craving for order, seems to sweep across the
soul like a wave; when everything else that
one habitually cares for is flung back, and over-
whelmed before it, even as the hosts of Pharaoh
were flung back, and overwhelmed before the
cold, subduing waters of the Red Sea.

We are all the children of our age; there
is no getting over that fact; heirs of a hardly
won civilisation, let us call ourselves Wild Wilful-
ness, or any other law-defying name, as much as

46 A GARDEN DIARY

we please. Yearning to show that our spirits
are above all trammels, that we are as free
as the birds in the air, we nevertheless all
sit in identical armchairs, eat the food the
cooks provide us, and in most other respects
exhibit about as much originality as so many
stair-rods.

It is only necessary to consider what happens
every day of the week in the garden to per-
ceive that this is the case. We have adopted
the most independent line possible; we have
vowed that ous gardens shall be natural ones, or
nothing. We adore flowery wildernesses, we
declare. We want our plants to grow as Nature
intended them to do, and not as the hireling
gardener does. We intend to put a limit to the
eternal bolstering up of our soil with all sorts
of extraneous elements; above all we will have
nothing to say to the clipping of our shrubs
into unreal shapes, nor yet to the planting of
our bulbs, and other flowering plants into lines,
squares, and parallelograms, but all shall be a
melting and a blending of one harmonious form
into another; every detail, as far as the eye
can reach, being subordinated to the larger
and more important spirit of the landscape as
a whole.

So we say! And yet, after the flag of free-
dom has been thus ostentatiously raised, what
happens? As often as not we find ourselves,

A GARDEN DIARY 47

by the logic of facts, and by the realities of the
situation, forced slowly to retreat, as other and
equally eminent strategists have been forced
before us. A flowery wilderness is delightful,
but unless its owner is content with the flowers
that grow in it by nature, or a few, very cautious
additions, his flowery wilderness is apt after a
time to become a wilderness, minus the flowers.
Then perhaps a reaction sets in. A sense of
failure gradually overtakes the too ardent
amateur. The reins of authority drop more and
more listlessly from his hands; until at last he
lets them fall altogether, and, with a smile of
kindly pity, the momentarily dispossessed pro-
fessional once more resumes full, and henceforth
undivided sway.

From so humiliating a finale may all the kindly
divinities that watch over gardens deliver our-
selves! Nevertheless there have been moments
when such a fate has seemed to draw near, and
even to look one in the eyes. Only three days
ago I was engaged in that breathless struggle
with the bracken. For the last two, aided by
Cuttle and his assistant, I have been fighting
ankle-deep against a perfect forest of couch-
grass, which had practically overwhelmed the
whole of our nursery-garden, helped rather than
hindered by the fence, with which we had inno-
cently hoped to keep back, not alone rabbits, but
every other trespasser.

48 A GARDEN DIARY

Worse than the conduct of the couch-grass,
because of a certain personal element in it, has
been the conduct of the rose-campion. Now
I have been exceedingly kind to that rose-
campion. Again and again I have intervened
to rescue it, when it was on the point of being
rooted out, and consigned to the dust-heap.
Only last spring I carried its roots by hundreds
with my own hands, and re-established them in
a special reservation ground, where they might
spread unmolested over a good half-acre or so
of copse. What has been the result? They
have indeed clothed their allotted space, but, not
content with this, they have burst like a horde
of Ojibeway Indians, or some such aborigines,
out of their reservation, across the frontiers of
civilisation, sending out myriads of seedlings
ahead of them, like a flight of skirmishers, and
are now nearly as numerous collectively, and
far more luxuriant individually, in the nursery,
than they are in the copse itself!

Incidents like these wound one, and are more
trying for that reason to the amateur gardener
than to the professional one, who probably re-
gards them as only to be expected. I am far
from saying that they constitute a sufficient
reason for surrender, but they certainly seem
to need the aid of a higher quality than mere
secular doggedness, to enable one to grapple
with them as one ought. It is moreover such

A GARDEN DIARY 49

occurrences as these that produce that extra-
ordinary thirst for order, that very unlooked-for
passion for tidiness, which I just now noted.
After a day or two passed in such struggles as
these one begins to understand the pride of the
colonist in pure, speckless Ugliness; in beauti-
fully clean, naked earth, varied by straight lines
of split-wood fences, or the like. I have not
as yet reached that point myself, and am glad
to feel that I can still tolerate Nature. All the
same a sort of nurseryman’s attitude towards
everything tainted with wildness is fast gaining
upon me, and unless I can check both it, and
this overweening love of tidiness while there is
time, I plainly foresee that there will shortly
be nothing else left!

50 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 29, 1899

“ TYOUNTAINS ; they are a great beauty and
refreshment, but pools mar all, and make

the garden unwholesome, full of flies and frogs.”
For two persons who have just been at some
pains to establish a pool in their grounds, this
is a hard saying! That the judgment has much
to support it, apart from the weight of its utterer,
I cannot deny. At the same time a better case
can, I think, be made out for the culprits than
may appear at first sight. Fountains in a copse,
be they never so limpid, never so sparkling,
would be stamped with an unendurable stamp
of artificiality. Pools on the other hand,
though there are certainly not many in these
copses of ours, are at all events not inconceiv-
able. In the present case we flatter ourselves
that the particular spot we have selected for
our pool was intended by Nature to contain
one, and nothing but the incurable aridity of
these dry hillsides hindered her from carrying
out that intention. Where every drop of water

A GARDEN DIARY 51

has to be watched over like hid treasure, it
may be doubted whether the amount that we
can afford to have trickling through it in
summer will suffice to hinder the water in it
from becoming yellow, brown, or green. That
is a point however which remains for future
discovery. Our main preoccupation at present
rests with the planting of the edges of our
pool, especially with the clothing of the bank
which, rising to the north of it, will absorb most
of the midday sun, and will require therefore the
most attention.

In its present condition a good deal of that
bank looks bare to desperation, yet I strongly
suspect that summer will prove it to have the
reverse fault of being crowded with a dense,
and inextricably entangled mass of vegetation.
Fortunately half its present inhabitants, being
biennials, will depart after the first season, when,
the prospect clearing, the permanent inhabitants
will stand forth confest and visible.

Omitting this temporary part of its furniture,
I will jot the others down as they stand, which
will enable us to see what we have, and also to
form a better idea of what we still lack.

First and foremost a kindly gift; two large
clumps of Arundo donax, easily supreme any-
where as pond-side decoration, the more so, as
they quickly attain to their full size. No other
plant of the reedy order, not even excepting

52 A GARDEN DIARY

a bamboo, gives quite the same impression
of vigorous, of almost insolent energy as does
this one. It adapts itself moreover perfectly to
our sandy soil, and so long as one sees that
it receives a reasonable amount of moisture,
seems to ask for little else. Next follow two
or three plants of Arundinaria japonica, and
below these again Arundinaria, or Bambusa
palmata, skirting the edge of the pond, and
passing on into the so-called bog. This last
came from Kildare, where it has established
itself, and run practically wild along the edge
of a lake. Here it seems to do its growing
more slowly, but the plants are spreading,
and I think promise fairly. Below the other
bamboos, but above palmata come two large
plants of Astilbe rivularis, placed so that their
arching leaves will overhang their lower neigh-
bours, and all but touch the water. Next,
turning the corner of the pond, come various
low-growing bushes. Berberis Darwini below,
with the faithful Aquifolium, and the taller steno-
phylla above, ending in a fringe of bog-myrtle,
and of Rodgersia podophylla, among which some
Solomon’s seal are now barely discernible. After
these come a few plants of Hemerocallis, both
fulva and flava, which need continual dividing
in the borders, but seem to flower well, and give
no further trouble so long as they are within
reach of an occasional splash. Acanthuses appear

A GARDEN DIARY 53

to be in the same position, the difference between
their growth in wet and dry soil being extra-
ordinary ; indeed when one remembers how they
abound in Spain and Italy, one fails to under-
stand the limp and desolated aspect they see
fit to assume here, under a very much more
moderate dispensation of drought.

Next follows Funkia Sieboldi. Funkias are
all meritorious plants, but Sieboldi, to my mind,
towers head and shoulders above the rest. Apart
from the beauty of the flower, its grey-green,
almost iridescent foliage is like no other leaf that
grows, and when the two are combined the result
is High art, art at its best point. Such praise is,
however, merely impertinent. It is more perti-
nent to say that the whole genus, but especially
Sieboldi, belong to that very limited category of
plants that are at once fit for the most orthodox
of beds or borders, while at the same time they
are free enough, and independent-looking enough,
not to seem ridiculous in a bit of pure “ wild-
ness” such as this little pond-side purports to
be. This is far from being a common virtue.
One only needs to run over such words as
‘‘Hollyhock,” “ Begonia,” “Pelargonium,” to per-
ceive in a moment what would be intolerable
outside of a more or less stiff parterre. It is
not so much a question of beauty, as of fitness
and adaptability, perhaps also of freedom from
certain set associations, which, having once rooted

54 A GARDEN DIARY

themselves in our minds, make it impossible for
us ever to rearrange our impressions, and recast
them in a new form. This however is a digres-
sion. To go on with my list. :

Upon the actual edge of the pond we are at
this moment planting some two dozen varieties
of Iris Kempferi. These have recently come
from Haarlem, and being still new-comers, have
their destiny ahead of them. The common yellow
iris, best and handsomest of all native, water-edge
plants, had only to be transplanted, as it was
already flourishing close at hand. As a successor
to it comes Ranunculus Lingua, another indispens-
able native, but one that requires sharp watching ;
its capabilities as a coloniser being unlimited, the
long, pink-tipped suckers pushing forward into
the water at a rate that would soon turn any
limited space of it into a mere jungle of trium-
phant buttercups.

In the part of the bank which, sloping rather
quickly away, inclines towards the “glade,”
come various low- growing shrubs, which carry
the line down to the region of heather, which in
its turn brings it to the level of the grass. The
tallest of these,—rather too tall for the place,—
is Viburnum opulus, common beside many a
Surrey pond, but not nearly enough grown in
gardens, as the best of amateur gardeners has
recently reminded us. Its cultivated relation,
Viburnum plicatum, is just beyond it, placed

A GARDEN DIARY 55

there, not because there is the slightest occa-
sion for its being upon the water's edge, simply
because it happens to be one of those plants
that never seem quite happy unless they have
abundance of space to move about in, the long
shoots, laden with blossom, having a wonderful
power of reaching out to distances that at first
sight seem to be quite beyond their grasp.
Another plant of which the same may be said is
Hydrangea paniculata. So far ours have spent
their existence dully in tubs, the idea being that
they required winter protection. Judging by
some that were experimented upon last winter
this seems to be a mistake, and I propose to
try a few here, by way of successors to the fore-
going, with which their equally industrious sprays
seem to possess a sort of kinship.

Our grassy “glade” being now all but reached
the remaining corner of the bank has been filled
with various grass-leaved flowering plants, which
seemed to come in appropriately. Of these the
largest is Libertia formosa, green all the year
round, and in summer bristling with white, iris-
like flowers, and, by way of plant-fellow to it,
Sisyrinchium Bermudianum (Plague upon these
polysyllabic dog-latinists!), one of the friendliest
of little plants that ever pined for a decent
English name. Put it where one will—on a
bank, in a bog, in a flower-bed—it seems equally
happy and appropriate; always compact, yet

56 A GARDEN DIARY

increasing as rapidly as any weed ; above all con-
tinually in flower, even, so I noticed last winter,
in the middle of frost and snow, and when its
leaves were so brittle that they snapped when
they were touched, like any icicle.

My list seems to be already stretching to a
tolerable length, yet there are plenty of things
that have not yet found their way into it. Here
is Bocconia cordata, for instance, impossible to
do without in such a spot. Here are the spider-
worts, both blue and white. Here are various
spireeas, chiefly low-growing ones, such as
“ Anthony Waterer” and palmata, the latter only
happy in a more or less damp place. In the
peat-filled hollow beyond quite a little crowd of
claimants rise up for notice. A good many of
these are now only satisfactory in the retrospect.
Of such are Primula japonica, and Primula rosea,
sorry-looking tufts of brown shreds, with no new
leaves as yet showing. Cypripedium spectabile
is in the same plight, but Hellonias bullata is
still green, Gentiana asclepiadea has a flower or
two showing, Lobelia cardinalis, both the older
and newer varieties, look red and happy, and
Schizostylis coccinea promises fairly, though it
never behaves with us quite as it ought to do,
and as I have known it behave in kindlier soils.

Turning to the region of mere dryness, three
or four rough stone steps, and a ridiculous
little ridge, lead towards the azalea corner.

A GARDEN DIARY 57

Here cistuses of various kinds have their home,
and, being fairly sheltered, do well, though
several require remembering in the winter. I
find the same to be the case here with regard to
the rosemaries, especially the younger plants, as
they grow older they seem to harden. Lavenders
fortunately are safe everywhere, in all weathers,
and the same may be said of Skimmia japonica
and Fortunei, two of the most satisfactory of
small winter-flowering shrubs. These with a few
tufts of Andromeda floribunda, and a small jungle
of alpine rhododendron, bring us up to the azalea
corner.

All these plants, especially the more recently
planted ones, will need pretty constant looking
after during the next year or so, but once that
crucial period of their existence is over, it is
my hope—possibly only my delusion—that they
will learn so to arrange their affairs as merely
to require the sort of attention that is necessary
to see that they do not overcrowd one another,
or—what is more serious—become invaded by
wild neighbours, rose-campions, and the like,
swarming in upon them to the point of suffo-
cation. The safest way of avoiding this is un-
doubtedly to cover the ground with low, carpeting
growths, which will remain green nearly all the
year round, and at the same time not make too
severe a demand upon the soil. The number
of such kindly little evergreens, or semi-ever-

58 A GARDEN DIARY

greens is a constant surprise when one comes to
collect them, and the fact that there should be
so many speaks volumes for a climate that we
are none of us ever weary of abusing. Apart
from absolute rock-plants, nearly all of which are
evergreen, there are a number of others, which
rarely or never lose their leaves, and whose
presence saves banks and hollows like these from
the reproach of bareness, and further takes away
—certainly ought to take away—all excuses for
visitations from that Tool of the Destroyer, the
pitchfork. Of such plants none are better than
certain campanulas, including our own hair-bells,
both the blue and the white. Wood-sorrels
again are excellent in a shady place, or, for a
sunnier one, there is their energetic cousin Oxalis
floribunda, in this soil the most undaunted of
colonisers, growing all the winter. ‘“ Creeping
Jenny” again, and “ Blue-eyed Mary,” delightful
things with delightful names, will cover as much
space as they are allowed to do. Of the more
easily grown forget-me-nots there are at least
four kinds—palustris, for planting close to the
water, or in it; dissitiflora, happy all the summer,
so long as it gets a little shade; sylvatica and
alpestris, growing anywhere, and everywhere.
Epimediums, again, are excellent, though apt to
get a little rusty in the winter. So is Tellina
grandiflora, an unwisely named plant, since its
strength lies, not in its flowers, but its leaves.

A GARDEN DIARY 59

Thymes, too, are always available; likewise
potentillas, erysimums, and veronicas, though
these last may seem to be trenching upon the
rock-plant region. Then, if we want larger
growths, are there not all the megaseas, which
may be torn in pieces two or three times a year,
if we like? Of low-growing shrubs, such as
Euonymus radicans, the various creeping coton-
easters, the savin, Gaultheria shallon, and others,
there is no lack. Yet another, and one of the
best of them all, Cornus canadensis, a true shrub,
and an evergreen one, although no larger than
a wild wood-strawberry.

But I find myself growing breathless, and the
list of such kindly “carpeters” is in reality only
begun. Flinging down woodruffs, wild pansies,
foam-flowers, sedums, mossy saxifrages, wald-
steinias, and periwinkles, as one might out of
a basket, I will only now delay to find room for
a few rock-pinks, particularly for these four—
cesius, cruentus, atro-rubens, and deltoides,—all
of which may be sown broadcast in the spring,
and all of which, especially the last, may be
trusted to hold their own against any but the
biggest and most ferocious of natives.

We have been honest caterers for our clients,
as far as preparation went, and my hope, I may
say my ideal, is that they will henceforward be
content with receiving merely surface nourish-
ment from time to time, and will neither look for

60 A GARDEN DIARY

or need that eternal process of renewal, and as a
consequence of disorganisation, which is the bane,
though I am willing to admit the unavoidable
bane, of nearly every flower-bed and border.

Ideals are odd things, and this one of mine
seems, even as I write it down, about as ridicu-
lous and puny an ideal as any forlorn idealist
was ever driven into making a boast of! Such
as it is, however, I cling to it tenaciously. After
all what does it mean? Written out a little
large it means repose of mind, and a freedom
from the strain of change; it even means a
certain sense of finality, and that at a very
sensitive spot in one’s small environment.

To a greater or less extent we all sigh for
finality. Nobody has ever attained to it, that
I have heard of, and not many people would
perhaps relish it if they could do so. None
the less it remains, something haunting; a
dimly descried presence, to us vaguely desirable.
To sit at ease under their own vines; to be at
rest in their own shaded places, has from the
earliest days flattered the imaginations of men,
busy and idle ones alike. Dawdlers in sunny
places, and haunters of gardens like our-
selves are naturally assigned to the second of
these categories. Since we have to support
the reproach of idleness, let us at least then
take heed that we secure the comfort of it. If
Leisure is an acquaintance of ours he is an

A GARDEN DIARY 61

acquaintance of so few people nowadays, that
we had better make the most of him. Now
fuss the good man detests, and change, merely
for change’s sake, is undoubtedly one of the
very worst forms of fuss. Like every other
pursuit and following, horticulture no doubt
has its battlefields, and those who go out upon
them must expect charge and countercharge,
rapid assault and varying vicissitude, like other
heroes upon other battlefields. For me such
combats, I am free to confess, have not even
a vicarious charm; Peace being the only deity
to whom I would willingly raise even the
smallest of garden altars. With other out-of-
door conditions we all aver that it is their
stability, their adorable unchangeableness, which
lends them in our eyes their most persistent
charm. Why then are we not to look for the
same charm in our gardens, which after all come
nearest home? That it is a charm easy of attain-
ment I were loth to asseverate, but that seems
hardly a reason for not endeavouring to attain
to it. It is in this direction at all events that
my own private plottings and plannings propose
to turn. If I must moil and delve; if I must
plant, dig, and contrive now, it is with the fixed
and fond determination of before long sitting
resolutely down, and doing absolutely nothing!

62 A GARDEN DIARY

OcTOBER 27, 1899

HO dare forecast even his nearest future ?

These last four weeks have been so charged
with anxiety—not only, or even chiefly, war anxie-
ties—that I have not made so much as a single
entry in this diary. In fact there has been nothing
to record. The poor little garden; its flowers ;
its weeds; the copse surrounding it; the entire
mise-en-scéene, with all the quips and jests which
in sunnier hours it gives rise to, seems to have
vanished bodily. It is as though the whole thing,
erstwhile not without its own little importance, had
dwindled to the size of one of those infinitesimal
specks, which one sometimes sees in feverish
dreams ; specks so dim and small, so well-nigh
invisible, that one wonders how in the first place
one ever discovered them, and why, having done
so, one should take the trouble of trying to keep
them in sight. That being the case it is as well
that I am leaving home to-morrow for several
weeks, and, since I shall be chiefly in London,
have a good excuse for leaving the garden diary,

A GARDEN DIARY 63

like the garden itself, behind me. Possibly, by
the time I return to them, the old, now submerged,
landmarks may have risen once more to the sur-
face, or I may have grown a little better used to
this changed landscape ; seeing that we all have
to get used to every variety of landscape ; every
admixture of weather; every cruel, blinding storm;
every rain-washed shore, or bitter, wreck-strewn
sea, which meets us in this very odd journey that
we call our lives.

64 A GARDEN DIARY

CHRISTMAS-DAY, 1899

[eee was a slight sprinkling of snow this
morning, yet the garden looks exceedingly
black. Save for a scarce discernible white line
here and there, everything in it seems stiff, and
hard, and black as iron; crumpled iron leaves
against an iron floor. Black is the livery, not
alone of sorrow, but of dismay, so that the garden
does very well just now to wear it. There are
moments in the individual life, moments, so it
appears, even in an entire nation’s life, when the
ordinary scheme of things seems to dissolve and
change ; when all the familiar landmarks for the
time being melt away, and disappear under our
eyes.

Standing here, staring blankly out of the window,
I feel myself for the moment a sort of embodi-
ment of all the other, vacant-eyed starers out of
windows, up and down over the face of the country
this Christmas morning. How many of them there
must be! How many must be staring down at
the dull ground, and telling themselves they will

A GARDEN DIARY 65

never care to walk in, or to look at their gardens
again. It may not be an actual garden, but at
least it will be a figurative one ; some special plot
of happiness ; some quarter-acre of habitual enjoy-
ment. I hope, indeed I feel sure, that in the great
majority of cases they will sooner or later enjoy
it again. Father Time is at bottom a kindly
creature, kindlier than when in trouble we are
inclined to believe him to be. For the moment
however the idea seems unrealisable, and would
scarcely be welcome if it were realised.

For hardly-pressed humanity there is, I believe,
only one really satisfactory way of dealing with
misfortune, which is—to refuse to believe in it!
That is, I find, the method that our excellent
Cuttle in the garden has adopted with regard
to most of the recent events in South Africa.
Anything exceptionally disagreeable, especially
anything that has to do with the surrender of
Englishmen, no matter under what circumstances,
he simply declines to believe in. It is not that
he is ignorant. He reads his paper diligently ;
he knows everything that is in it, but he refuses
to accept more of the contents than he considers
proper. When, a few weeks ago, the first of
our Natal mishaps occurred, and the number of
English prisoners captured was posted up in the
village hall, Cuttle informed me the next morning
that he had seen it, but that there wasn’t a word
of truth in it! I demurred, but he stuck to his

F

66 A GARDEN DIARY

guns steadily. It was the same last Monday,
when I saw him for the first time after our two
most recent misfortunes, that of the Modder and
the Tugela.

‘‘This is bad news, Cuttle,” I said, as we met
outside the greenhouse.

“Well ma’am, they do try to make it out to be
baddish, but I wouldn’t believe it, if I was you.”

‘But it is in all the papers, Cuttle.”

“Very likely it is ma’am, but what of that?
I don’t hold with none of those papers. They
must be a-stuffing themselves out with some-
thing.”

“But I’m afraid the generals admit it them-
selves.”

“Excuse me ma’am, but that’s just where
you're making a great mistake. We don’t know
nothing about what the generals admit. All
we know is that the papers say they admit it,
which is a very different story. Mark my words,
you'll find that it'll turn out to be some of their
muddlings. Just you mark my words for it,
that’s how it is.”

I said meekly “I hope so, Cuttle,” and walked
away, for really I had not the heart to try and
shake his incredulity. Not that I imagine I
could have done so had I tried. That good,
homespun garment of British pride in which
he had wrapped himself was proof against
any assaults that I could have brought to bear

A GARDEN DIARY 67

upon it. I wish with all my heart that he would
lend us each a piece of it. We want it badly.
Pray heaven and all its saints that we may none
of us ever need it much worse than we do this
Christmas-day, 1899 !

CHRISTMAS-DAY, 4 P.M.

GINCE luncheon I have been to see a neigh-

bour, in the vague hope that some fresh war
news might have arrived this morning. There
was none of course, and I walked home again
between banks of withered bracken and trailing
bramble, under the big tree-hollies, glistening
all over their surfaces with a thousand reminders
of Christmas, and of its gifts. England is so
big, and old, and sensible that she does not
generally care about Christmas presents, but
there is one present that, I take it, she would
dearly like to have to-day. Shiploads of holly,
forests of mistletoe are hers for the asking, but
that one little leaf of victors laurel that she
wants so badly, that she would so gladly pin upon
that broad breast of hers, this, it seems, is denied
her. It may come to-morrow. It must, we all,
not alone Cuttle, feel convinced, come before long,
but it will not come in time for her Christmas-

box.

68 A GARDEN DIARY

What an odd convention it is, when one
thinks of it, that habit of embodying a country
in an individual! Considered seriously the whole
contention is absurd. To talk of a nation as
a person is to talk sheer nonsense. If one
handles the idea a little it tumbles to pieces in
one’s fingers. The fiction of unity resolves
itself into a mere vortex of atoms, all moving in
different ways, and moreover with a different
general drift in each successive generation. As
a matter of fact I doubt whether Englishmen,
who are nothing if not practical, ever do think
of their own country as an individual, unless
one of them happens to be called upon to design
a coin or a cartoon. The whole idea is extra-
neous, a survival from classical days, and the
lumbering absurdities which are now and then
dragged about the streets only go to prove how
far from the genius of the people such repre-
sentations really are.

Perhaps it is because I am not English that
I find myself falling so readily into the trick.
There was a time,—not a very recent one—
when I thought of England habitually in that
light, and in the most truculent fashion possible.
In my eyes she stood visibly out as the Great
Bully, the Supreme Tyrant, red with the blood
of Ireland and Irish heroes. It was always
she and her then; indeed it was only by keeping
up the fiction of an incarnate Saxondom that

A GARDEN DIARY 69

indignation could be retained at the proper
boiling point. To turn from the past to the
present was to spoil the whole effect. In place
of War, Famine, Massacre, one only got dull
political controversies, or equally dull agrarian
disturbances. For the Raleighs, the Sydneys,
the Straffords, the Cromwells,— vast impres-
sive figures, large and lurid—only a group
of rather harassed gentlemen, ‘well-meaning
English officials,” painfully endeavouring to steer
their way so as to offend everyone as little
as possible. Yes, I had quite a respectable
capacity for hatred in those days, and England
—that historic England of which I knew abso-
lutely nothing—enjoyed the greater part of it.
Especially, I remember, that I used to gloat over
the notion of some day or other a great national
HUMILIATION befalling her—a Sedan, a
Moscow—I hardly knew what; retribution at
all events in some very visible and dramatic
form. With what glee I used to picture her
standing helplessly before the nations; without
a friend or an ally to turn to; naked and
ashamed ; crushed bleeding to the earth, as she
had so often crushed Ireland; a mark for every
wagging head

Well, well, thus we play the fool, and the
spirits of the wise sit in the clouds and mock
us! Here am I walking home along an English
lane, and almost wringing my hands in despair

70 A GARDEN DIARY

because such a very mild and colourless version
of those old cherished dreams has befallen mine
ancient enemy !

e e e e cd
CHRISTMAS-DAY, 6 P.M.

I FORGOT to record quite an unlooked-for
little pleasure which befell me on my way
home this afternoon; one of those little incidents
which are nothing in themselves, yet which mean
much to us, and never more so than when life is
going ill.

I had got as far as the grassy entrance to our
copse when a sudden dazzling gleam of sunlight
shot across it, sweeping over the fields beyond,
and away up to the top of the downs. Though
the day had been fairly fine for the time of
year, the expectation of so dramatic a finale to
it had never for a moment crossed my mind,
and I stood gazing about me almost as if some-
thing had happened ; feeling in fact as if some-
thing desirable and unlooked for ad happened.

The yellow oak scrub—withered but not leaf-
less—glowed with a sudden russet splendour.
Upon the little garden wall the terra-cotta pots
shone with a momentary reminiscence of that
Italy where they were born and baked. The
air seemed to tingle; the tall birches glistened,
one sheen of feathery silver up to their tiniest

A GARDEN DIARY 71

towering twigs. It was a kindly thought of
whichever divinity sent that most unexpected
and satisfactory beam to cheer this particular
day. It did not last long of course, and the
gloom of a winter’s night has followed quickly.
For all that Christmas 1899 will never seem
quite so dark, never so absolutely despairing in
the retrospect, as it would have done without
that last benevolent gleam at eventide.

G2 A GARDEN DIARY

JANUARY 3, 1900

oy ae satisfactions of intercourse are apt to be
overrated, yet there are times when they are
certainly not without their uses. Living for the
moment alone—if anyone can be said to be alone
who possesses a few good neighbours, and one
kind dog—lI find myself in an oddly dualistic con-
dition of mind. In bodily presence I am here at
H , engaged in sundry important avocations.
I am path making ; copse cutting ; plant protect-
ing; I am even bricks-and-mortar superintending
in asmall way. To my own private consciousness
I am really engaged in quite another set of pre-
occupations, and a very long way from these
green downs, and rustling oak copses of ours.
The experience does not pretend to be particu-
larly original, seeing that a large number of other
people’s experience would probably just now bear
it out. Solitude however emphasises these sort
of odd dualities, and endows them with an air of
greater distinction. Are mortals better and wiser,
or worse and more foolish when they are alone?

A GARDEN DIARY 73

The wisdom of the ages has hitherto declined to
answer that question, a fact which probably proves
its wisdom. Better or not, one thing is at least
certain, and that is that they are extremely different.
“Men descend to meet,” says Emerson, and he
may be right. I am inclined myself however to
think that that profundity, that peculiar mental
greatness of which, like others, I am perfectly
conscious when I am alone, is less a solid than a
gaseous greatness ; a sort of exaltation, dependent
for the most part upon the fact of there being
no one to contradict me. We are all of us at
all times microcosms, but never are we .so com-
pletely microcosms as when we are quite by
ourselves. Then we seem to swell into a per-
fectly multitudinous host, all the members of
which exhibit a singular unanimity, and moreover
a touching desire to endorse our own views, how-
ever often these may contradict one another!
Like many other honest-minded civilians, my
thoughts have of late been considerably taken up
with schemes of amateur strategy. The plans of
campaign that I have formulated in the course
of the last two months would have puzzled
Von Moltke, and might even have gone far to
surprise Napoleon! If I have not forwarded
any of them to our Generals in South Africa it
has been mainly because I felt that it might be
kinder to allow them to go on in their own way
without any assistance of mine. I heard lately

74 A GARDEN DIARY

of someone, by the way, who actually had tele-
graphed out her recommendations to Sir Redvers
Buller. As the story reached me the telegram
took this form : “Please try to relieve Ladysmith.”
I hope for the credit of human nature that the
tale is true, but if so there is a simple innocence
about this form of admonition of which I fear
that I should have been personally quite incapable.
My own ideas, my own forms of suggestion, are
entirely different. They are large, nay grandiose,
and moreover they are extremely intricate. As
I walk about over these lanes and downs I see
strategical possibilities in all directions, which
cause me to thrill over the magnitude of my own
conceptions.

Towards evening, especially, the sense of what
might be,—of what, for aught anyone can say to
the contrary, still may be,—rises almost palpably;
a beckoning ghostly phantom of the Great Coming
Invasion. Dorking —that scene of crushing
British disaster—-is not far off; were I to
clamber up the opposite ridge I should be look-
ing down on it. Moreover, between one land-
scape and another the difference becomes much
less when all detail is reduced to one vast blur.
I have a friendly knoll upon which I some-
times take my stand towards sunset hour, and
from which I have of late conjured up Biggars-
bergs, inaccessible and kopje-covered as heart
could desire. It is true that the enemy holding

A GARDEN DIARY 75

them is absolutely invisible, but then so he pro-
bably would be in any case. Evening has more-
over in my experience an odd power of loosening
the tie of the actual. The mind seems to be
less fixed to its shell than in the earlier, and
more garish hours of the day. As the shadows
lengthen stronger and stronger becomes the im-
pression that the world is after all but a small
place, and that the scenes that one is thinking
of are nearly, if not quite, as close as those
that one is actually looking at. Thought flits
over the wave-crests between this and South
Africa more lightly than one of Mother Carey’s
chickens, and alights dry-shod upon the veldt.
One is amongst them. One is standing in the
midst of them. One can see, literally all but see,
that tattered, sunburnt, rather dilapidated-looking
host—friends, cousins, kinsfolk ; countrymen and
fellow-subjects at all events. How odd you all
look, dear friends, and yet how familiar! Big
English frames, shrewd Scotch faces, tender,
devil-may-care Irish hearts. Surely one knows
you? Surely you are very near to us, disguise
yourselves as you may? The setting may be
new, the remoteness considerable, but neither
setting nor remoteness can hinder one from feel-
ing at home in the midst of you!

76 A GARDEN DIARY

JANUARY 6, 1900

“ DULLETS—tThe air was a sieve of them.

— They beat upon the boulders like a
million hammers. They tore the turf like a
harrow!”

These three lines came out of a recent number
of the Dazly Mazt, and they describe Elands-
laagte. Is it, I wonder, because Literature is
so much more familiar to me than War that
I seem to require the aid of the one in order
to bring home to me the reality of the other?
These three lines are certainly literature, litera-
ture of the impressionist kind, which, if not the
best in the abstract, is at any rate the best for
such a purpose. Trying to put oneself into the
position of such a bystander as the writer of
them, I am able to fancy that if the bullets came
thick enough they really mgh¢ seem to tear the
turf like a harrow. In what way exactly the air
could be said to be a sieve of them, I am not
clear, yet the phrase seems to live, and therefore

A GARDEN DIARY 77

to carry its own justification. As it happens
I was out yesterday in a rather exceptionally
imposing hail-storm. It was so dry that there
was no occasion to hurry, and I stood still for
a while to study effects. The stones, as they
pattered and rattled round me, might—danger
apart—have quite served as a suggestion of the
other sort of rattling and pattering. Looking
at them dispassionately I inquired of myself,
“Would one run?” and Truth—there being no
one else present—promptly replied, ‘ Madly!”
So, save for the grace of acquired training, I
take it would nearly everybody. My hail bullets
seemed to be in a prodigious hurry, and were
being prodigally, if not very scientifically, directed
by marksmen concealed somewhere above Leith
hill. They hissed, they danced, they ricochetted
off the trees, they bespattered the ground in all
directions in a very businesslike and realistic
fashion. There was a good deal of snow still
lying unmelted in corners, and into that snow
the new-comers as they fell cut deep little pits,
and disappeared from sight in an instant. Else-
where they drove in white flocks over the ground,
hardly melting at all. They were not quite so
large as carrots, as someone assured me that he
had once seen hailstones, but they were certainly
as large as fair-sized gooseberries. Through
such a furious hail—only appropriately black—

78 A GARDEN DIARY

the famous Bagarrah cavalry rode to their deaths
last September year. Through such a hail, as
thick, as fierce, as brutally indifferent, who that
one knows, that one cares for, may not be riding
or walking to-day ?

A GARDEN DIARY 79

JANUARY 8, 1900

WE have been enveloped all this morning

in a cloud of smoke, not exactly battle-
smoke, but nearly as thick, perhaps, in these days
of smokeless powder, rather thicker. Our inde-
fatigable Cuttle has decreed that we must at all
costs get rid of those mountains of garden rub-
bish, which seem to be for ever accumulating.
Hence this smoke! Never in my life did I see
such volumes! They rolled in blackish blue
columns all about our leafless copse, till towards
the afternoon, a wind getting up, they were swept
finally westward, across the downs, somewhere in
the direction of Guildford.

Personally I like the smell, acrid though it
undoubtedly is. The pile itself is moreover the
nearest approach one ever gets in these de-
generate days to a bonfire, for which I still
retain the most infantile affection, and which
never seems to be so familiar, or so endearing,
as upon the afternoon of a winter's day. Who
can explain those incredibly remote, yet at the

80 A GARDEN DIARY

same time perfectly definite feelings of associa-
tion, of which we are all at times more or less
aware? Why should certain perfectly common-
place things awaken dreams, reminiscences,
suggestions ; whereas others, every bit equally
qualified to do so, find us blank, and indifferent ?
Of all such aids to impersonal memory, commend
me to an out-of-door fire! The wild, keen smell
of it. The red eye of flame, blinking at one out
of the heap. The sleepy rolls of smoke, tumbling
about, and making one’s eyes water. The
sudden ‘“crick, crick, crackle” of a snapping
twig, travelling sharply through the frosty air.
All these separately, or the whole combined,
bring with them trains of association that have
been accumulating very much longer, or I am
much mistaken, than the course of any one single
lifetime. Reminiscences, who can tell, of that
remote day when the human hearth was for the
most part not an indoor, but an out-of-door one?

A friend and neighbour of ours has recently
improved upon such casual burnings by having
what may be called a permanent bonfire in
her grounds, and I wonder more people who
love their gardens, and spend whole winters
in the country, do not adopt the plan. In one
respect it is certainly an inferior bonfire, for
its main constituents are, not leaves and sticks,
but anthracite coal. To make amends, it burns
merrily away night and day, only needing to

A GARDEN DIARY 81

be replenished, I am assured, once in twenty-
four hours. Her garden lies in the heart of a
big pinewood, and the fire has its home in an
open lodge or gazebo, supported by larch poles,
without door or window, but made possible to
sit in in cold weather, by being match-boarded
upon two sides, the south and south-east sides
alone being widely open. Until one has actually
tried, it is difficult to believe how comfortable
one can be in such a spot even on a very frosty
evening, both feet extended to the blaze, and
a rug tucked round one to keep off stray
draughts. As daylight wanes the red glow
increases, lighting up the big pine trunks, and
awakening in one’s mind vagrant suggestions
of camp fires, and forest settlements, while at
other times it has the practical advantage of
making many garden operations possible which,
without such a speedy refuge to fly to, would
in this chill-evoking climate of ours scarce be
practicable.

It is odd what minute deviations from the
everyday stir the mind, and help it to shake
off that crust of routine, which it ought to be
the aim of all of us to get rid of. In these
days too, one is thankful to anything that gives
a stir to existence, apart from the weary news-
papers. It is, I think, one of the few merits
of winter that spots, at other times tame to
flatness, seem in fierce, or exceptionally cold

G

82 A GARDEN DIARY

weather to revert to an older, and a wilder con-
dition. Snow admittedly recreates everything ;
our most familiar paths and shrubberies, nay our
very stable runnels, growing quite arctic and
hyperborean-looking under its disguise. Apart
from snow, the same impression is produced
by any really strong atmospheric variation.
Crackling grass, and glittering ice-bound trees,
awaken one set of suggestions. Roaring winds,
a drenched earth, and inky clouds tumbling
wildly over the sky, arouse quite others. Even
objects inside the garden, plants that have been
perhaps put there by one’s own hands; clumps
say, of bamboos and reedy grasses—Arundo
donax or the like—assume suddenly new, and
slightly savage aspects when one sees them
sweeping to and fro, or buckling like so many
fishing rods under the lash of a sudden tempest.
The commonplace is not really unescapable,
though it often seems as though it were.
There are wider, freer notes, which only need
awakening to stir, and thrill us with their
presence. The imagination leaps to meet them,
and feels them to be its right. For we are all
heirs to a large inheritance, though we are apt,
as a rule, to be forgetful of the fact.

A GARDEN DIARY 83

JANUARY 10, 1900

i os kindly days in a desperately grim winter
have had the effect of reawakening in one’s
mind half-forgotten thrillings; thrillings after
long grass, and green shadows ; after a thousand
eye-caressing tints; after the pure, delicious life
and companionship of flowers. There are times
when all this seems rather to pain than to please.
When the persistency of such perishable things
appears but an added wrong, but an additional
unkindness. Why should these last, and other,
and higher ones, zo¢ last? we demand; one of
those questions which, seeing that they can never
be answered, it were as well, perhaps, that they
should remain permanently unasked.

Walking briskly along the lanes this morning,
with a determination to think only of what lay
immediately below my eyes, I have been struck
afresh, as often before, by the capabilities of
beauty possessed even by the poorest plots
of ground; plots which, far from having been
intentionally beautified, have been stripped, on

84 A GARDEN DIARY

the contrary, for utilitarian reasons of such beauty
as Nature had originally endowed them with.
Yet, under the influence of a little kindly sun-
shine, how they still gleam, those poor plots ;
how the few green things left in them manage
to prink themselves out, and to respond genially
to that genial greeting! ‘And is it not slightly
discreditable,” I reflected, ‘‘that we, who call
ourselves gardeners, and have deliberately taken
in hand similar, often much better plots, specially
with an eye to beautifying them, should again
and again completely fail in doing so; should
again and again spend thought, time, money,
and the sweat of the brow—chiefly of other
people’s brows—and all that they should, as
often as not, be rather worse at the end than
at the beginning?”

The truth is that this business of “ beautify-
ing,” into which many of us have recklessly
plunged, is a very much more difficult and a
very much more delicate operation than we are
prepared to admit. To the truly discerning,
the truly nature-loving eye, the smallest scrap
of plant-producing ground, the homeliest corner
of earth—“long heath, brown furze, anything”
—has potentialities of beauty and interest which
even the best gardener rarely develops as
they might, and ought to be developed. It
is not merely that individually our powers are
weak, our taste poor, our ignorance great, our

A GARDEN DIARY 85

imagination defective, but that over and above
all this we have in most cases not the faintest
idea of what we are aiming at. With no
clear vision of what we propose ultimately to
produce, how in the name of reason can we
hope to produce it, or anything else worth
having ?

The cause of the mischance in nine cases
out of ten lies in the fact that we attempt too
much. Our original combination may have been
good, but we want to make it still better. Our
gold gets overgilt; our lilies are painted till
they almost cease to be lilies at all, and the
result is failure all along the line. This sounds
the reverse of encouraging, but I am not sure
but what it is in some respects better that it
should be so. I suspect that all gardeners—
professionals and amateurs, experts and gropers,
—are just now rather in a state of flux and
indecision. Two chief schools hold the field,
and are in some respects mutually destructive
of one another. There is the school which
avows itself the faithful, not to say the servile,
follower and imitator of Nature, and there is
the school that proposes to itself to improve upon
her. The tendency of the first is to develop a
good deal of picturesque disorder, a pleasant,
rather easy-going sense of repose, and possibly
some want of definite form and colour. The
tendency of the second, or rather of its members,

86 A GARDEN DIARY

is to regard the garden as a battle - ground;
colour, size, brilliancy, height, as so many tests
of their own personal victory, and every plant,
species and hybrid alike, as objects for them to
shape and manipulate at their own good pleasure.

Will these two divergent schools ultimately
combine into one harmonious whole? Will the
over-strenuous science of the second strengthen
and reform the airy, somewhat weed-encouraging
grace of the first? Will the aspiration after
beauty of the one, in time relax the utilitarian
tension of the other? These are questions which
must be left to be resolved in the still unplumbed
future. Possibly the gardener of the twenty-first
or twenty-second century may be able to reply
to them !

Pending that desirable, but still rather remote,
contingency, I have left the lanes, and returned
homeward, and am now looking down at our own
somewhat chaotic little garden, with its small
brown beds, each edged with a neat white frost-
frill. Poor little garden! I have felt so oblivious
of it of late that a certain compunction comes
over me as I look at it. After all, gratitude for
such good things as have come in one’s way is
an undoubted part of decent living, and the most
practical way of showing that gratitude is to
make the best of them. Well, the year is still
young; there will be time enough for fulfilling
‘that, and every other small social obligation in

A GARDEN DIARY 87

the course of it. Eleven and a half months!
What unknown things have you got hidden
away? What secrets, as yet unguessed at
by any of us, do you keep concealed behind
those picturesque, and friendly-sounding names
of yours?

88 A GARDEN DIARY

JANUARY 20, 1900

CBee, wind this morning was excruciatingly
cold, with a hungry whistle, that belied
the pale sunrays, which were doing their best
to redeem the situation. On such a morning
the good gardener’s thoughts, even before going
out, fly to the younger and weaklier amongst
his plants, and his imagination towards devising
new shelters, and, if possible, more efficient ones.
Creepers are, as a rule, easily protected; either
there is a wall, against which mats can be laid,
or, at worst, some post that they can be fastened
to. It is shrubs in the open that present the
greatest difficulty ; nightcaps of sacking, or tents
of matting not adding to the picturesqueness
even of a winter garden.

Our more recently planted rhododendrons look
anything but happy, and I have just been begging
Cuttle to bestow a good shovelful of nourish-
ment about the roots of each of them. It is not
protection that they need, for they are hardy
enough, but they sicken in this thin, dry soil,

A GARDEN DIARY 89

which seems to reach them through their two-
foot blanket of peat.

Even when well grown and long established,
thododendrons hardly seem to me to be quite
the ideal thing for these rustling oak copses of
ours. We plant them, partly for the sake of
their colour in its season, partly because we need
evergreens, and the common ponticum is one
of the best of evergreens, but they seem to me
to remain exotics, and not altogether happy
ones. There are two distinct varieties of scenery
with both of which rhododendrons consort
magnificently. One is heavy, boggy ground,
deep, dark, and oozy, under large trees, into
the recesses of which they can settle, spread-
ing out in all directions, re-rooting them-
selves as they choose in the black earth; their
flowers catching the divided sunrays, and turn-
ing every hollow place into a pool of colour.
Another, and a yet more ideal place is a steep
hillside, provided that it is furnished with
boulders, and provided that the said boulders
are not of limestone. There is one such hill-
side above the Bay of Dublin which I find it
difficult to believe might not be able to hold its
own, even though confronted with any similar
extent of ground amongst the Himalayas them-
selves. It begins as a ravine, rising out of
a rather thin wood. As one mounts the
ravine opens, and the trees fall back. The

92 A GARDEN DIARY

FEBRUARY 5, 1900

OT to devote an indefinite number of hours

to the reading of war news; to eschew the
luxury of idle hands, less on account of Dr. Watts’
reasons against it, as on account of more personal
ones, which have taught me to reprobate the prac-
tice. Here are a couple of respectable resolutions
for a bitterly cold February morning. ‘‘ Books,
and work, and healthful play”! Could a more
commendable little programme be invented? or
one that might be followed with greater ad-
' vantage by many of us who only exhibit our
superiority by laughing at it?

Into which of the two latter categories garden-
ing is to be ranged I am not quite clear; it
depends, I should say, upon the number of
rose-campions, ‘‘ Snaking Tommys” and the like,
that are to be found in the garden in question.
Winter is supposed to be a time of year which
gives comparatively little scope to the energies
of the amateur gardener. If so, then in this
respect, if in no other, I am in luck’s way this

A GARDEN DIARY gI

every side. She looks up at him out of the
bracken with an aspect not very different from
what she wore at the Prime, and if he wishes to
spoil her—well, he has to do it for himself!
This to many excellent gardeners would seem
a poor compensation for a sadly unproductive
soil, and a deplorable lack of summer moisture.
There are others, however, to whom a certain
sense of indwelling peace, a certain feeling of
underlying harmony, are the first of all require-
ments. Now both of these are more easily found
than made.

94 A GARDEN DIARY

FEBRUARY 7, I900

. ~ the very top of its strength!” Cold as it

has been of late, I hardly expected to find
no garden left when I got up to-day! So it is
however. Late last night everything seemed
normal. This morning our little Dutch garden
has vanished utterly ; swept out of existence as
though it had never existed. From centre
to margin—beds, borders, walks, red walls,
everything—the entire little depression has been
covered with a uniform white blanket, effacing it
completely, and restoring the landscape to what
it was before man, woman, or measuring tapes
arrived to trouble it. For the plants this new
state of things is an improvement, but how
about our work? Behold us suddenly reduced
to a state of deadlock; all our various little
activities brought to an absolute standstill. The
paths that were being cut through the copse ;
the ground that was being got ready for grass-
sowing; the flower-beds that had to be clipped
into the right shape ; the heather that was being

A GARDEN DIARY 93

winter, for there is abundance to be done here;
work moreover which must either be attended
to now, or else not done at all. With such
weather as we have of late had there is no
margin either for dawdling. To-day seems to
be an off day with the frost fiend’s gang, and
we must try, therefore, to push our own work
forward before they are back upon us in renewed
strength. By the look of the sky, and the
general feeling of things, it is evident that they
are only just round the corner, and collecting
themselves for a fresh assault. As I crossed the
open end of the “glade” just now the wind
met me with an edge, cruel and cutting as spite,
or hatred. A few aconites and snowdrops are
pushing out their flower-tips, but it is a mere bit
of gallant bravado upon their part. By night
the stars, seen through any uncurtained window,
seem to wink at one derisively, and winter is
still at the very top of its strength.

96 A GARDEN DIARY

of reckoning; while as for the birds and beasts,
they are much more disposed to turn to us for
help, than to make any friendly propositions the
other way.

It may be mere vanity upon my part, but it
always seems to me that small birds recognise
their heavy, wingless, two-legged kinsfolk with
less difficulty during this sort of weather than at
any other time of the year. The fact that one
bribes them to such recognition by vulgar doles
of breadcrumbs may have something to say to
the matter, but I fancy that I read a distinctly
kindlier expression in their eyes. They glance
at us with an air of comparative condescension.
They perceive that we share their own help-
lessness ; that we are not so very different from
themselves, only bigger and stupider. For in-
stance, I have been publicly snubbed this whole
winter by the tomtits. Under the eye and to the
knowledge of the entire garden I set up a large
post, hung over with cocoa-nuts for their con-
venience. Some of these cocoa-nuts were sawn
into slices, others, more artfully, into rings, and
I pleased myself by believing that they would sit
and swing in them, as they pecked an unfamiliar,
but not unpalatable meal. Will it be believed
that not one tomtit has deigned to touch those
cocoa-nuts? They have hopped to and fro on
the boughs almost within peck of them, yet never
so much as tried to ascertain whether they were

A GARDEN DIARY 95

brought from a distant common, where it could
be cut discreetly ; the entire bustle of the garden
has been brought to a condition of arrest. Into
the middle of our fussy little rhythm Nature has
dropped her own imperious full-stop. Against
that full-stop there is no appeal. In vain one
protests that one is really in a great hurry;
that unless these flower-beds are made, unless
yonder piece of ground is got ready for grass-
sowing, March will be upon us, and close at its
heels, April; that the spring is coming on, and
that we must get our work done. To this
remonstrance Nature merely opens her eyes with
a mildly sarcastic air, and replies, “Must you?”
It is the case of the old woman of the nursery
tale over again, who ad to get her pig over the
stile in order to give her old man his supper.
In that case she did, after many repulses, find
a complacent beast, I think, who undertook the
task. The right spring was touched; the spell
broken, and the whole state of deadlock dis-
solved at once. How we are to obtain so
desirable a dissolution I have yet to learn. I
see no spring to touch; no bird, beast, or
element that could be appealed to with the
slightest hope of success. The sky, iron-grey,
with vicious, inky streaks across it, does not
seem promising; neither does the wind, which
keeps to its beloved north-east. The earth is
invisible, consequently is for the moment out

98 A GARDEN DIARY

There were many days last summer—to be accu-
rate, I believe, there were forty-three—when it
was by no means necessary to go to the Sahara
in order to ascertain what a condition of almost
unendurable drought could be like. For the
present I feel that these two samples will suffice
me. I cannot, unfortunately, return them, since
I do not know their sender’s address, but I feel
under no obligation to charter either camels or
whale - boats, in order to go and make their
acquaintance upon a larger scale.

As for the mere ferocity and killing powers of
Nature we are not without a taste of her capacity
even in that respect. Apart from the wild
creatures, which have to look out for themselves,
she exacts in weather like this a pretty stiff list
of victims from the old, the weakly, and the very
young. My energetic chow Mongo insisted upon
my taking him for a late run through the snow
this afternoon, and, as we stood for a moment
near the stile, there came up a melancholy little
chorus of bleatings from some sheepfold in the
valley below us. I peered over into the white
darkness, but could see nothing; Mongo licked
his lips, and I earnestly trust that he was not
thinking of mutton. It may be mere weakness
on my part, but I have always felt glad that in
my various communings with the good green
earth I have stopped short at the garden, the
wood, the bog, the hillside, and have never once

A GARDEN DIARY 97

eatable or not. They preferred, in fact, not to do
so; in ¢hezr family, they practically sent me word,
they never ate victuals that had not been selected
by themselves; other people might do so, and
they had heard that sparrows were less particular,
but it had never been ¢hezy custom. I felt—as
anyone would feel under the circumstances! To-
day for the first time, thanks to the friendly
connivance of the snow, this fastidiousness has
broken down. With elation I perceive my dis-
dainful blue neighbours, not only pecking at, but
actually sitting and swinging in the long-despised
brown rings. I am trying to bear my triumph
meekly, and am helped towards doing so by
reminding myself of the well-known fact that in
times of stress and famine social distinctions
are apt to break down. I shall have to wait
till the weather relaxes to see whether this
amiability is anything more than a truce, born
of the hour of trouble, and not intended to last
beyond it.

We are apt to talk as if the hyperborean con-
ditions were no concern of ours, yet, as Alphonse
Karr long ago remarked, we have only to sit
still to find that these, and most other extremes
of climate have come round to us. It was the
tropical or sub-tropical regions of the globe that
not long ago were good enough to send us
specimens of their weather, as enterprising trades-
people enclose samples of their goods in envelopes.

H

98 A GARDEN DIARY

There were many days last summer—to be accu-
rate, I believe, there were forty-three—when it
was by no means necessary to go to the Sahara
in order to ascertain what a condition of almost
unendurable drought could be like. For the
present I feel that these two samples will suffice
me. I cannot, unfortunately, return them, since
I do not know their sender’s address, but I feel
under no obligation to charter either camels or
whale - boats, in order to go and make their
acquaintance upon a larger scale.

As for the mere ferocity and killing powers of
Nature we are not without a taste of her capacity
even in that respect. Apart from the wild
creatures, which have to look out for themselves,
she exacts in weather like this a pretty stiff list
of victims from the old, the weakly, and the very
young. My energetic chow Mongo insisted upon
my taking him for a late run through the snow
this afternoon, and, as we stood for a moment
near the stile, there came up a melancholy little
chorus of bleatings from some sheepfold in the
valley below us. I peered over into the white
darkness, but could see nothing; Mongo licked
his lips, and I earnestly trust that he was not
thinking of mutton. It may be mere weakness
on my part, but I have always felt glad that in
my various communings with the good green
earth I have stopped short at the garden, the
wood, the bog, the hillside, and have never once

A GARDEN DIARY 99

stepped into the paddock or the farmyard. In
reading lately Mr. Rider Haggard’s Farmer's
Year, | found my pleasure a good deal interfered
with by the eternal and the detestable apparition
of the butcher! Whenever the small lambs, that
frisked so delicately, were beginning to grow
plump; whenever certain Irish bullocks, whose
vicissitudes one followed, were pronounced to be
not improving as they ought ; even when the old
milch cow, who had given so much good milk,
and had brought so many calves into the world,
began to flag—always there was that abominable
apparition in a smeared apron waiting for them
close at hand, or peering in sinister fashion from
round a corner. No, whatever other functionary
I might be willing to share my pursuits with,
assuredly I could never consent to share them
with Mr. Bones! The objection may be merely
sentimental, but so are most of our likings and
dislikings merely sentimental. As for these green
clients of ours, it is true that they do die pretty
‘frequently upon our hands, and the fact is, no
doubt, very distressing, the more so as in nine
cases out of ten we are aware that it is entirely
our own fault. In their case there are at least no
heartrending cries or groans, heard or unheard.
They go to their own place in peace, wafted as it
were by slow music towards the gentlest of dis-
solutions. While as for ourselves, if we are their
murderers, well, we manage to hold up our heads,

100 A GARDEN DIARY

and take particular care never to allude to the
subject. On the contrary, we put on an air of
extra cheerfulness, and make haste to plant some-

thing else!

A GARDEN DIARY 101

FEBRUARY I0, 1900

HAT resolution about the war and its news-

papers I still feel to have been the right
one. Unfortunately, like many excellent resolu-
tions, it has only one drawback, which is that
it is impossible to keep to it! The situation has
grown too strained; it clutches at one like a
demon; it rides one all day like some waking
nightmare. In vain I assure myself that the
proper attitude for all non-combatants is one of
absolute patience. That it becomes us just now
to study patience, as we might study one of the
fine arts; to learn, that is to say, either to go
about our own concerns, or else to wait till we
are told—as we might be at the end of an
operation—“ All over!” “All well!” This, I
have no doubt, is the proper and patriotic atti-
tude, only how is it to be attained? or who is
sufficient for such placidity? It is not so many
days since I opened my paper at eight o'clock
in the morning, and the message heliographed
by Sir George White to Sir Redvers Buller

102 A GARDEN DIARY

sprang to meet my eye. “Very hard pressed”
and immediately below it the comment—“ Here
the light failed”!

“Here the light failed!” That seems indeed
to be the summary of the whole situation. One
question at least we are all forced to ask, if not
with our lips, at least inwardly. What of Lady-
smith? Will it; can it now be reached? and if
not what is the alternative? Such thoughts
are gadflies, and would drive the tamest mad.
Restlessness gets possession of one. The thirst
for news, more news, ever more, and more, be-
comes a possession ; one that is no sooner slaked
than it revives afresh. My particular garden
boy has been turned into a mere newspaper boy,
and spends his whole days running downhill
to the station, on the bare chance of another
paper having come in, or of someone having
seen someone, who may possibly know some-
thing.

Has it often happened I wonder in the history
of a country that this sort of external and public
news—the news of the street and of the news-
paper—becomes to each individual his own abso-
lutely private news ; news that for the moment
seems to supersede even the acutest personal
grief ; news that makes the tears start, the pulses
throb, the heart, at apprehension of what may be
going to happen, literally stand still from fear?
The thought of Ladysmith, it is no exaggeration

A GARDEN DIARY 103

to say, amounts to an agony. One feels it in
one’s very bones. Fear of what its fate may
be is the last thought at night, and one awakens
to remember it with a sensation of despair which
would be ridiculous were it not so real.

For the odd part of it is that not a single
creature near and dear to me is shut up within
those walls. My interest in it is therefore a
purely external one, the interest of a citizen,
nothing more. If we—myself, and others in
the like case—feel it thus acutely, how must the
situation stand to-day, to-morrow, all these piti-
less, interminable days, to some ?

104 A GARDEN DIARY

FEBRUARY 12, 1900

I HAD occasion to go to Guildford yesterday
despite the weather, and met in the train
our eminent horticultural acquaintance, Mr. R. P.
We have always a good deal to say to one
another on the subject of our respective gardens,
although his is a long-established and renowned
one, ours such a callow young thing that it is
hardly fit as yet to be called a garden atall. On this
occasion, seeing that he was coming from London,
my first remark was not a horticultural one.

“Ts there anything fresh?” I asked. “News
seems so often to come in just after the morning
papers are out.”

‘“Fresh? Oh, you mean about the war?
No, I think not. Everybody seems to be pretty
sick over the whole business. I saw Sir F. J.
the day before yesterday, and he was very much
in the dumps about it. He says the Tommies
out there don’t like it one bit. That they have
got their tails regularly between their legs, and
I’m sure 7 don’t wonder.”

A GARDEN DIARY 105

“How dare he!—I mean I don’t believe a
word of that!” I exclaimed. ‘‘Anything else
I am willing to believe, but not that. We have
got our tails between our legs here at home if
you like; I am quite ready to admit that. But
they! Never!”

“Well, I don’t know. I only tell you what
I hear. They have had a baddish time, you
must remember. Stormberg and all that !—quite
enough to give anyone the jumps, / should say.
Of course it has been kept out of the papers.
In the papers the Tommies always figure as
heroes. Is Anemone Blanda in flower with
you yet?”—this with a sudden rise of anima-
tion.

“Anemone Blanda?” I repeated, feeling slightly
confused by the rapidity of the transition. “ Yes.
At least no. I think not—I haven’t looked
lately.”

“Tt is with me! Sixteen tufts in full flower—
beauties! I shelter them a bit of course, but
only to save them from getting knocked about.
You never saw such a colour as they are!
Yours were the pale blue ones, weren’t they?
I know there’s a lot of that sort in the trade
that are sold as Anemone Blanda, but they’re
not the right Blanda at all. Mine are as blue
as, oh, as blue as—blue paint.”

‘““We have numbers of bulbs at present in
flower,” I said severely. ‘‘Scillas and chino-

106 A GARDEN DIARY

doxas, and daffodils, and tulips, and Iris Alata,
and many others.”

“Ah, potted bulbs. They’re poor sort of
things generally, don’t you think ? Some people,
I believe, like them though.”

“We have Cyclamen Coum in flower out of
doors,” I added ; garden vanity, or more probably
deflected ill-humour, arousing in me a sudden
spirit of violent horticultural rivalry.

“Oh, you have, have you?”—this in a tone
of somewhat enhanced respect. ‘Don’t you
shelter it at all?”

“Not in the least!” I replied contemptuously.
‘We grow it out in the copse; on the stones;
in all directions. It is a perfect weed with us.
No weather seems to make the slightest
difference.”

I am really surprised that I did not assert
that we had Orchids and Bougainvillaas growing
out of doors in the snow! It is probable that
I should have done so in another five minutes,
for irritation sometimes takes the oddest forms.
Luckily for my veracity our roads just then
diverged ; my horticultural acquaintance getting
out at the next station, and I continuing on my
way to Guildford.

I don’t think I have ever in my life felt more
ruffled, more thoroughly exasperated than I was
by that most uncalled-for remark about the
Tommies. Had they been all individually my

A GARDEN DIARY 107

sons or my nephews I doubt if I could have felt
more insulted! I adore my garden, and yield
to no one in my estimation of its supreme
importance as a topic; still there are moments
when even horticulture must learn to bow its
head; when the reputation of one’s Flag rises
to a higher place in one’s estimation than even
the reputation of one’s flower-beds. ‘‘ Anemone
Blanda!” I repeated several times to myself in
the course of the afternoon, and each time with

a stronger feeling of exasperation. ‘Anemone
Llanda, indeed!”

108 A GARDEN DIARY

FEBRUARY 13, 1900

ie what lies beyond the next few weeks could
be suddenly laid open to us, what should
we see? It is, I am aware, rank cowardice
upon my part, but if by merely ruffling over the
blank pages of this diary which I hold in my
hand I could in an instant find out, I know that
I should refuse to do so, The same feeling has
beset me before now, but hitherto always with
regard to personal matters; never, so far as I
can remember, with regard to public ones. Three
weeks! It is not a very long time. Only a
few more crocuses and scillas will be out in our
little Dutch garden; only a few more oaks and
chestnuts cut in the copse, yet within that time
the fate of Ladysmith must be decided. Should
help fail to reach it—and it may well prove im-
possible—what shall we see? what will the
world see? what will our various enemies see?
Only two alternatives appear to be open: an
unbelievable surrender, and an only too easily
believable slaughter. That last of course is the

4

A GARDEN DIARY 109

central thought, the unendurable one; the vision
that hangs before one’s eyes day and night.
Death upon those iron hills; death without the
possibility of accomplishing anything; death under
the most unendurable of conditions ; shot help-
lessly, like the furred or the feathered beasts of
a battue. 1 write it down deliberately, in the
hope of thereby getting rid of it, for it haunts
one unendurably. With that perversity, which
makes us all at times our own most ingenious
torturer, my mind revolves continually around
the disaster before it comes, and fills up every
detail with the most diabolical distinctness. “Fall
of Ladysmith! Fall of Ladysmith! Destruction
of the garrison!” It seems to reverberate along
the roads; it presents itself upon every village
hoarding, as a friend of mine saw it several times
this winter upon those of the Paris boulevards.
Before I open my paper in the morning it seems
to be hidden under the folds, ready like an asp
to spring out and poison me. At night I fall
asleep to the thought of it, and in my dreams it
performs wild and Weirtz-like antics, projecting
itself in and out of them with all that monstrous
reduplication which the besetting idea has a
way of achieving for itself, when the brain
that originated it is nominally asleep, and at
peace.

110 A GARDEN DIARY

Lonpon, FEBRUARY 16, 1900

OD be thanked! God be thanked! one of
them, at least, is safe. Kimberley has been
relieved, and the others, assuredly the others will
follow? This leap from a midnight of gloom
to a midday of joy has been almost too great ;
life, even for the most placid, has become too
breathless, too crowded ; let me pause a moment
and recapitulate. I came to London upon Saint
Valentine’s day, the 14th; S. S. being on her
way south; circumstances delayed her a day,
and in that day all this happened. We had
gone to see a friend; she left me to take a turn
in the Park; in a few minutes she returned
breathlessly ; she had met a park-keeper and he
had told her the news. Five minutes more we
were both in the park; ‘had caught the same
inspired park-keeper, and had fallen upon him
simultaneously.
“Ts it true? How do you know? Who told
you?”

A GARDEN DIARY Ill

“Quite true ma’am. Quite true ladies. You'll
find it written up at the War Office.”

‘But how? Where did they get in from ?
The enemy were right across; so

“Well ladies, as I understand it were like
this. General French was sent north, and he
fetched a big circuit as it were so. And

With our umbrellas we drew a hasty but
effectual scheme of attack upon the park gravel,
then hurried away from our gold-braided in-
formant in the direction of Pall Mall.

Oddly enough St. James’s Palace did not
appear to be in the least irradiated by the in-
telligence! its grim old face remained as un-
responsive, and as dirty as usual. Everything
else however had caught the glamour. It shone
upon the cabs, or at any rate upon their cabbies ;
it lit up the sea of mud; it seemed to float along
the pavements scoured by a recent shower. Men
were coming out of the clubs in groups, talking
loudly ; everyone talked loudly ; not an acquaint-
ance was in sight, yet they seemed to be all
acquaintances ; more than acquaintances, friends,
dear friends; we looked benignantly at them,
and they looked benignantly back at us. In
London; in St. James’ Street! Tall or short,
stiff or pompous, young or old, it was all one;
they were brothers; brothers in a common joy,
brothers in a common relief from an all but
maddening dread. To smile for no reason in

112 A GARDEN DIARY

some perfectly decorous stranger's face seemed
to be the most usual, the most natural behaviour.
Safe! Safe! It was a chime, one which needed
no joy bells to make it sound louder. Surely for
us at least it was worth the strain, worth the
long suspense, the almost hopeless anxiety for
this? And Ladysmith? and Mafeking? The
turn has come ; the tide has changed! We shall
shortly hear the same news of them. We
shall be rejoicing over both of them to-morrow!

A GARDEN DIARY rag

SURREY, FEBRUARY 26, 1900

‘ee is a little tapestry fire-screen in

my sitting-room here, which has been
disturbing me quite seriously all this winter.
It represents a group of Boers—when the
tapestry was made I take it the word was
spelt doovs—of various ages and sexes, but
all equally convulsed with laughter. The
central figure is a big, square-jawed, good-
natured looking fellow, who holds aloft in his
hands a tiny, red-coated toy manikin, which he
is causing to perform ridiculous antics for the
amusement of a solid infant of two or three
years old, who is trying to reach it. At a
table close by an old man sits eating, in a
suit of what appears to be greasy grey corduroys.
He also grins with satisfaction at the perform-
ance. So does a woman—presumably the
mother of the solid infant— who looks back
laughingly from a doorway, over the dish which
she carries in her hands. Other Boers, or boors,
are to be seen in the background, all equally

I

114 A GARDEN DIARY

convulsed by the ludicrous figure cut by little
Red-coat; all distorting jaws—wide enough by
nature—into grimaces expressive of appreciation
at his ridiculous position.

Since the original of this piece of tapestry
was painted over three hundred years ago by
a painter named Teniers, it is not at all likely
that it was meant to represent our Boers of
to-day, nor that the ridiculous little manikin in
the red coat could be meant for an unfortunate
Rooinek! In spite of that fact I have been
unable for months to endure to look at this side
of my harmless little fire-screen. Every morning
on entering my sitting-room my first act has
been to push it up through its sliding groove,
until only a pair of prodigiously stout calves,
and one infant’s shoe remain to be seen. To-
day—and I write the fact down as a sign of
changed times—my fire-screen remains un-
touched! More than this, I have found a
malignant satisfaction in sitting down before it,
and, as I warmed my feet—damp with garden-
ing operations—surveying the row of grinning
faces, with the little red manikin still performing
his degrading antics in their midst.

“Laugh away, my friends!” I remarked.
“Laugh away! Make the most of your time.
Don’t disturb yourselves pray on my account.
The unfortunate Roozmek is no doubt, as you
say, a very ridiculous and helpless sort of

A GARDEN DIARY 115

creature. At the same time don’t be too sure
that he may not make a sudden leap yet out
of your fingers! Stranger things have hap-
pened.”

So many caricaturists, friendly and unfriendly,
have made capital out of this struggle of ours
that I rather wonder none of them seem to have
hit upon this familiar Teniers. That accuracy
that pertains to all genius is plainly visible,
moreover, as one looks at it, for the portraits—
evidently they are portraits—might be those of
any group of our worthy enemies to-day. As for
the old fellow at the table, it might be Oom Paul
himself in proper person; the same air of some-
what sanctimonious rectitude; the same broad
fleshy nose, the same protruding chin, the same
semicircular sweep of grizzled beard. It sets
one reflecting upon the persistency of national
types. Centuries rise, and grow, and fade away;
wars are made and cease again, but probably
few things in this fluctuating world change so
little, or with such a snail-like slowness, as the
few broad lines upon which the characteristics
of any given race have once got themselves

legibly inscribed.

116 A GARDEN DIARY

MarRCcH I, 1900

nae LY we need no satirist to point out the
ironies of life, for they are for ever with us!
Here is the latest in my own experience :—
After all my arrangements, my care about
telegrams, my determination not to be defrauded
of even half an hour’s satisfaction, I have heard
at last of the relief of Ladysmith from a child
by the roadside; from a child? nay but from a
baby, a smudgy-faced cottage infant, that could
barely walk, and certainly was quite unable to
talk! It happened in this wise. I was hurry-
ing along the lane on my way to take the
train for Godalming, having waited till the
last minute in hopes of a telegram which
never came. My morning papers had told
me nothing, or nothing beyond vague surmises,
which I was quite competent to provide for
myself; consequently I was famishing for more
substantial fare. I had nearly reached the
village, and was hurrying round the last corner.
Suddenly out of one of the cottage doors came

A GARDEN DIARY 117

this creature, dragging after it a stick with some-
thing red tied to it, which I entirely failed to
distinguish as having been even intended for a
flag. Either it stumbled, or from sheer force
of circumstances simply sat down in the middle
of the road, right in front of me. I was de-
layed an instant, and in that instant out flew
its mother, and plucked it to its feet again, with
a sound maternal smack.

“There ain't no sense in yer being run over,
is there, ye little fule, not if Ladysmith zs re-
lieved !”

“Ladysmith!” I was upon the two of them
in an instant, and had seized the bigger one by
the arm, though she was not an acquaintance of
mine.

“What did you say ? Zs Ladysmith relieved ?”

“Lor bless you ma’am, don’t you know? Why
hours and hours ago! We heard of it a little
afore eleven we did!”

“But are you certain? Is there no mistake
this time ?”

“Mistake? Bless you, no ma’am, there ain’t
no mistake! Why it were stuck up at the office
by Mr. Smith hisself, just gone quarter to the
hour. I was a-coming along with my husband’s
second breakfast, for he’s working now for
Mr. Bellew at the Mills. So as I was passing
close to the office ‘Whatever is all this about,’
thinks I, for there was eight or ten people

118 A GARDEN DIARY

a-Standin’ there, and a-readin’ somethink. And
with that I sees——”

I too had seen something! A flag—unmis-
takably a Union Jack—hanging near the
Church, I had overlooked it in my hurry. At
sight of that, excitement, combined with the
fear of missing my train, overcame my polite-
ness, and I flew down the lane in the direction
of the station.

The train was caught, but only by the
narrowest margin. I sprang into a carriage,
all but shaking hands as I did so with an
absolutely unknown old gentleman, who was
its only other occupant. Everyone knows the
shrinking, the more than maidenly dread of the
solitary travelling Ze, for the unknown travelling
she, however harmless the latter may look. On
this occasion public interest overcame even that
terror. As a river bursts through its banks, so
my old gentleman burst into a torrent of re-
pressed information. He had just come from
London; he had witnessed the scene at the
Mansion House; he described to me the Lord
Mayor coming to the window with a telegram
in his hands; he dilated upon the crowds, the
cheering, the flags, the block in the streets;
above all upon the central fact of the situation,
which was that he had himself been thereby
made twenty minutes late at his board, or
meeting, whatever it was. ‘For the first time

A GARDEN DIARY 119

in twenty-five years !—the very first time! They
couldn’t make out what had happened to me;
thought I must have been run over!” he assured
me several times between Guildford and Godal-
ming.

Well, well, it has come at last! All is right,
all is well, and we may go back to our own little
concerns; our housekeepings, and our market-
ings, our weedings, and our seed-sowing, with
lighter; let us hope, perhaps also, with a trifle
gratefuller hearts ?

120 A GARDEN DIARY

MarcH 3, 1900

Cye* good old Cuttle is leaving us; will be
gone by this time next week, and I feel
more sorry than seems quite reasonable! To-day,
when we began talking the matter over together,
a suspicious huskiness in my voice warned me
that I should do well to get away from the sub-
ject before my character for propriety was quite
lost !

It is better I know for many reasons that he
should leave. He cannot, indeed will not, un-
dertake sole charge of both flower and kitchen
garden, and to have anyone over him in either
department is not to be dreamed of. Moreover
his own home is four miles away, all up and down
a long crooked lane, and a walk like that after a
hard day’s work would be enough to try anyone
half his age. Under ordinary circumstances the
departure of a man who, though he has been with
us now nearly three years, came at first as a mere
jobber, would be a small affair on either side.
Our poor old Cuttle is however so identified with

A GARDEN DIARY 121

the very existence of this little possession of ours
that to lose him seems like losing a piece, and
moreover a considerable piece of it. If the pegs
and the marking-tapes have been our contribu-
tions, all the solid work, the earth turning and
delving, the trenching, the grass-sowing, the
cutting down of trees, above all the intermin-
able pitchfork operations, have been his, and his
satellite's. Surely then he has a right to regard
himself as its creator? Our good, old, kindly,
argumentative Cuttle! The familiar little nooks
and corners, cultivated, wild, half wild, will hardly
seem so entirely themselves ; hardly so intimately
familiar, without your friendly face!

122 A GARDEN DIARY

Marc 5, 1900

y arvaiael be praised for a leisurely life! I have
been visiting A. R. D., whose days are filled
with large and various activities ; whose responsi-
bilities are great ; whose hours of work are long ;
of leisure few and scanty. I admire such indomit-
able workers, with an admiration which increases
with every year I live, but I envy them, Oh ye
gods, not at all!

“Cling to the peace of obscurity; they shall
be happy that love thee.” Where, I wonder,
have I acquired that rather ignominious injunc-
tion? There is a seventeenth-century flavour
about it which makes it sound respectable, yet
at bottom I suppose it is merely a counsel of
laziness. Work, far from the curse, is the allevia-
tion of the curse; of that I am ‘as convinced as
anybody. At the same time a good deal of the
work that goes on around one seems to be rather
the product of the unasked volition of the worker,
than of any violent external necessity. Obscurity
and laziness moreover are far from interchange-

A GARDEN DIARY 123

able terms, seeing that the majority of the hard-
workers of the world are, and as a necessity
always will be, obscure. It is only in our little
fussy artistic or literary coteries that the two ideas
have attained to a sort of accidental connection.
Personally I have a relish, I might almost say
a passion for obscurity. The retort is of course
easy, and I am able to reply to myself that
the alternative has never been pressed upon my
attention with any very urgent insistence. That
is true, but does not really affect the matter.
Honestly, I do regard obscurity as a blessing,
apart from such satisfactions it may provide for
laziness. For what does it mean? It means
that you belong to yourself; that you have your
years, your days, hours, and minutes undisposed
of, unbargained for, unwatched, and unwished
for by anybody. It means that you are free
to go in and out without witnesses; free as
the grass, free rather as the birds of the air.
Further, I am inclined to think that only
Obscurity can properly and heartily enjoy his
sunsets, moon-rises, spring mornings, running
streams, first flowers, and all the rest of the good
cheap joys that lie about his path. The known
and admired person is expected to make capital
out of such matters, and he probably does so too,
poor fellow! Yet upon the untrammelled enjoy-
ment of such things how much, not only of the
satisfaction, but of the peace of life depends?

124 A GARDEN DIARY

As was said by one—who, by the way, was very
far himself from being an Obscurity—‘ Nothing
startles me beyond the moment. A setting sun
will always set me to rights, and if a sparrow
comes hopping to my window, I can take part in
its existence, and pick about the gravel.”

A GARDEN DIARY 125

MarcH 7, 1900

SENTIMENTALIST sleeps in nearly

everyone, whether he is aware of the fact
or not; just as we are all potential poets or
lovers, though some of us undoubtedly under
rather a deep disguise. My particular vein of
sentiment has lately taken the form of linking
together sundry small spots here with others
far away, upon the other side of St. George's
boisterous channel. Thus I have a Burren
corner, a West Galway corner, a Kerry corner,
a Kildare corner, even a green memento or two
of the great lost forest of Ossory, of which only
a few shadowy remnants survive to a remote, but
happily not an indifferent generation.

That pleasure is to be found in such childish-
ness might at first sight seem incredible. Since
it is so, there is no use, however, in refusing to
recognise it oneself. Take the Burren, for
instance. Burren the wild, the remote, the
austere, the solitary; to the few who know it
a region absolutely unique, with its cyclopean

126 A GARDEN DIARY

terraces sloping slowly to the waves, that moan
and mutter eternally around their bases. To
represent the Burren—even the Burren plants
—by three or four tiers of stones, which are not
even limestones, might well seem even to oneself
the very acme of absurdity. I refuse however
to be ashamed of it, and if my Dryas octopetala
and my Helianthemum canum, my Potentilla
fruticosa, and my Cystopteris fragilis would but
accept such hospitality as I can offer them;
would but pretend that fragments of lime rubbish
are slabs of limestone, I should be content, and
ask no more of them.

Some are kindly enough, but others are hope-
lessly supercilious, and I am at my wits’ end
how to cater for them. If distinguished visi-
tors would only condescend to mention their
wants plainly, how gladly, I have often thought,
would one hasten to satisfy them. When they
merely look disgusted, and, after sulking hope-
lessly for some months, die upon one’s hands,
what is an unfortunate host or hostess to do?
Here is Helianthemum canum, for instance,
which for the last nine months I have been
keeping from dying, as it were by main force.
Up to now I have in a measure succeeded, and
have even occasionally flattered myself that it
was beginning to resign itself. I know perfectly
well however that it has in reality made up its
mind upon the subject, and that one of these

A GARDEN DIARY 127

mornings I shall hurry out to my “ Burren”
corner, only to find Helianthemum canum look-
ing black but satisfied, having just succeeded
in dying triumphantly on my hands!

128 A GARDEN DIARY

ro

Marcu 8, 1900

te pace at which some plants, no matter

how discouraging the weather, manage to
swell out their tissues, and to spring aloft
under one’s very eyes, is an unfailing marvel,
and in this unpropitious soil the marvel seems
all the greater. So many quite common plants
decline to live in it in its natural state, that
one’s gratitude goes out all the more to the
few that are willing to put up with us as we
are. Foremost amongst such obliging vege-
tables stand the mulleins, and foremost amongst
the mulleins stands that really noble person,
Verbascum olympicum. If it has a fault it is
that it is 400 good-natured, and zoo vigorous. Not
only does it attain to its robust proportions at
a rate that takes one’s breath away, but further
it increases so rapidly, and with such a reckless
prodigality, as threatens to people the whole
neighbourhood with its descendants. Seeing
that each of such descendants requires as much
space for its development as does its parent,

A GARDEN DIARY 129

the perplexed gardener wonders at times how he
is to dispose of his too obliging property, and
ends by being not a little embarrassed by his
own wealth.

There was one day last summer, when, re-
turning home after a short absence, and going
into the garden, I was not a little startled to
discover what a congregation of the giants
we had unwittingly been entertaining. A giant
may of course be highly ornamental, and a
giant that is eight feet high, and of a bright
canary-yellow throughout the greater part of that
length, is almost bound to be so. There were
—I took the trouble to count them—one hundred
and eleven such giants at that moment all in
flower together in the garden. Now considering
that the proportions of that garden are not those
of Kew or Versailles, there is no denying that
one hundred and eleven bright yellow giants,
all occupying it at the same time, affected the
mind with a certain sense of surplusage! They
stood in rows along the grassy paths; they
shouldered one another, and everything else out
of any place they had been allowed to spring
up in; they appeared unexpectedly in out-of-
the-way corners of the copse, where the elderly
oak-scrub found itself reduced to the position of
a mere underling at the feet of these aspiring
biennials. To come suddenly round a corner

K

130 A GARDEN DIARY

was to receive an impression of being surrounded
by a crowd of gigantic, lemon-coated attend-
ants, all standing respectfully at attention, an ex-
perience naturally rather trying to mere modest
humanity.

There is another equally large and complacent
biennial, which, on account perhaps of that
very complacence, I find myself constantly
treating with the scantiest civility. It has not
I think quite the solid strength and impressive
bearing of the great mullein, but as regards
height, is often even more gigantesque. This is
the large variety of C£nothera biennis, familiar
to most people as CEnothera Lamarckiana, but
possessing no English name that I am aware of
beyond the generic, and not very descriptive
one of “Evening primrose.” There are a good
many varieties of evening primroses in gardens,
both perennials and biennials, and a few true
species, of which missouriensis, otherwise macro-
carpa, is undoubtedly one of the best. Lamarck-
iana on the other hand is hardly a subject for the
garden proper. As a tenant of steep banks, of
rough borders; of all sorts of half, or three-
quarter wild places, it has in this soil no com-
petitor, or only finds such competitors in the two
biggest of the mulleins.

I have been trying this year the experiment
of planting it along both sides of the green

A GARDEN DIARY 131

walk that crosses the upper part of our copse.
Whether it will endure the amount of shade
that it will find there remains to be seen.
It is a sun-lover by nature, like most of its
tribe, but its growth is so redundant that
a little curtailment of it will do it no great
harm. Though less spreading, it requires almost
more room than the verbascums, for, if the
space it covers is less, it is a true biennial,
never failing in my experience to flower the
year after it is sown. With Verbascum olymp-
icum this is not so. There are some here
at this moment that were sown three years
ago, and have not yet flowered. They will
do so no doubt this year, and with that event
the cycle of their existence ends. The worst
is that the gap they leave when they die is
large; moreover, as in the case of foxgloves,
the black stump is both an ugly object in
itself, and a difficult one to get rid of. When
are we to possess a really good perennial
foxglove I wonder? There is a_ perennial
yellow one, but it is a poor thing, hardly
worthy of its name. Perennial verbascums are
also few in number, most of the family showing
a more or less aloe-like fashion of flowering.
In their case one is able to console oneself.
The imagination grows a trifle giddy in fact
at the thought of every mullein one has seen

132 A GARDEN DIARY

spring from seed remaining as a permanent
possession ; always equally towering, and equally
clamorous of space and sunlight. Many-acred
would be the garden that could support them
all!

A GARDEN DIARY 133

MarcH 19, 1900

GOME way back in this diary I was unwise
enough to inveigh against that ‘pleasant
herb called Vanity,” especially in its relation to
gardens. A greater error I now feel there could
not be, and I am convinced that if we only took
care to cultivate a sufficient supply of it, it
would not only be a satisfaction in itself, but
an immense stimulus to the successful cultivation
of all other desirable plants.

This is not, I am aware, the general view. The
general idea being that the herb in question is a
mere weed, one that will not only grow every-
where, and at all seasons, but that grows the most
luxuriantly upon the poorest soil. Now this is
certainly not the case. What amount of it is
grown in other gardens I cannot say, no report
—or only a very indirect one—being forwarded
to any of the regular gardening periodicals.
That there are poor varieties of it I am willing
to admit, but a really good “strain” is always
worth securing, if it can be done legitimately,

134 A GARDEN DIARY

and so I am sure every successful gardener
would be the first to say. So convinced do I
feel of its value that there are many succulent,
and quite wholesome vegetables, that I would
gladly see thrown away in order to make room
for more of it!

That admirable essayist, and, from his own
account, horticulturist also, Sir Thomas Browne,
evidently grew a good deal of it in 4zs garden,
though with the odd humour that prevails
amongst its cultivators, he imagined that he
had very little, in fact none at all. Here is
the Religio Medict, so 1 have only to turn
to his panegyric of it, a panegyric all the more
satisfactory because he apparently intended it to
be the reverse. Perhaps though, as Mr. Pepys
would say, ‘That was in mirth.”

“I thank God amongst those millions of vices I
do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped this
one.” [Millions of vices! now may heaven help
thee, Sir Thomas! however one must remember
that he was a rhetorician.] ‘“ Those petty acqui-
sitions, and reputed perfections, that advance and
elevate the conceits of other men, add no feather
unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower
and plume himself over a single line in Horace,
and show more pride in the construction of
one ode, than the Author in the composure
of the whole book. For my own part, besides
the jargon and patois of several provinces, I

A GARDEN DIARY 135

understand no less than six languages; yet
I protest I have no higher conceit of myself
than had our fathers before the confusion of
Babel, when there was but one language in
the world, and none to boast himself either
linguist or critick. [ have not only seen several
countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the
chorography of their provinces, topography of
their cities, but understand their several laws,
customs, and policies; yet cannot all this per-
suade the dullness of my spirit unto such an
opinion of myself as I behold in nimbler and
conceited heads, that never looked a degree
beyond their nests. I know the names, and
somewhat more, of all the constellations in my
horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that
could only name the Pointers, and the North
star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole
sphere above me. I know most of the plants of
my country, and of those about me, yet . .

Nay Sir Thomas, dear Sir Thomas, let me
not follow thee longer in this vein, else might
one of the devoutest of thy followers lose some
share of that: devoutness! I hastily ruffle thy
pages over, feeling certain before long of coming
upon thee in a worthier one.

I have been longer over my search than |
expected, having set my heart upon finding one

136 A GARDEN DIARY

particular passage, which I failed to do, a fact
hardly to be wondered at, since, as it turned out,
there was no copy of Zhe Garden of Cyrus
in the house. I have found it however, at last,
safely hidden, like a sprig of myrtle, in the tight
embrace of an ancient notebook.

“But the quincunx of heaven runs low, and
tis time to close the first parts of knowledge.
We are unwilling to spin out our awaking
thoughts into the phantasms of sleep, which
often continueth precogitations, making cables,
and cobwebs, and wildernesses of handsome
graves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so
little, and the oneirocritical (!) masters have left
such frigid interpretations from plants, that there
is little encouragement to dream of Paradise
itself. Nor will the sweetest delights of gardens
afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dull-
ness of that sense shakes hands with delectable
odours; and, though in the bed of Cleopatra,
can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost
of a rose.

“Night, which Pagan theology could make
the daughter of Chaos, affords no advantage to
the description of order, although no lower than
that mass can we derive its genealogy. All
things began in order, so shall they end, and so
shall they begin again ; according to the Ordainer
of order, and of the mystical mathematicks of
the city of heaven.

A GARDEN DIARY 137

“ Though Somnus in Homer be sent to rouse
up Agamemnon, I find no such effects in these
drowsy approaches of sleep. To keep our eyes
open longer were but to act our Antipodes.
The huntsmen are up in America, and they are
already past their first sleep in Persia. But who
can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from
everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts
at that time when sleep itself must end, and, as
some conjecture, all shall awake again?”

Most melodious of rhetoricians, and most
whimsical of prose-poets, I bid you a good-night.
For by a coincidence which you would be the
first to appreciate, twelve o'clock is striking even
as I copy your last line, and I light a bedroom
candle with the sound of those dim prognosti-
cations, and thunderous conjectures of yours still
ringing sonorously about my ears. They do not
alarm me, however; nay I would gladly carry
them with me past the ivory gate. For, as you
yourself say—

‘Happy are they that go to bed with grand
music like Pythagoras, or have ways to compose
the fantastical spirit, whose unruly wanderings
take off inward sleep, filling our heads with
St. Anthony’s visions, or the dreams of Lipara,
in the sober chambers of rest.”

138 A GARDEN DIARY

Marcu 20, 1900

lle ae the defence of Vanity, to the defence of

England! ‘Attend to your transitions, my
boy,” is said to have been the reply of a veteran
orator, when pressed by a junior for some axiom
that would sum up the whole art of oratory in
a sentence. Literature also, like oratory, has to
attend to her transitions, else dire confusion,
and the just indignation of her readers, is the re-
sult. The diarist stands upon a slightly different
footing. If there is such a being as a literary
libertine, or harmless law-breaker, he perhaps
is entitled to the name. His pages are filled
up according to no settled plan, and with an
eye to no particular convention. He claims to
be free as the wind upon the tree-tops, free
as all our unwritten moods, which are rarely
quite the same for many consecutive hours.
Such at least, is the claim of this particular
diarist. To-day, for instance, leaving the garden,
and all that relates to it, to take care of themselves,
he has wandered away upon the theme, of all

A GARDEN DIARY 139

things in the world, of Zxvaszon, moved thereto,
partly by the desire which assails us at all times,
of dilating upon what one knows least, partly
by the equally inborn desire of running counter
to conventions upon which one has been brought
up, and which have been instilled into one’s
mind ever since one could walk unaided.

That the difference between soldiers and
civilians is an absolute difference, clear as glass,
hard as adamant, is one of those conventions.
Until the other day I never remember hearing
it so much as questioned. Yet how does that
fact now stand in the face of all that we
have been hearing, seeing, reading about, during
the last five months? If one thing more than
another has been brought home to us by this
present struggle it is that under modern con-
ditions a civilian—without the slightest preten-
sions to be anything else, so long only as he
is a good marksman—is not only as valuable,
but under many circumstances, far move valuable
than the average soldier, who as a rule can just
shoot, and nothing more, who has all the finer
parts of his art still to learn, and is not at all
likely to learn it when he has no more leisurely
target to practise upon than the living man.

It is upon the strength of this revolution
that I have been indulging this morning in a
private Invasion of my own, specially designed
for the exaltation of the rifle-shooting civilian, in

140 A GARDEN DIARY

whose doings I take a natural interest. Plans of
Invasion are always rather fascinating, whatever
the realities are likely to be. On this occasion
I have only allowed myself a very small and
cheap Invasion, just enough to put our rifle-
shooting civilian standing in it and asking how
he is to behave himself. It is not coming off in
the orthodox place, which I take to be nearly
opposite the bathing sands of Boulogne, but upon
quite a new theatre, namely upon the shores of
Dublin Bay. My invaders are probably French,
but may be anything else, it does not in the least
matter. Whoever they are they have succeeded
in evading the Channel Fleet, have run the gaunt-
let of the forts—no impossible feat—and have
disembarked some forty or fifty thousand strong
somewhere between the Bailey of Howth and the
foot of Bray Head.

As for their purpose in landing, so far as my
information extends, it is simply to do as much
damage as can be conveniently accomplished
within a given time. If the defending fleet re-
mains entangled elsewhere, and they can be
reinforced, so much the better. In any case
France can afford to lose some twenty or thirty
thousand recruits in a good cause. Moreover
he would be a poor sort of Frenchman who for
the sake of burning, harassing, shooting, raiding,
racking, ruining, and generally running amuck,
amongst British possessions, would not run the

A GARDEN DIARY 141

risk of capture, and the, not after all, very un-
comfortable, entertainment of a prisoner of war.
Here, then, stands our military position ; and now
comes the question of what in such a case, are
the rights and duties of the ordinary, peaceable
but rifle-shooting civilian ?

First let me clear the ground for myself
a little. In the course of certain profound re-
searches upon the whole art and practice of war
as laid down in the Débdcle, La Guerre et la
Paix, and other recondite manuals, I have learnt
that in the case of invasion the barrier between
civilians and professional soldiers is even stricter
and more menacing than at other times. The
soldier, let his capacity or incapacity be what it
may, is entitled in case of capture to honourable
treatment. He may be nearly starved to death,
if provisions run short, as the French soldier-
prisoners were after Sedan. He may be shot
out of hand, if he endeavours to escape, but with
these trifling exceptions he is a person having
definite rights and a definite status ; a person the
cold-blooded slaughter of whom would stamp the
perpetrator of such a deed as a brute, no gentle-
man, and a man generally to be avoided, even by
his own side. Turning now to the position of
a civilian during invasion, I learn, by studying
the same authorities, that he is an individual
without rights of any kind should he attempt—
no matter upon what provocation—to touch a

142 A GARDEN DIARY

weapon in war time. Although the weapon in
question be his own familiar rifle or fowling-
piece ; although the spot he proposes to defend
with it is his own hearth, with his own wife and
daughters standing beside it, he is liable—legally
and honourably liable, for that is the whole point
—to be led away from that hearth, settled com-
fortably with his back against the nearest wall,
and then and there uncomplainingly shot, his wife
and the rest of his family looking on. This I
am assured, or used to be assured, is the whole
law and the gospel, as the law and the gospel
is laid down for military purposes; a law the
carrying out of which is not only permitted, but
is the bounden duty of every honourable soldier
and Christian officer. In no other way, so I have
always been told, could the protection of the
civil. population be guaranteed during invasion.
If a man, merely because the property destroyed
is his own, were free to pot—we call it nowadays
to snipe—at the destroyer of that property, what
in such a case would become, one was asked, of
the poor defenceless soldiery ?

So much for the old rule, now for its modern
application. Bearing all this in mind, I look
away to South Africa, and what do I see? I
see a crowd of fighting men, upon hardly one of
whom—our own regulars and militia of course
excepted—can I succeed in discovering any of
the recognisable marks of a soldier. Here and

A GARDEN DIARY 143

there one or two such may be discerned, but the
bulk are purely and avowedly civilian. They
have walked out of their shops, their farms, their
offices, their counting-houses, their clubs, or
wherever else they come from, precisely as we
see them. They can shoot, or they think so; they
can ride—more or less—but in spite of these
accomplishments they are no more soldiers than
is the diarist who dips this eminently civilian pen
into this utterly unmilitary inkpot. If the German
commanders of 1870 refused to see in the francs
tereurs anything but unrecognisable freebooters ;
if Napoleon declined to accord the Tyrolese
marksmen and their heroic leader decent treat-
ment, mainly on the grounds that the latter was
an innkeeper, what would either of them have
said to the bulk of those fighting upon both sides
to-day in South Africa ?

All this, however, is merely preliminary. Our
invasion is no problematic peril this time, but a
peril that has actually arrived. They have come,
the aggressors! they are already standing upon
our sacred shore! the question now is what
are we to do with them? Can there be any
doubt upon that subject? Up, arm yourselves,
and away! high and low, young and old, brave
and the reverse—women first, as befits their
daring! Up, and at the villains! Let them not
carry their purpose an inch further. Let not one
of them return to boast of where he has been!

144 A GARDEN DIARY

Yet hark! what sound is that? Surely it is not
the luncheon bell? How exceedingly incon-
venient! Well, our invasion must be postponed
for the moment. After all, as Peter Plymley
wrote to his brother Abraham, “It is three
centuries since an English pig has fallen in a
fair battle upon English ground”; so, though
this particular struggle is coming off not on
English but Irish ground, it is not likely to be
all over before this afternoon.

A GARDEN DIARY 145

MARCH 20, 1900. 3 P.M.

qe interruption disposed of, we now return

to our Invasion. Owing, perhaps, to the dila-
tory nature of our proceedings, the invaders have
already left the coast, and pushed their way some
distance inland, the result being that matters are
beginning to look exceedingly uncomfortable for
the unfortunate invaded. The regular army in
Ireland happens to be at an exceptionally low
ebb. It has been heavily drawn on lately to fill
up vacancies at the seat of war, no one in authority
having of course dreamt of anything so improb-
able as a sudden incursion into Dublin Bay.
The Commander-in-Chief is reported to be half
dead with work and worry at the Royal Hospital.
His subordinates are behaving like heroes. The
“ Polis ”—otherwise the Royal Irish Constabulary
—are doing soldiers’ work, and doing it a good
deal better than most soldiers. Dublin is believed
to be for the moment safe, but the condition of
the country immediately south of it is critical to
a degree. No one seems to be certain what the

L

146 A GARDEN DIARY

opinion of the bulk of the people really is. In-
vaders, especially French ones, are historically
dear to their hearts, but the thing has been
sprung upon them this time with rather uncom-
fortable rapidity, and there is something extremely
sickening, so everybody admits, about the smell
of burning roofs.

Immediately upon landing, the enemy estab-
lished their headquarters, with no little strategical
discretion, in a naturally defensible position upon
the Wicklow Hills, from which point they are
cheerfully engaged in sending out raiding parties
over the whole of the adjacent country. The
portion of Kildare nearest Wicklow has already
been overrun, and most of its villages burnt,
despite their nearness to the Curragh ; Naas and
Sallins are reported as likely to be the next
assailed. The suddenness of the catastrophe has
strained the military resources almost to breaking
point, and the soldiers are forced to be kept
together, not only to defend the approaches to
the metropolis, but also in the hope of being able
to bring on a general engagement in some more
hopeful position than against the fortified camp
in Wicklow. The result is that, beyond a limited
number of constabulary, the general in command
of the district is unable to spare a man for the
protection of the smaller places.

Before that harassed and overdriven officer
there suddenly appears—the Civilian! How

A GARDEN DIARY 147

many, or how few, is a detail. Few or many
they are all civilians, undiluted, country-bred
civilians, good shots and good riders; men of
varying ages, but all with a more or less intimate
knowledge of the local conditions. They are—
but generalities are so unsatisfactory —let me
take one of them, and suppose myself to be
him, and I can be multiplied afterwards as
required. Here I am; big and strong, level-
headed and resolute; no boy—far from it—but
sound in health and vigorous, a local magnate
in a small way, fairly good at most sports, rather
more than fairly good at rifle-shooting ; a familiar
figure formerly at Wimbledon, more recently at
Bisley. Nothing can be further from my inten-
tions than to obtrude my services; I wish that
clearly to be understood. At the. same time if
I can be of any use under the circumstances,
you had better say so!

With South Africa fresh in all our minds, can
there be any question as to the answer? What
more desirable material could unfortunate, under-
manned commander have, or desire? As to
what he could do with me there are plenty of
answers ready. He might place me in certain
chosen positions, rifle and field- glass beside
me, and desire me to pick off certain of the
enemy’s officers, who are known to be surveying
the country. He might fill a country house or
two with me and others like me, and so prepare

148 A GARDEN DIARY

pleasant little surprises for those who expected
to find them vacant. He might do many
things, only—and this is the point I am trying
to arrive at—would he venture to do any of
them? If such a man as IJ am representing
myself to be were liable to be treated as
the Germans in 1870 treated French fighting
civilians, including women, and as the French
would no doubt have treated German ones, in
such a case it is hard to see how any responsible
commander dare run such a risk, however great
his need, or our willingness to serve. Risks
are of course of the essence of war, but there
are risks and risks. No one proposes to hunt
with the hounds, and then run with the hares;
to fight while fighting is reasonably safe, and
afterwards slip hurriedly back into mufti; to
play a soldier's part, yet claim the immunities
of civilians. Let the risks be no worse than
those which any soldier runs, and our faithful
civilian is satisfied, and asks no more. There
are, however, risks which it is hardly proper,
hardly I may say decent, for any self-respecting
man to run. That our typical civilian would be
really liable in these days to be shot in cold
blood, most people would find a difficulty in
conceiving, yet how does he stand officially ?
above all, how does he stand internationally ?
Have the risks of so monstrous, so utterly
abhorrent a contingency, been once and for ever

A GARDEN DIARY 149

removed? and if so, since when? This is the
point that one would like extremely to have
authoritatively cleared up, seeing that the number
of civilians, capable at a pinch of defending their
own homes, possibly even their own fields and
parishes, seem likely as the years go on to in-'
crease. Organised, or unorganised, the straight-
shooting civilian has arrived, and he proposes to
stay. He is still, however, an entirely new factor
in the body politic, and, like other new-comers,
he requires therefore to be neatly adjusted to the
rest. That under no circumstances he could be
of any use, few, I take it, would be bold enough
to assert. These are hardly days when any
possibly useful national asset can be left with
safety upon the shelf. Let our sturdy civilian
be able, in case of capture, to claim the same
amount of amenity that is accorded in all decent
warfare to the captured soldier, in that case
I should say—speaking, of course, merely as a
fool—that the more of him we had the better
and the more comfortable for all of us.

150 A GARDEN DIARY

Marcu 26, 1900

VIEW, a brand-new view, and in a garden

supposed to be viewless! That our best
point as regards scenery lies in the direction of
the Dorking downs, is I think beyond question.
The worst of it is that lying as they do nearly
due north of us, the more of them we show the
more the wind catches at our plants. Openings
upon this side have, consequently, to be thought
out with care, and executed only after long de-
liberation.

This time I think we are safe. -A space of
copse, ending in a fence, over which in summer
tree-lupins and everlasting peas tumble together
in friendly confusion, has been cleared. What
was lately solid copse, fifteen to twenty feet high,
has sunk to a mere russet-coloured growth, just
bracken height, no more; three feet to four
feet, that is to say, rising occasionally to five.
This makes a broadish space, in which bracken
and bramble, stunted elder, seedling birch, two or
three low thorns, and some wild guelder-roses

A GARDEN DIARY 151

sprout together. Past this, sweeping up from the
region of the larches, comes our new grass walk,
eleven feet wide, consequently a walk of pride
to people who have hitherto subsisted upon two-
foot tracks! With a fine easy curve it turns
away to the south, making for the gate which
divides the garden from the copse. That turn
being shared by the new opening, will I think
ensure that no new rush of cold air can come
tearing in upon the flower-beds. But for this no
hatchet or billhook would have been conducted
to the spot by me. Our new little view is—face
our neighbour’s opinions—a remarkably nice little
view, but did it display Alps or Andes, in place
of the despised Dorking downs, the right-minded
gardener would in the latter case hesitate ; might
even feel in the end that it would be too dearly
purchased.

Now for the next question, and a serious one.
Are we to allow ourselves to make any garden
use of this new clearing or not? This touches
upon the larger question of meddling generally.
To meddle, or not to meddle? Is it permissible
—as regards what lies outside the strict garden
boundaries—to interfere, or ought we to leave
the whole matter to Nature, in other words to
Chance ?

To lay down the law dogmatically upon this
point would be to lay it down for every garden
in Great Britain, or all not girded by kitchen

152 A GARDEN DIARY

gardens, or ploughed fields. Such a prospect,
though enticing, might take some little time to
carry out. Confining oneself for the moment
to the immediate case, one finds that like most
other cases, political, or horticultural, it is mainly
one of compromise. Were our copse beginning
to dwindle perilously, then, with a politician of
the last generation, I should exclaim ‘‘ Can't you
leave it alone?” Seeing that, though we have
been chopping assiduously ever since we came,
two-thirds of our space is still covered with un-
invaded copse, the case seems to me to be a fair
one for experiment.

That being decided upon, what to experiment
with becomes the next question, and here aspect
is clearly the ruling factor. That no early morn-
ing sun will reach the place even in summer is
certain. Four respectable oaks, of quite a gentle-
manly girth, stand along the fence, and forbid it.
They are not near enough for their roots to do
much damage, but the firstlings of the sun’s rays
they will certainly keep to themselves. This being
so, there is a limit clearly as to what will answer.
All things considered, especially with regard to
the fact that the brambles could hardly be dis-
lodged without a wrench which would disorganise
everything, I am inclined to give my vote for
more brambles, only this time civilised ones.
There are plenty fortunately to choose from.
There is, for instance, Rubus odoratus, showing

A GARDEN DIARY 153

a vigour, and a turn for colonisation hardly to be
exceeded by the very wildest of wild brambles.
There is the cut-leafed bramble; there is the
bramble of the Nootka Sound ; there is the white-
washed bramble; there is the salmon-berry ; the
cloudberry ; the bramble of the Rocky Mountains,
and others, all of which I already in fancy see
tossing themselves up and down the bracken, and
over their wilder brethren, in one delicious froth
of white or rose-coloured blossom.

Another, and a yet more fascinating vision,
sweeping over the field of my mind, has for a
moment given it pause. What.of a jungle, not
of brambles, but of roses? None of your trim
standards, of course, but some of the freer kinds
—Rosa alba, Rosa lucida, Rosa brunonis, with
some Ayrshires, some Dundee ramblers, and
one commanding thicket of the biggest of the
Polyanthas? It is a heady vision, and as a por-
tion of the natural “wildness” might intoxicate
the brain of Lord Bacon himself. In gardening
it does not do, however, to be too easily in-
toxicated. We have to keep a sober head ;
we have to look at the matter from all its
points of view; there is the question of aspect,
already touched upon; there is the question of
soil; above all there is the question of fertili-
sation—dear, delicate word! No, we must not
allow ourselves to be carried off our feet by
any vision, however roseate. We have always

154 A GARDEN DIARY

been a pair of sober horticulturists, and we will
continue to be so still. Our rose-jungle must
wait. It is only postponed: we will have it
yet, and in a better place. Even if we never
did have it, even if the postponement. had to be
an eternal one, is it not, one sometimes asks
oneself, the gardens that never have been planted
—‘‘whose flowers ne’er fed the bee”; whose dusky
scented walks no foot has ever trod, that yield
the deepest, the most unqualified enjoyment ?
“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
are sweeter.” What then of unseen gardens?
What wealth of blossoms! what a flood of sun-
shine, which yet never scorches! what green and
translucent groves, which at the same time are
never damp! what order, without the faintest
touch of formality! what wildness, what heavenly
entanglements, without so much as an approach
to confusion! But I perceive that I am again
wandering out of the domain of horticulture, into
a much less attainable region, and it may be as
well, therefore, to pause.

A GARDEN DIARY 155

Marcu 28, 1900

H AD we embarked upon a little stone house,
instead of a little red-brick one, should
we, I wonder, have had the energy to bestow
upon ourselves a small flagged and_stone-
walled garden as an adjunct to it? I doubt it.
For one thing flagged gardens are, I imagine,
costly affairs. Moreover I have never myself
seen a new one that appealed to me as quite
satisfactory. An old, grey-walled, and grey-
flagged garden, as part of an old, grey farmhouse,
or manor, is one of the most ideal possessions
that the heart of man could sigh after. Like
most other ideal possessions, to have it, it is,
unfortunately, necessary as a rule to have been
born to it.

Be this as it may, I have never ceased to
rejoice that we had the energy to embark at
once upon our little red-brick garden. The
comfort of knowing that there is always one
spot sure to be clean, sure to be dry, sure to be
a satisfaction to step into, even in such weather

156 A GARDEN DIARY

as we have of late been afflicted with, is a boon
that can hardly be overrated. As a mere
matter of appearance, the red-brick garden
seems to be at least as “natural” an appanage
of the red-brick house as the little grey-stone
garden of the grey-stone one. Both require
a certain amount of thought and contrivance,
especially as regards proportion, but once this
is attained, they soon learn to wear that inevit-
able aspect, which in garden making, as in all
the other arts, great and small, is the first,
and surely the least dispensable of all require-
ments ?

That the grey-stone garden is on the whole
the higher species of the two I admit. At the
same time the red-brick one has this great
advantage over its stony brother that it is
essentially a winter’s day garden, whereas the
stone one may, and in bad weather does, look
grim, to the point of being almost forbidding.
In both gardens some amount of hindrance is apt
to arise with regard to the laying down of the
walks. Flagging is a costly process, and where
the walks are very narrow, the laying down
of stone flags must be a matter of some
difficulty. The same applies, though not quite
to the same extent, to the red-brick garden.
That it ought to be tiled, just as the other
ought to be flagged, I feel sure. At the same
time good, red gravel, or even bricks, broken

"A GARDEN DIARY 15

fine, mixed with sand, and rolled, answers
fairly. Another question arises in the matter
of vases. Terra-cotta ones of the right design
are not easily come by in this country, and, when
come by, they often cost more than if imported
direct from Italy. These, however, are details,
while the question of what to plant in such
gardens is still more obviously an open one.
That the more of glaucous, grey-blue tints—such
as that found in the foliage of carnations—we
have the better, is I think certain, while if
small bushes are wanted, lavender will provide
the same shade. Where both walls and walks are
of red brick, blue, white and violet seem to be
the right prevailing colours; reds and yellows
only to be admitted slowly, and with precaution.
All this, however, savours of dogmatism!

The supreme moment for such little plots is
of course their spring-bulb time. Most people
call them Dutch gardens, and whether common
in Holland or not, the tulip undoubtedly seems
born to flourish in them. When the tulips are
over, plenty of other things come on however to
take their places. Pansies, for instance, never
look better than in such gardens, whether as a
carpet for tea-roses, or in beds by themselves.
The smaller campanulas, especially the white hair-
bells, the small double daisies, and a host of other
things of the same sort, answer perfectly, while,
if we want to stretch out our bulb season all

158 A GARDEN DIARY

we can, sparaxis, ixias, bobartias, the early white
gladioli, and others, are all ready to hand,
followed by the various lesser irises, winding up,
at perhaps their best point, with xiphium and
xiphioides.

The one indispensable point—here again dog-
matism appears !—is that such gardens should be
so close to the house as to keep up the idea of
being merely an adjunct, or flowery courtyard to
it. With this idea in our minds anything like
distance is fatal. You must be free to step into
your garden from your door, or with no more
interval than two or three steps, or the breadth
of a gravel walk. Garden fanatics as many of
us already are, and—as life increases in strenu-
ousness—more and more will yearly become, it
is our interest obviously to spin out our play-
time all we can. Now nothing so helps us
towards this, or so effectually counteracts our
Arch-enemy, as to have some little settled place
so cunningly contrived that even 4zs malignity,
backed by its worst agents—sleet, hail, fierce
winds, cutting rains,—fails to reduce it to a
condition of mere despairing sloppiness; mere
forlorn, and death-suggesting desolation.

A GARDEN DIARY 159

MarcH 29, 1900

Wie would believe in being seriously tor-

mented by a plague of oaks? Such
nevertheless has been our lot for the last few
weeks. As plagues go they are certainly better
than locusts, not to speak of others that we
read of in the Bible. For all that we find
them quite troublesome enough. Although so
young that they were only dropped from the
parent bough last autumn, they already cling
to the ground with all the tenacity of their
ancestors; the most exasperated pull causing
considerable fatigue to the puller, but producing
no effect whatever upon the youthful athlete.
Many of them are in the engaging condition of
being still attached to their natal acorn, which,
acting as a sort of grappling iron, effectually
hinders their being drawn up, even through the
soft soil of our flower-borders. Last year was
a most bountiful one for acorns, and every sty
in the neighbourhood revelled in plenty. Since

160 A GARDEN DIARY

we do not ourselves keep pigs, we hope that
another season we may be less blessed!
Biologists have a theory—they would call
it a law—which they call the law of ‘ Multi-
plication in Geometrical Progression.” By that
law the plants of any region would, under
favouring conditions, increase from a hundred to
a thousandfold every year. Happily for people
who wish to walk about they never really do
anything of the sort; on the contrary, the
population of any given district, apart from
man’s interference, remains for the most part
all but stationary. Until a parent is considerate
enough to die, and make way for it, every green
child that is born is bound to die in its infancy.
These little oaks of ours are an excellent example
of that fact, as well as of the summary fashion
with which Nature is in the habit of wielding
her maternal sceptre. They are, as anyone
can see, as hale and as vigorous as could be
desired; hearts of oak, every one of them, and
they know it. Not an oaklet amongst them but
sees itself in nightly visions as an umbrageous
giant, lifting high in air a mighty trunk, and
spreading out branches that all the fowls of the
air could lodge upon with comfort. Alas, for so
much prospective dignity! Every one of these
youthful monarchs is doomed to an early death,
and it is merely a question of what stage of im-
maturity he will be called upon to perish at!

A GARDEN DIARY 161

There is yet another biological dictum which
these deluded young sovereigns may serve to
illustrate. Before Darwin, or any other exposi-
tor, laid it down in prose, it had been already
laid down in unforgettable verse—thus :—

“No being on this earthly ball
Is like another, all and all.”

Nothing certainly on this earthly ball can be
truer. Never two living beings came into the
world precisely alike, and these baby oaks differ
each of them in some imperceptible fashion from
its baby brother. Here is a handful plucked at
random out of the flower-beds that will prove
it. In this one that I hold in my fingers, it is
easy to see that the future giant would have
been a somewhat thick-set, and stunted colossus.
This one again has already a tendency to self-
division, and would probably have ended by
becoming forked. Yet again this one would, if
it had been spared—appropriate phrase—have
grown up to be the very ideal of oaks; a glory
of the woods; star-proof; sun-proof; magnifi-
cent in its life, and in its death destined to
be converted into the very straightest and most
wind-defying of masts. This last, by the way,
is not a loss that we need delay to weep over,
seeing that long before it could have reached
maturity, masts will in all probability have gone
to join the other relics of the past; even yachts

M

162 A GARDEN DIARY

being converted probably by that time into little
electrical monsters, with ingenious arrangements
for enabling them to become submarine ones,
whenever the wars of that date threaten to inter-
fere with the comfort of their owners.

Poor baby oaks! They gave me a great
deal of trouble to pull up, and now, with that
inopportune remorse, sometimes ascribed to
murderers, I am disposed to grow quite pitiful
over them. They have been so spoilt, moreover,
in the process, that they are not even worth
putting into a flower-vase. Imagine having been
potentially capable of serving as the tutelary
deity, the beloved shade, the rendezvous of all
the lovers of a parish for possibly half a dozen
generations, and being found actually unfit to fill
a bow-pot for an hour! Could poet or pessi-
mist hit upon instance of malicious destiny more
dramatically or tragically complete ?

A GARDEN DIARY 163

APRIL 2, 1900

Ae last we are in April. The winter corner is
turned, and a new era entered upon. But
April this year is an incongruous sort of an April,
though the incongruity is possibly only in one’s
own fancy. We are apt to fashion our notions
of the becoming, and to expect Nature to con-
form to them. A desperately dry April it certainly
is. The days are hard, and cold, parched, and
nipping ; at night the wind howls, but with no
accompaniment of desirable drops. The garden
cries to the sky for rain, but no rain falls upon it,
yet the only days I have spent in London were
days of unceasing downpour. Such favouring of
the Metropolis at the expense of the country is
manifestly unjust.
April is such a lovely word, that it ought also
to be always a lovely thing. If one imagines it
—or rather her—as she might appear to us in
dreams, or an allegory, we should deck her out
of course in the tenderest green. Floating gossa-
mers would hover around her; small pink buds

164 A GARDEN DIARY

would bend down to kiss her small pink feet. So
encompassed she would come to meet us along
the wood paths, a vision of grace and maidenly
beauty ; the traditional smile on her lips, the
equally traditional tear in her eye. She would
look up in our faces with an appealing glance,
and then begin suddenly to weep, she herself
knew not why. A maiden with the most maidenly
of dreams, enclosing a whole enchanted world of
visionary hopes, fears, delights, anticipations, which
it would be the dull business of Experience to
dissipate as the year rolled on.

But April, as she presents herself before us
this year, is not that sort of maiden at all. She
is a remarkably uncompromising sort of young
woman, with hardly any visible green about her
costume. She does not care for the colour
apparently, but prefers drabs, and greys, and
browns. As for tears she is not nearly as much
given to them as we could desire. She thinks
poorly of them evidently, and considers them out
of date. Her smiles too are doled out in the
same penurious fashion as her tears. She gives
us what no doubt she considers our due of both,
but nothing to spare. Her impulses are all dull,
decorous, mechanical; as for her feet, far from
being bare, they are clad in warm winter shoes
and stockings, which indeed they have every
reason to be.

Doubtless I am old-fashioned, but I cannot

A GARDEN DIARY 165

admire such sedate damsels. Give me a little
more spontaneity ; a little more youthful impetu-
osity and dash—

“ Robes loosely flowing, hair as free ;
Such sweet neglect more taketh me.”

To drop metaphor, which has a_ tendency
to drop itself, we are in despair over this
dryness, and as a consequence have had to
resort already to the aid of our watering-pots.
Now in April the watering-pot ought in my
opinion to be still reposing in its tool shed, with
the early spider weaving his first web across its
spout. So strongly is this impressed upon my
mind that I feel as if there were something illicit,
something I might almost go so far as to call
unprincipled, in resorting to its assistance thus
prematurely. After all though, a gardener’s first
virtue, I reflect, is to save his plants, and unless
we promptly take some step of the kind, ours for
a surety will for the most part die.

166 A GARDEN DIARY

APRIL II, 1900

Cy advantage we have secured out of our
dry April. Ever since our arrival we
have wanted an additional water-stand for the
garden, but various causes, chiefly I think
dislike to making any more inroads upon the
bracken, have hindered us from setting one
up. When it comes to dragging watering-pots
several hundred yards while the year is still only
three months old, imagination pictures what
fatigues will be ours in July and August. A
new stand accordingly has been established, and
an ugly scar the laying of it has made through
the copse. Now however that part of the busi-
ness is done; the grass sods, carefully laid on
one side, are back in their places again, and one
must only hope that the bracken, safely curled
away underground, knows little or nothing about
the transaction.

As its practical outcome we have, rising out
of the ground, a short stiff pipe of lead, which
has been more or less dexterously hidden away

A GARDEN DIARY 167

in the heart of one of our stunted oaks. I am
ashamed to confess the intense, the childish
satisfaction I found this morning in turning our
new tap for the first time, and seeing the water
gush out in one free bound, as if glad of its
escape ; looking as clear too, as if newly come
from the heart of a glacier, or upon its way
to the edge of some Atlantic cliff, there to be
caught by the wind, as I have often seen it
caught, and sent back high overhead, in one
dancing, rainbow-coloured feather of light.

“Take you at your commonest, at your ugliest,
and what a lovely thing you are!” I thought,
as I let the tap run for a few minutes, and stood
to watch the water beginning to create little rills
and runnels for itself, and to feed the dry copse,
the dead leaves, brambles, withered bracken,
everything within reach, with the first full rush
of its benevolence.

I do not know that I am more given than other
people to proclaiming aloud that I have too many
blessings ; that Nature has been too generous, and
too bountiful in her benefits on my behalf. Now
and then however it has occurred to me to ask
myself what I—or, for that matter, other people
—have done to deserve this free unstinted gift of
clear, pure water. In and out of our houses;
through our pipes and conduits; into all our
tubs and washhand basins, it flows and flows
continually, and we take it as an absolute matter

168 A GARDEN DIARY

of course that it should do so, rarely even taking
the trouble to say ‘‘ Thank you.”

By way of commentary upon the above reflec-
tion I have just taken up a newspaper from the
table, and this is what has met my eye. It is an
extract apparently out of a letter home.

“We found some water at last near Stinkfon-
tein””—suggestive name—‘“but the place was
very shallow, and the mud black and deep. We
could not get the horses to look at it, but the
men drank it greedily, and drank it too at the
only place where they could reach it, which was
where the hoofs had churned it into a blackish
liquor, thick as soup.”

Poor Tommy! Yet there are people who
declare that you are not fond of water! Evi-
dently this is another of those libels of which
you have been too long the subject.

A GARDEN DIARY 169

APRIL 17, 1900

hea west wind this morning had a rolling
sonorousness which sent my thoughts flying,
swift as light, across all the little intervening
ridges, over the plains, over the villages, across
endless housetops, through multitudinous suburbs,
over the big, ugly, stately town; out again,
over fresh sweeps of more or less encumbered
green fields, hedgerows, lanes, roads; past
meadows and orchards, redolent of centuries
of care; past brickfields and coalfields, redolent
only of defiling greed; over a fretful space of
sea; across more fields, less enclosed, less
cultivated, but certainly not less green. On
and on breathlessly, until I stood—free of all
encumbrances, free of any thought of luggage,
conveyance, or the need of a roof to shelter
under—upon a very familiar spot, close to the
tumbling breast of the Atlantic.
The clearness, or lack of clearness, with which
certain familiar spots rise before the eye is one
of the minor mysteries of life; mysteries which

170 A GARDEN DIARY

like many larger ones we are never likely to clear
up entirely to our satisfaction. There are
moments in my experience when such a spot
as this that I am thinking of, is in a sense more
vivid to me away from it than if I were standing
there in person; when every tuft of bog myrtle
becomes clearly visible ; every yard of “drift” or
of “boulder clay” shows in its entirety ; the very
stones fallen from them, and lying like small
cannon-balls upon the beach, being all able to
be counted. The waves toss; the clouds roll
wearily; the seaweed rises and falls, as it
naturally would. No scene in a cinematograph
could by any possibility be clearer.

This is the vivid condition. An hour later
one tries to conjure up the same familiar scene,
and not a detail will rise to one’s bidding. Not
a leaf, not a stone, not a wave will become
manifest. Clearness is gone. A dull, blurred
impression is all that remains. The landscape
as a whole may be there, but its details are
lost. That living, multitudinous - tinted fore-
ground has vanished as though it had never
existed.

It must have been the scent of the bog plants
which conferred that momentary impression upon
me this morning. That scents “open the
wards of memory with a key” we all know.
They do more, for they sweep away for the
moment those films which ordinarily cover the

A GARDEN DIARY 171

mental eye, so that during that moment we really
do see. Of all scents commend me for this
awakening quality to the boggy ones. They
alone in my experience are really transformatory.
For the brief time that their aroma is in one’s
nostrils one actually zs in the place that they
recall.

It is a proof of the demoralising effect of
ownership that one of my first impulses nowa-
days is a desire to transfer the plants that I see,
sometimes that I merely remember, from where
they are to where I happen to want them. Yet,
when one thinks of it, what an outrage! Why
should one desire to do anything of the sort?
Conceive the contrast, the downfall; the roomi-
ness, the elemental breadth, the cool, rain-satu-
rated comfort of the one setting; the cramped
limitation, the unpalatable dryness of the other.
Not that I would for worlds disparage our own
faithful coppice ; to do so would be to show my-
self the merest of ingrates. Was I not an alien,
and did it not befriend me? Was I not roofless,
and did it not offer its soil for us to lift a roof
over? Still, when one tries to place the one
scene beside the other the contrast becomes
farcical. The very wind—the cold, unsentimental
wind—must be sensible of such a difference.
How much more then a root-extending, acutely
sensitive, living thing !

I have a profound affection for bog plants,

172 A GARDEN DIARY

which I hope some of them respond to, for they
thrive fairly. Others are exceedingly difficult
to establish, and rarely look anything but
starved and homesick. Amongst these are
the butterworts. Why the translation should so
particularly affect them I have yet to learn,
but the fact is unmistakable. Not all the
water of all our taps, not all the peat of all
our hillsides will persuade them to be contented.
In vain I have wooed them with the wettest
spots I could find; in vain erected poor sem-
blances of tussocks for their benefit; have puddled
the peat till it seemed impossible that any
creature unprovided with eyes could distinguish
it from a bit of real bog. No, die they will,
and die they hitherto always have.

The sundews, on the other hand, are much
less hard to please. Indeed, considering that
at least one species grows wild within a few
miles of us, it would be the height of affectation
were they to refuse to tolerate us. I find myself
falling into the habit of thinking that I am inhabit-
ing here a region of eternal thirstiness, devoid of
the materials of sustaining any vegetable more
requiring in the matter of water than a gaillardia.
Yet, when one considers the matter seriously,
England is not precisely the Great Sahara!
There are brown streams, purling brooks, drip-
ping wells, rushy meadows, even puddles and
bog-holes, to be found a good deal nearer to

A GARDEN DIARY 173

this spot than the Atlantic. We are purblind
citizens all of us; apt to dogmatise largely upon
an uncommonly small substratum of knowledge.
Like the moles and the blindworms we know
remarkably well the few inches that we can
actually feel and touch; but with regard to what
John Locke calls “the rest of the vast expan-
sum,” that we give up to fog and _ practical
non-existence, thereby saving ourselves from the
trouble of knowing anything about it.

174 A GARDEN DIARY

APRIL 18, 1900

yu even dull, and quite unfeathered bipeds
have their glimmerings now and then of
sense, and of instinct. There are hours in which
the great Mother befriends them, as she does the
rest of her two-legged, four-legged, or many-
legged offspring. That she should continue to
do so is I think amiable, and rather surprising
on her part; when one considers how they dis-
obey and deride her ; how they sit day after day
in stuffy rooms, eating dinners of many courses ;
hardly ever getting up to see the sun rise, or
doing any of the other things she directs, and
which her better-behaved scholars invariably do.

In spite of this, when the right winds blow,
when the spring is afoot, and the leaves are be-
ginning to bud, she allows the old visions to return
to them. She brings back the old voices from the
old haunts, to whisper once more in their ears, so
that for the moment they forget the years that
the locust has eaten, and their own incredible
stupidities, and all that has been, and time rolls

A GARDEN DIARY 175

itself up like a scroll, and they are once again
in very deed, though but for a little while, as
they once were.

There is a spot in a hill-wood barely a mile
from this door, to which I have been a good
many times this spring, and which each time I
go gives me a curiously homely feeling. Ireland
seems to breathe in it, even West Ireland, though
I can hardly say why, the only apparent reason
being the rather unpatriotic one that the fir
trees, of which the wood consists, have been
sadly neglected. It covers an unusually steep bit
of hillside, and below expands into a tangle of
brakes and brambles, circling about a hollow
place, which in my mind’s eye I conceive to be
a boggy pool, though, were I to clamber down
to it, I should probably find it to be dust-dry.
Far and near not a roof is within sight, else
were that illusion for a certainty lost. More-
over, the only bit of distance visible seems to
be houseless also, and in these grey, rather
despondent - looking spring days wears just a
touch of that wistful indefiniteness, the lack of
which, one is apt to assert, amongst many beau-
ties, to be England’s most conspicuous blemish.

Until the last great summons comes for us, we
can never, happily, entirely lose what has once
formed a part of our little mental patrimony.
We may deliberately discard it, or, what oftener
happens, it may get unintentionally overlaid with

176 A GARDEN DIARY

other matters, so that it appears to be gone, but
a little search, or some happy accident, brings it
flying swiftly back, and the pleasure of that
repossession is so gteat that it seems almost
worth while that the thing should have been
temporarily mislaid.

Of all such inalienable possessions the love of
out-of-door life is surely the most inalienable ?
And is it not profoundly natural that it should
be so? For this race, to which one belongs,
was after all born under an open sky, even
though every individual of which it is composed
may have been born to-day under roofs. We
do not any longer require the comfort of shelter-
ing boughs, nor yet to nestle at night in moss-
lined hollows, but the thought of such places still
lurks in our blood, and the life of out-of-doors
remains as much a part of the natural inheritance
of a man, as it is a part of the inheritance of a
fox, or of a wood-pigeon, or of a tiger moth.

Back, back—like the touch of half-forgotten
greetings—comes a flood of remembrances to
the heart. Back flows the old stream along its
old channels. No longer tearing along with a
wild tumultuous rush, but still sweeping by,
full and clear, with a pleasant afternoon patter,
and showing many an unlooked-for nook,
many a forgotten corner along its banks, once
we surrender ourselves frankly to its guidance.
Back the scenes return; ever back and back;

A GARDEN DIARY 177

now vividly ; now with a dream-like vagueness ;
scenes, some of them, that we have ourselves
known, others to which we have only as it were
a communal right. Waking hours under the
flickering shade of leaves; life as it was lived in
a larger, freer world; a world without walls or
hedgerows ; without sign-posts, or notice-boards ;
a world without towns, or smoke; without dust,
or crowds.

It has been often debated, and not perhaps
very profitably, which of two types of men see
deepest into that great arcanum of life which we
roughly call Nature. Is it the Man of Science,
whose business it is to chronicle what he sees
and learns, but who must never travel half an
inch beyond his brief? who must cling to fact, as
the samphire-picker clings to his rope, and never
for an instant relax his hold of it? Or is it on
the other hand the Singer, who is only too ready
to toss all fact to the winds, and to account it
mere dust, and dregs and dross, so he can
awaken in himself, and pass on to others, some
hint, some passing impression, of what he would
probably himself call the soul of things?

Time was when the barrier between these two
types was held to be an absolutely impassable
one. We call ours a prosaic age, but it is cer-
tainly one of its better points, and a mitigation
of that prose, that those barriers hardly appear

to us so absolutely impregnable as they once
N

178 A GARDEN DIARY

were. If we have never seen a great scientist
combined with a great poet it is at least not in-
conceivable that the world may some day behold
such a combination. Even within the generation
just over, and in utilitarian England, there have
been one or two men who have given us at all
events an inkling of so desirable a possibility.

Given a mind that can feed on knowledge,
without becoming surfeited by it; a mind to
which it has become so familiar that it has grown
to be as it were organic; a mind for which facts
are no longer heavy, but light, so that it can play
with them, as an athlete plays with his iron balls,
and send them flying aloft, like birds through
the air. Given such a mind, so fed by know-
ledge, so constituted by nature, and it is not easy
to see limits to the realms of thought and of
discovery, to the feats of reconstruction, still more
perhaps to the feats of reconciliation, which may
not, some day or other, be open to it.

A GARDEN DIARY 179

APRIL 26, 1900

Ble reddening of our sundew patch has

brought back to my mind various sundew
experiments, carried on long since, with all the
zeal of youth and enthusiasm. In this, as in
every other walk of biology, the investigators of
those days, amateur and scientist alike, followed
with docility in the wake of their master. Darwin
played the tune, and all the rest of us, great and
small, danced to his piping.

To the best of my recollection my own investi-
gations were chiefly carried on standing stork
fashion upon a tussock, surrounded by an inky
opacity, which threatened to draw the investigator
downwards with a clutch, more tenacious and
formidable than that of any sundew. To the
faithful Irish botanist the poverty of the Flora
of Ireland as compared with that of Great Britain
has always been a serious humiliation. In this
respect these Droseracee form an exception.
Of the few British species all, I think, are to
be found upon the bogs of the West of Ireland,

180 A GARDEN DIARY

the largest of them—appropriately called anglica
—being much commoner in Ireland than else-
where in these islands.

A very slight acquaintance with their habits
could hardly fail, I think, to convince even the
most sceptical that their roots are mainly em-
ployed as anchors, and water-pipes, while for
a supply of that nitrogen which every plant
requires they are chiefly, if not exclusively,
dependent upon insects. Of these the two lesser
species would appear to content themselves with
the smallest of Diptera and Lepidoptera, whereas
anglica will occasionally tackle larger prey, and I
have myself seen it with a good-sized moth (a
noctua) attached to and nearly covering the entire
disk, the long tentacle-like hairs being closely
inflected over the victim, whose struggles are
soon put an end to, once the sticky secretion
exuding from the hairs closes above the trachea.
When the leaf re-opens nearly the whole of the
insect (be it fly, moth or beetle) will be found to
have disappeared, even the wings being reduced
to a few glittering fragments. No animal sub-
stance in fact comes amiss; fragments of bone,
hide, meat-fibrine, and even, according to one
authority, tooth enamel, softening, and in time
dissolving under the powerful solvent secreted
by the glands. Whether the Droseracee have
the power of attracting their prey, or must wait
until chance sends it within their clutches, seems

A GARDEN DIARY 181

undecided. In the case of a little Portuguese
relative, one Drosophylum lusitanicum (growing,
unlike other members of the family, upon dry
hills in the neighbourhood of Oporto) such a
power appears undoubtedly to exist, the people
of the neighbourhood using it as a flycatcher,
and hanging it upon their walls for that express
purpose.

This meat-eating habit or instinct (whichever
we may agree to call it) is shared to a greater or
less extent by all the Droseracez, such as the
Venus’s fly-trap, the Byblis gigantea of Australia,
and a small but curious aquatic cousin, known to
botanists by the formidable name of Aldrovanda
vesiculosa, whose tiny leaves have the power of
shutting vice-like over every unfortunate insect
which approaches them, and which thus finds
itself enclosed in a floating prison. If eminently
characteristic of them, this carnivorousness is by
no means confined however to the sundews, and
their allies. If anything the Pinguiculas, for in-
stance, rather exceed them in voracity. Few
plants are at once so beautiful, and so interesting
from the problems to which their distribution
gives rise, as is the great Irish butterwort —
Pinguicula grandiflora. Unknown to England
and Scotland; unknown to the whole north of
Europe; unknown even to the rest of Ireland;
its viscid green rosettes may be seen on most of
the lowlands of Kerry, and upon many of the

182 A GARDEN DIARY

bogs of south Cork. For nine months of the
year that is all that there is to see. In June a
flower-stalk rises out of the centre of the rosette,
crowned with a pendulous bell of the most
pellucid, the most ethereal shade of violet. Hap-
pily for the susceptibilities of the investigator
this is not the flesh-eating portion of the plant,
that office being strictly confined to the leaves.
Stooping down and examining these leaves we
find that, whereas some are flat, others are
slightly dog-eared along the edges. If further
we unroll a few of the dog-ears we discover the
remains, not of one alone, but often of a dozen
unfortunate flies and midges, in all stages of
assimilation ; some already half-digested, others
still alive, and struggling to escape from their
glutinous prison. If further we place a fragment
of bone, of meat, or indeed of any nitrogenous
substance, upon the edge of one of the fully
expanded leaves, we shall find that little by little
the leaf begins curling upwards, until the two
edges approach, and then join. Finally the
morsel is lost to sight, becoming entirely im-
mersed in its bath of secretion, where it remains
until all its nutritive parts are absorbed.

Viscous as the whole surface of the leaf is, it
does not seem as if this process of digestion was
carried on with the same rapidity in the centre
as at the sides, and, as there are in this case
no long hairs to act as locomotive organs, it

A GARDEN DIARY 183

often happens that one may see flies and other
small insects lying partially dried up and useless
in the centre of the leaf. In one respect this
viscidity appears at first sight to be inconvenient,
the entire surface of the leaf being often covered
with twigs, leaves, particles of boggy fibre, and
such-like matters, which the plant has apparently
no power of getting rid of. In the end this may
prove however to be an advantage rather than
otherwise, since it has been ascertained that the
Pinguiculas feed, not alone on animal, but also
on vegetable substances; the extreme stickiness
of the leaves causes them moreover to act as a
chevaux -de-frise, thus hindering small but
industrious ants from making their way up the
flower-stalks to the corolla.

Yet another little group of bog - plants,
namely, the Utricularias, or bladderworts, are
meat eaters. In their case the fly-catching
apparatus is situated, not in the leaves, but in
certain small attached air - bladders, which are
constructed almost exactly upon the principle of
an eel-trap, and which, if opened, may generally
be found to contain flies. Thus we see how
discovery may be anticipated, and how one of
man’s most boasted attributes—that of the
Destroyer—may be wrested from him by a
miserable little green bog-weed! Before the
first Celtic hunter flung spear at wolf or stag ;
before the Firbolgs, or the Tuatha-da-Daanans

184 A GARDEN DIARY

—cunning workers and craftsmen—had set up
any gins or traps in the wilderness; before the
first monk or abbot had arranged ingeniously
devised weirs, wherein the salmon—seemingly
by miracle—rang a bell to announce its own
arrival; before any of these things had been
done, or thought of, little Utricularia minor and
little Utricularia intermedia had set up their
own primitive green eel-traps in the yet un-
visited wastes of Iar-Connaught.

A GARDEN DIARY 185

May 5, 1900

po events are more gratifying than to find

oneself taken more seriously by other people
than by oneself, and I am pleased therefore to
discover that our palpably artificial little pond
has been taken possession of by a colony of
frogs, which must have travelled some distance
to make its acquaintance, frog-haunted ponds
or even ditches being by no means abundant
on these dry hillsides of ours.

I have never myself met more than one
species of frog in these islands. Professor Bell,
however, speaks of another, Rana Scotica,
which he held to be distinct, but the difference
seems to be mainly one of size. It is ex-
tremely difficult to persuade anyone who has
noticed the multitudes of frogs which swarm in
Ireland that they were only introduced there
artificially, and as lately as the beginning of last
century. Such, nevertheless, is the fact, and
the date of the event is, moreover, a tolerably
fixed one. It was a Dr. Gunthers, or Guithers,

186 A GARDEN DIARY

who, in the year 1705, turned out a handful of
spawn into a ditch near Trinity College. For
some years the frogs appear to have contented
themselves with the neighbourhood of that
University, but sixteen years later, in 1721, they
were found forty miles away, from which point
they seem to have rapidly extended themselves
over the whole island. Incidentally the fact is
confirmed by a great, if hardly a zoological
authority, namely, Dean Swift. In his Con-
siderations about Maintaining the Poor, which
appeared in the year 1726, in the course of
thundering against certain fire offices, which had
the impertinence to be English, he declares that
“their marks upon our houses spread faster and
further than a colony of frogs.” The portent,
therefore, it is plain, had reached his ears.
Coincidences are attractive things, and it is
satisfactory to discover that as regards earlier
times we are again able to fortify our mere lay
zoology upon the authority of an eminent eccle-
siastic. This time it was St. Donatus, bishop of
Etruria, who, writing in the ninth century, assured
the world, upon his episcopal authority, that no
frogs or toads existed, or, moreover, could exist
in Ireland) Three centuries later Giraldus
Cambrensis tells us, however, that in his time
a frog was taken alive near Waterford, and
brought into court, Robert de la Poer being
then warden. “ Whereat,” he says, ‘“‘ Duvenold,

A GARDEN DIARY 187

King of Ossory, a man of sense amongst his
people, beat upon his head, and spake thus:
‘That reptile is the bearer of doleful news to
Ireland.” Giraldus is careful, however, to
assure us that ‘“‘no man will venture to suppose
that this reptile was ever born in Ireland, for
the mud there does not, as in other countries,
contain the germs from which frogs are bred” ;
indeed, in another part of the TZopographia
f{ibernica we learn that frogs, toads, and snakes,
if accidentally brought to Ireland, on being cast
ashore, immediately “turning on their backs, do
burst and die.” This statement is corroborated
by a still more illustrious authority, that of
the Venerable Bede, whom Giraldus quotes as
follows : “ No reptile is found there” (in Ireland),
“neither can any serpent live in it, for, though
oft carried there out of Britain, so soon as the
ship draws near the land, and ¢he scent of the
ay from off the shore reaches them, immediately
they die.” So efficacious was the very dust
of Ireland that on “gardens or other places in
foreign lands being sprinkled with it, immediately
all venomous reptiles are driven away.” So, too,
with fragments of the skins and bones of animals
born and bred in Ireland; indeed, parings from
Irish manuscripts, and scraps of the leather with
which Irish books were bound, were amongst
the accredited cures for snakebite until well on
in the Middle Ages. Of his own personal

188 A GARDEN DIARY

experience Giraldus relates to us how, upon a
certain occasion, a thong of Irish leather was,
in his presence, drawn round a toad, and that,
“coming to the thong, the animal fell backward
as if stunned. It then tried the opposite side
of the circle, but, meeting the thong all round,
it shrank from it as if it were pestiferous. At
last, digging a hole with its feet in the centre
of the circle, it disappeared in the presence of
much people.”

Our frogs and toads are not likely at present
to become an affliction to us. Should they ever
do so I must certainly send for some Irish
leather, or, failing that, for a pinch of Irish dust,
and try its effect upon them. An influence that
has been vouched for by such a variety of
authorities ought to retain something of its
ancient potency. Scientific experiments in any
case are always interesting!

A GARDEN DIARY 189

May 8, 1900

RETUEAING to our pond this morning to
see whether the water-lilies propose flower-
ing this season, I find that the frogs have
been depositing spawn along its edges, so that
the thongs of Irish leather may become necessary
sooner than I expected!

All the same I am delighted to see the frog-
spawn, for J have an affection for tadpoles. Youth-
ful associations cluster pretty thickly around them,
but apart from such a merely sentimental attach-
ment, there is a satisfaction, I may say a zoologic
thrill, about this transition of a water - living
and water-breathing animal into an air-breathing
one; a transition going on, moreover, not at some
remote, and more or less dubious geologic age, but
under one’s very eyes, even, as in this case, in the
middle of one’s own decorous, shaven lawn.

It is difficult to remember that frogs breathe
air as much as we do ourselves. Unlike our-
selves, and their other zoologic. betters, they do
so, however, not by alternate contractions and

190 A GARDEN DIARY

dilations of the chest, Nature not having provided
them with ribs, but by the doubtless more archaic
process of swallowing air. Not only would a frog
die if kept too long under water, but—seeing that
it can only swallow air by shutting its mouth—
were that mouth kept forcibly open it would equally
die, and from the same cause, namely, want of
breath. Tadpoles, on the other hand, are strictly
water-breathers, and until they have shed their
gills, have no more need to go to the surface to -
breathe than a fish has. That, by the way is not
an absolutely accurate illustration, seeing that
certain fishes do need to go to the surface for
air. The famous Anabas, or “climbing perch”
of India, is such an air-breathing fish, the air
reaching it by means of cavities on either side
of its gills, and if prevented from reaching the
surface, and renewing the supply, it would “drown
like a dog,” or so the scientists assert. Such
cases, however, can hardly be called normal.
Fishes that can live comfortably for days out of
the water, that can nest in a bush, and travel
across a particularly dry country, are not likely
to be met with in zoologic rambles about this
parish.

Returning to our Irish frogs, it is an odd fact,
especially considering their recent introduction,
that in addition to swarming over the lowlands,
and in every place dear to frogs, they have learnt
to climb long distances up hill, and to establish

A GARDEN DIARY Igl

themselves in ponds separated widely from any
others, often not even fed by streams, and
moreover destitute of nearly all other animal in-
habitants, with the exception of certain minute
molluscs, which are believed by zoologists to
have reached them upon the feet of wading
birds, and that at such a remote period of time
that they have become what are practically new
species.

Many years ago, on reaching the top of
Mweelrea, the leading mountain of Connemara,
I remember my surprise at finding swarms of
young tadpoles wriggling along the margin of
a small pond, nearly upon the actual summit.
They were still in the engaging comma- like
stage, before legs had begun to dawn upon their
consciousness, and seemed to have remarkably
little to eat, for the water was crystal clear. The
pond was one of that attractive kind known as
corries, held by the geologists, doubtless truly,
to be of glacial origin; a delicious clean-cut
oval; pure rock, from marge to marge; gouged,
as if by the chisel of Michael Angelo, from the
matrix in which it lay. But for the unmistakable
evidence of the tadpoles it would, to any reason-
able imagination, have suggested the bath of
some mountain nymph very much sooner than
frog-spawn.

We are all of us to-day evolutionists, if some
of us still with a certain amount of reservation,

192 A GARDEN DIARY

and to the evolutionist tadpoles must always
prove interesting acquaintances. They provide
us with at least an inkling as to the fashion
in which your unadulterated water-breather may
have been converted into an air-breather, and
by means of no process more recondite than
that of losing its gills. That such conversions
do take place, and under certain circumstances
remain permanent, has been proved in the well-
known case of the axolotl, or Mexican gilled
salamander. As long ago as the year 1867, while
conducting some experiments at the Jardin des
Plantes, M. Duméril startled the zoologic world of
Paris by communicating the fact that, out of a
number of axolotls kept in the collection there,
about thirty had left the water, and had assumed
the form of what had hitherto been regarded as
an absolutely distinct genus of land salamander,
known as amplystoma. This discovery made at
the time a prodigious stir, not so much on account
of a water-breathing creature losing its gills, and
becoming an air-breather, for that was a phe-
nomenon which might be seen every spring, and
in most of the ditches round Paris, but because
the axolotl was known to breed, and that it
therefore appeared to indicate the exceedingly
anomalous case of a larval form proving to be
fertile.

How the feat of transformation was to be
actually witnessed was the next problem, and it

A GARDEN DIARY 193

is pleasant to remember that it was through the
energy and perseverance of a woman naturalist,
Fraulein Marie von Chauvin, that the matter was
finally cleared up. By continually damping the
specimens of axolotl kept by her on land, and
assiduously feeding them, she was able to pre-
serve two out of five through the gradual process
of decreasing their gill-tufts, and tail-fins, changing
their skins, and so forth. Finally to her own and
everyone’s triumph, the complete amplystoma form
was assumed, and the transformation was thereby
accomplished. The world has seen a fair number
of miracles since it began to run its course, and
perhaps not the least difficult of those miracles to
receive with absolute credulity have been some of
its natural ones!

194 A GARDEN DIARY

MAFEKING-DAY, 1900

Ie is the nineteenth of May. S. S. has re-
turned, and the east wind which has long
been vexing our souls has departed for the
moment, and a soft caressing zephyr blows
seductively. The garden, comforted by recent
showers, is smiling one broad smile from the red
steps at the top of it to the new pergola at the
bottom. And now this morning comes the news
of the Relief of Mafeking. Joy for the victors ;
joy for the nation ; joy for everything and every-
body. Flags flutter from all the posts; the dogs
strut about in new tricolor rosettes; “the air
breaks into a mist with bells.” All this is well,
very well. Only; only. A few lines coming by
the same post, a single short note, and for one
"person that May sunshine is blotted out as effec-
tually as though the very orb itself had perished.
The garden with all its flowers; the copse sur-
rounding it, new clad in gala attire; the whole
cheerful little picture has become darkened ; its
atmosphere changed ; its pleasant anticipations

A GARDEN DIARY 195

turned into a simple mockery. Even to-day’s
news sounds thin and unreal, and the tale of
Mafeking is as it were the tale of some defence
read of long since in an ancient, a seldom-
opened history, the actors and heroes of which
have long vanished and been forgotten. We
are but poor, bedimmed mirrors all of us, and
what we reflect is rarely the real thing, more
often only some blurred and distorted image
projected by our own sad selves.

196 A GARDEN DIARY

May 26, 1900

HAT Nature is cruel is not to be denied;

the evidences of that cruelty are written
out large and red in every woodland, under
every hedgerow. That she can be also un-
accountably pitiful, or at all events take pains
to appear so, is fortunately equally true, and
it is a truth that at times comes very near
to the heart. This morning at a very early
hour there was a tenderness, a kind of hover-
ing serenity over everything, that appealed to
one like a benediction. The air itself seemed
changed ; sanctified. The familiar little paths
one walked along were like the approaches to
some as yet invisible Temple.

There are certain pictures of Jean Francois
Millet’s in which this quality of sanctity is the
first thing that strikes one, the more so that
the obviously religious element is conspicuously
absent from them. His “Angelus” has always
seemed to me a poorer composition in this re-
spect than some others. When one sees a man

A GARDEN DIARY 197

standing with his hat off in the middle of a field,
in the company of a woman, who clasps her hands,
and looks down, one knows what one is expected
to feel. When on the other hand one sees only
a childish-looking farm-drudge knitting, a number
of greedy sheep feeding, and a rough dog watch-
ing them, where, one asks oneself in perplexity,
does the religious element come in? That it is
to be found in the “ Bergére” is however, un-
mistakable, and equally unmistakably was it to
be found in the copse this morning, though how
it got there, or who implanted it, I were rash
were I to attempt to explain.

Assuredly man is by nature a devotional
creature, however little of the dogmatic may
mingle with his devotions. He may avert his
ear from the church-going bell, he may refuse
to label himself with the label of any particular
denomination, but it is only to be overtaken with
awe in the heart of a forest, and to fall on his
knees, as it were, in some green secluded spot
of the wilderness. The sense of something be-
nignant close at hand, of some pitying eye sur-
veying one, is so vivid at certain moments of
one’s life that it actually needs a rough conscious
effort if one would shake it off. Even the
sense of the vastness of that arena upon which
our poor little drama is being played out, even
this habitual impression becomes less grimly
crushing at such moments than usual. What if

198 A GARDEN DIARY

it zs colossal, one says to oneself, and what if,
as compared to it, ourselves and our troubles
ave infinitesimal? what if they count no more
in the scheme of things than do the afflic-
tions of a broken-legged mouse, or of a crushed
beetle? Very well; be it so. The mouse and
the beetle have, after all, each their allotted
place in that scheme. Nay for aught we know
to the contrary, each may have its own incal-
culable hour; each may be susceptible of the
same profound, if intangible, consolation.

A GARDEN DIARY 199

JUNE 2, 1900

(hea revolving year has brought us back at

last to June. Here is June, and here are
all the June flowers. If June were only always
really June, and if our hearts could always keep
time to its weather, then were earth paradise,
and any remoter one might be relegated to the
remotest of Greek kalends. June however is
by no means invariably June, while as for our
hearts they are like our eyes, which have a
fashion of blinking sometimes at the light, as
those of owls are reported to do, preferring
their own shadowy places, and the night,
which at least brings kindly dreams. Yet are
kindly dreams, it may be asked, realy the
‘kindliest, seeing that we wake from them,
and know that they are false? Are not ugly
dreams, are not even terrible ones, better,
seeing that we wake from them, and say to
ourselves that matters, after all, are not quite
so bad as ¢hat? It is a question, and, like

200 A GARDEN DIARY

many questions, a good deal easier asked than
answered.
“Tf there were dreams to sell,
Pleasant, and sad as well,

And the crier rang his bell,
Which would you buy?”

It is not the time, however, now for dreams,
or for dream thoughts. It is nine o'clock in the
morning, and everybody ought therefore to be
wide awake and smiling. The garden at all
events is performing its duty in both these
respects, and seems, moreover, to be making
encouraging little signals, like some humble but
rather impatient suitor, who wishes to observe
that he has really been waiting a long time,
and deserves a little attention. Perhaps it
does. Perhaps, seeing that it is there, and that
we are here, it ought not to fare worse at our
hands than our own dull bodies, which have
to be clothed and fed, put to bed, and taken
up again, whatever the less material portion
may be feeling at the time. Here on my
table I see is a list of some of our latest
seedlings. They are not alpines this time, only
common border plants, with a sprinkling of
candidates for naturalisation, of which this
copse can absorb almost any amount, so long
as they are of the right sort. It is not a long

A GARDEN DIARY

201

list, and will not therefore take very long to

transcribe.
Here it is :-—

Adonis vernalis.

» pyrenaica,
Alstrémeria aurantiaca.
Anchusa italica.
Anthemis tinctoria.
Aponogeton (self-sown).
Armeria cephalotes.

i . alba.
Aster amellus.

» ericoides.
Campanula pyramidalis,
Catananche czerulea.
Commelina celestis.
Chionodoxa sardensis.
Cimicifuga foetida.
Chelone (Penstemon) bar-

bata.
Clematis graveolens.
Cobzea scandens.
Convolvulus sylvatica.
Coreopsis lanceolata.
3 tenuifolia.
Cistus laurifolius.
» formosus.
Cyclamen Coum.
i europzum.
. hederzfolium.
Cytisus scoparius.
a3 5s albus.
» Andreanus.

Cytisus precox.
Delphinium (various).
Dictamnus fraxinella.
Dipsacus laciniatus.
Doronicum austriacum.
i plantaginum
excelsum.
Eccremocarpus scaber.
Echinops Ritro.
“ ruthenicus.
Erigeron speciosus,
Eryngium amethystinum.

6 Olivierianum.
Onopordon arabicum.
3 illyricum.

Ferula tingitana.
Francoa appendiculata.
Gaillardia grandiflora,
Gypsophila paniculata.
Heuchera sanguinea.
Hypericum calycinum.

i olympicum.
Iberis corifolia.

» sempervirens...

Lathyrus latifolius grandi-

florus.
Lilium tigrinum (from bulb-

lets in axils).
Lupinus arboreus,

» polyphyllus.

202 A GARDEN DIARY

Lupinus polyphyllus alba. © Meconopsis Wallichi.
Lythrum salicaria super- Mimulus cardinalis.

bum. Myosotis dissitiflora.
Libertia formosa. . sylvatica.
Lobelia cardinalis. 5 palustris semper-
Muscari armeniacum, 1 ewe florens.
» conicum,
Meconopsis cambrica.
6 nepalensis,

My list appears to be a longer one than |
thought. I have as yet only reached the N’s,
yet my energies have quite come to an end for
the present. I will put off the remainder of it
therefore for a day or two.

A GARDEN DIARY 203

JuNE 8, 1900

HAD intended going doggedly on this

morning with the list of our seed-sowings,
but another impulse has come, and the sowings
must stand over for the moment. Something
in the look of to-day’s sky and earth—a
brand new earth after last night’s rain—has
brought a new, and a most unlooked-for wave
of exhilaration to my mental shores, and the
visitation is just now too rare and comforting
not to be met half way with the keenest of
hospitality.

‘Life is a flux of moods,” and to the fluctua-
tions of those moods there is assuredly no limit.
If we are eternally surprised by our own limi-
tations, our own torpidity and dullness, there
are also—and for this heaven be thanked—some
possibilities of surprise upon the other side, and
that for the oldest, the saddest, the least alert
amongst us. A hundred hours of intolerable
dullness and stagnation pass over our heads.
Then comes the hundred and first, and lo! the

204 A GARDEN DIARY

dull brain wakes, and the deaf ear hears. A
new perception of the unperceived relationship
of things; a new perception of the invisible
splendours lying unnoticed around us, becomes
for the moment almost startlingly visible. Such
hours are the only really countable ones, the
chief solace of existence, the one clear reason,
one is tempted to say, of our poor encumbered,
stunted little lives. For their sakes, if for no
other reason, it were well worth the trouble of
being born, and of all the aches and ills that
belong to that very singular estate; worth our
meeting gallantly, if possible merrily, the thou-
sand petty pinpricks, the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, the occasional alienation of
those one loves best, nay—if it must be so—
even the fell assaults of Giant Despair and all
his abominable brood.

For the suggestiveness of what lies about us
is no mere fancy, but is absolutely real ; real as
the light upon yonder tree-tops; real as the
sorrow in our hearts; real as the love that makes
all things endurable; real as the death which
puts an end to pain. At this very moment, now
passing over my head, there is lying about me—
close to my eyes, could I but discern it—the
materials alike of the loftiest poetry, and of the
most riddle-solving science. Disregarded and
unheeded there they lie, ready alike for the
greatest singer in his happiest mood, for the

A GARDEN DIARY 205

most era-making of discoverers, nay, for aught
I can tell to the contrary, for the seer, the saint,
and the prophet in their hours of highest, and
most God-inspired contemplation.

For the raw materials of inspiration are eternally
at hand, only invisibly. They are as present here
this morning as they ever were; present in the
earth and its green things; in the common
face of day; in the comings and goings of the
clouds, and of men; in the changes of the sky,
and of our own poor lives. The light that is
gilding yonder cumulus is as capable of inspiring
great thoughts here to-day in a Surrey copse, as
ever it was in Delphi, or in Argos, or in Jeru-
salem. It may awaken just as resounding
emotions, it may inspire just as great deeds to
the hearts of yonder passers-by in a dogcart, as
it did to the Assailants of Troy, or to the Seekers
of the Golden Fleece. The constituents of all
greatness, of all poetry, heroism, and sanctity
are for ever amongst us. It is only the right
recipients of them that are alas! so scanty.

And yet, even though we are not quite the
right recipients, it is well for us that such gleams
come. Who shall say that an existence which is
capable of being even thus temporarily lifted above
itself is not for that very reason a goodly and a
desirable one? What proportion of discomfort,
what proportion even of sheer pain, of numbing
weakness, of crushing sorrow were not worth

206 A GARDEN DIARY

enduring so long as one knew—knew as a matter
of absolute certainty—that they would be now
and again pierced by gleams of such celestial
potency? The hard thing, and the thing that
for all mortals will always be hardest to bear
patiently, is—not the uncertainty even—so much
as the desperate transitoriness of such visita-
tions. Almost before we have time to see and
to confer with them, our enchanting visitors
have spread out their gauzy wings, and have
vanished beyond recall. They are gone, but
where they are gone to, or when they will next
revisit us we have not the faintest notion. Ariel
and Titania have disappeared into the abyss, but
Caliban and Bottom on the contrary remain per-
manently behind, and are continually at our
elbows. At this very moment, and while I am
still thinking about it, the light is shifting rapidly.
The day has grown older; more crowded. A
thousand bloated nothings have sprung up like
so many fungi in the path. Shadows, slight,
but impenetrable, have gathered over the fore-
ground. My own mood too has shifted, and
what a while ago seemed so clear has grown
fainter and fainter, and seems to be upon the
point of disappearing altogether. The good
little hour has passed!

A GARDEN DIARY 207

JULY 7, 1900

ee CE more the great outside tide of life has
beaten down the little barricades that one
erects against it, and has come thundering in
over them in an avalanche, tossing them to right
and left, as though they were so many straws in
its path! This week that has just ended has
been for millions—for all Europe, for the whole
world in fact—stamped with the impress of what
one would fain still hope to be an incredible
horror. Personally this Pekin nightmare has
centred itself for me in the fact that E. B. was
reported to be still there. Recently she was
known to have been there, and whether she had,
or had not left seemed at first impossible to
ascertain. At last, though not until after days
of suspense, of uncertainty, of growing hope-
lessness, came the telegram—‘“‘Safe at Hong
Kong,” and the relief is greater than it is easy,
without exaggeration, to put into words.

So great has been that relief that for me it
has perceptibly altered the whole situation, as |

208 A GARDEN DIARY

suppose it was inevitable that it should do. Never-
theless, the tragedy as a tragedy remains, and if
anything seems to be deepening daily. The
newspapers certainly do nothing to minimise it ;
perhaps they would say that it was hardly their
province to do so! Such headings, however, as
‘The Chinese Cawnpore!” ‘“ Last shots reserved
for the women!” ‘White children carried on
spears!” seem to be rather more than it is their
absolute duty to offer to their readers! As
regards hope, no one appears to have any left, so
that it seems mere optimism to cherish any. A
ray reached us two days ago from our neighbour
S. B., who had heard of a reassuring telegram
from someone in Sir R. Hart’s employment in
Pekin. No such gleam, however, seems to have
travelled down to the murky depths of our news-
papers, so that one can only fear that there must
be some mistake.

It is with a sort of angry helplessness, mixed
with an instinctive feeling of self-defence, that
one turns from such accumulated, such carefully
elaborated horrors, and tries to forget them
in whatever little pursuit happens to lie nearest
to one’s hand. It is not particularly creditable
to one’s humanity that one should succeed in
doing so, and there is no denying that one’s
attitude is essentially that of a kitten, or other
small Unreasonable, which runs after its ball,
though disaster may be hovering, or conflagration

A GARDEN DIARY 209

about to involve, it and everyone else. Happily,
we are made so, just as surely as the kitten is
so made. We catch at straws, and in nine cases
out of ten the straw saves us. Were it not for
this same blessed prerogative of being interested
in trifles, what, one sometimes asks oneself, would
become of all our poor wits? or where on a
journey so full of loss and sorrow, shock and
trouble, would they have got to before the final
goal is reached ?

210 A GARDEN DIARY

JULY 14, 1900

ITH a mind full of China, and its abomina-

tions, I happened this afternoon to take
up Zhe Opium Eater, and opened full upon the
passages describing the results of the Malay’s
visit. What imagery to be sure! What an
amazing rhetorician! Certainly if all life were
the feverish dream, the half nightmare, one is
tempted sometimes to call it, no greater exponent
of its terrors has ever existed than Thomas de
Quincey. Take this as a prelude.

“The Malay has been a frightful enemy for
months. I have been every night, through his
means, transported into Asiatic scenes. I know
not whether others share my feelings on this
point, but I have often thought that if I were
compelled to forego England, and to live in
China, and among Chinese manners, and modes
of life and scenery I should go mad. The causes
of my horror lie deep, and some of them must
be common to others. Southern Asia in general
is the seat of awful images and associations. As

A GARDEN DIARY 211

the cradle of the human race it would alone have
a dim and reverential feeling connected with it.
But there are other reasons. . . . The mere
antiquity of Asiatic things, of their institutions,
histories, modes of faith, etc., is so impressive,
that to me the vast age of the race and name
overpowers the sense of youth in the individual.
A young Chinese seems to me an antediluvian
man renewed. . . . It contributes much to these
feelings that Southern Asia is and has been for
thousands of years, the part of the earth most
swarming with human life. The great officina
gentium. Man is a weed in these regions. The
vast empires into which the enormous population
of Asia has always been cast, give a further
sublimity to the feelings associated with all
Oriental names and images. In China, over
and above what it has in common with the rest
of Southern Asia, I am terrified by the modes
of life, by the manners, and the barrier of utter
abhorrence and want of sympathy, placed be-
tween us by feelings deeper than I can analyse.
I could sooner live with lunatics, or brute
animals.”

Now for the dream proper.

“Under the connecting feeling of tropical heat
and vertical sunlights, I brought together all
creatures, birds, beasts, reptiles, all trees and
plants, usages and appearances, that are found
in all tropical regions, and assembled them

212 A GARDEN DIARY

together in China, or Indostan. From kindred
feelings I soon brought Egypt and all her gods
under the same law. I was stared at, grinned
at, hooted at, chattered at, by monkeys, by
paraquets, by cockatoos. I ran into pagodas ;
and was fixed for centuries at the summit, or in
secret rooms; I was the idol; I was the priest ;
I was worshipped; I was sacrificed; I fled from
the wrath of Brahma through all the forests of
Asia: Vishnu hated me; Seeva laid wait for me.
I came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris; I had
done a deed, they said, which the ibis and the
crocodile trembled at. I was buried for a
thousand years in stone coffins, with mummies
and sphinxes, in narrow chambers, at the heart
of eternal pyramids. I was kissed with cancer-
ous kisses by crocodiles, and laid, confounded
with all unutterable slimy things, amongst reeds
and Nilotic mud.”

A GARDEN DIARY 213

Juty 28, 1900

i Gs last ten or twelve days have been
different from any that I ever remember
before. Circumstances have made them so,
yet it has seemed as though there were some-
thing about themselves that has, as it were,
affected those circumstances. For one thing it
has been extraordinarily hot, so that we have
been thankful for every breath of air that has
travelled to us across the downs. The new little
water-lily pond has been most kindly, and has
contrived to produce an amazing illusion of cool-
ness, while the oaks in whose shadow it lies
have provided us with the reality of shade. We
two have sat day after day for hours beside it,
and the minutes have slipped along, like bubbles
upon some very slow stream. There is a strange
sense of unreality over everything ; a sense that
everything is very near its end. The hours of a
summer’s day, and the years of a man’s life
seem to be much the same thing, and the one
hardly longer than the other. The chimes from

214 A GARDEN DIARY

the clock across the valley are almost the only
sounds that break in upon our stillness, for the
birds sing very little just now. It has been a
most strange fortnight; curiously unreal; extra-
ordinarily dreamy and spectral-like. One by one
its days have slipped by, very, very slowly, yet
now that they are almost gone I say to myself—
“ How terribly swiftly!”

A GARDEN DIARY 215

AUGUST I, 1900

eee are times—surely we all know them

—when the injustices of life, of the indi-
vidual destiny, seem more than can be silently
endured. ‘Why should this? and this? and
this be?” we ask. To what end such superfluous
happiness heaped upon one head, such equally
uncalled-for refusals of it consigned to another?
What does it mean? or who is the better for
such unendurable partiality ?”

The question is the oldest of all questions,
yet it is the question of to-day, as it will be
the question of to-morrow, and of many more
to-morrows. Job asked it about himself, as
some of us ask it about those whom we know
to be infinitely better than ourselves. More-
over it is not alone the apparent injustice of a
life as a whole, but of the several parts of it,
that we murmur at. There are acts of courage,
of silent endurance, of unrecognised heroism,
which only need to be performed in some more
conspicuous fashion, or upon a larger field, to

216 A GARDEN DIARY

awaken the whole world to admiration. Yet
they pass away unnoticed; oblivion enshrouds
them, and they are never so much as heard of.

When such suppressions, such seeming in-
justices, occur at the beginning of things, while
the sun is still high, and Time seems a friendly
factor, one is able to reassure oneself. One
says—‘‘ Wait a little longer!” ‘The time will
come!” When such illusion, however, is no
longer possible; when the sands have run out,
or been scattered in mid-career; what is one to
say then? What faith, what philosophy, what
stoicism, or what mixture of all three, will enable
one to accept it without complaint ?

A GARDEN DIARY 217

AUGUST 4, 1900

OF the vicissitudes of this year there seem to
be no end! After we have mourned over
these victims of Pekin as men mourn over those
for whom there is absolutely no hope; after we
have enumerated their names, like the names
upon a death-roll, and all but held a national
funeral service in their memory; and after we
have followed their last moments ; gloried in its
heroism; wept over its tragedy ; starved, sighed,
bled, almost died with them ; lo, it appeareth now
that none of them are dead at all! Was ever
an entire continent in the history of the world so
mercilessly defrauded before of its tears?

I have no notion how they may feel about it
themselves, but my impression is that were I the
responsible head of a daily newspaper I should
prefer to immure myself from society for the
next few days! There is a pile of such papers
at this moment in my sanctum, which I have just
been turning over, and reading a few of the head-
lines with some little inward entertainment. Not

218 A GARDEN DIARY

that I pretend for a moment to have been one
whit wiser, or less lugubrious myself! Far from
it. We have all been a flight of ravens and
screech-owls together, only that some of us
have screeched and flapped our wings a little
more energetically, and in rather a more public
fashion than the rest!

A GARDEN DIARY 219

AvuGusT 6, 1900.

FEW of the minor experiences of life are, I

think, more consoling than to come across
some small link in the chain of natural law,
over the right connections of which one has long
groped blindly. Such a little bit of good luck
befell me only yesterday. In itself it was what
one calls the veriest trifle; simply a question as
to the relationship of certain obscure organisms,
profoundly uninteresting to the world at large.
To myself it seemed, for a while at all events, to
be of some little consequence. It imparted—for
fully ten minutes—an entirely new impression of
a vast, a peaceful, and a most orderly progress.
It seemed to open up vistas into the perfection,
into the breadth, no less than the complexity,
of that great scheme of Life, of which we our-
selves form a part. It came as a sudden vision,
as a conception of possibilities—I hardly know
what to call it—the vividness of which it would
be difficult without exaggeration to put into
words.

220 A GARDEN DIARY

For those who, like myself, are the mere irre-
sponsible camp-followers of science, the import-
ance of any given solution seems often to be
less in what it actually teaches us, than in what
it allows us indirectly to guess at. The new fact
may or may not be important, but the ideas that
it starts in our minds can hardly fail to be so.
In the imaginative realm there is literally no limit
to the revelations to which the tiniest of natural
phenomena may not serve as an introduction.
The fact itself may be the minutest of facts; a
mere pin-point, a scarce perceptible chink of light,
but it is a chink in the walls as it were of a great
cathedral of discovery, the doors of which may,
for anything one knows to the contrary, be
thrown widely open to oneself, and to everyone
else to-morrow.

This, if I am not misleading myself, is the real
attractiveness of every pursuit which has the
elucidation of Nature for its end and aim; one
perhaps most felt, or at all events most enjoyed,
by the more ignorant of her votaries. Properly
directed ignorance is in truth a most desirable
haze, and when some stray beam does traverse
its obscurity, how great is the illumination which
follows! What may not be possible where there
is no dead-weight of fact to keep our feet upon
the solid earth; no panoply of unescapable
knowledge to bid our pleasant fancies nay?

Even for those less comfortably unfettered

A GARDEN DIARY 221

by circumstances, it must be an alleviation surely
of the prose of life that in this region of the ideas
no man can ever positively say what may not
be in store for him. However tame, however
dull his foreground, there is always the chance
of something ahead; something that when it
comes, will sweep his thoughts away with it to
the very verge of the horizon. There is never
a day, there is hardly an hour, in which some
new idea may not be upon its road. Now a
really new idea for the time being remakes life.
It is a solvent which dissolves all old impres-
sions, and rebuilds them anew. Men live by
ideas, as surely, almost as literally, as they live
by bread, and a world into which no new idea
ever entered would be a dead world, tenanted
only by corpses.

The strange thing is that we should any of
us doubt this, or that in those innermost citadels
which we call our brains, we should really very
greatly care about anything else. Surely for
people so oddly circumstanced as ourselves the
quest for ideas, ever larger, ever more com-
prehensive ideas, is the only perfectly rational
occupation? Stranded upon the shores of the
Unknown; rocked to and fro by all the winds
of mystery; ignorant of whence precisely we
came, whither precisely we are going; for people
in so strange a position as this to be continually
on the quest for some new intimation, for some

222 A GARDEN DIARY

further hint, or indication, seems as natural as
for shipwrecked sailors to be for ever on the
watch for sails.

I remember—it is years since, yet the im-
pression is as clear as though it were yesterday
—one who, during the vigils of a sleepless night,
slipped suddenly into a dream. And in that
dream it seemed to the dreamer as though he
stood upon a narrow-topped hill, encompassed
by all the stars, and lifted high in air above the
slumbering earth. And, looking upwards, he
was aware of a sky, immeasurably vaster and
higher, or so he thought, than he had ever
observed any sky to be before. And, still gazing
into that vast sky, the dreamer perceived that it
was filled with what at first he took to be snow-
flakes. Looking more closely he saw that, if
snowflakes, then they were snowflakes lit up
by all the colours of the prism. And one of
these snowflakes, just then slowly descending,
touched the dreamer’s head with a soft, but
quite a sensible impact. ‘And as it touched him,
lo, a new thought sprang up, alive, full-fledged,
wonderful, within his brain ; a thought absolutely
unsuspected by him before; vast, formative,
irresistible, like some new law of Evolution, or
of Gravitation. And, with it, light seemed to
break in upon him from every side at once, and
a great joy, and a sense of elasticity such as he
had never known before. And a voice said—

A GARDEN DIARY 223

‘These are the thoughts with which this earth
of yours has been built up, and all yonder other
earths, of which this is one of the very least.”
And another voice said—‘ They are as the sands
of the sea for multitude, and of the secrets
hidden in them, and of the wonder, and satis-
faction, and delight of those secrets there is no
end.”

Then that sleeper awoke, and, though the
night was still long and dark, the thought of
his dream remained with him, and was like the
song of a thrush in his heart until the morning.

224 A GARDEN DIARY

AUGUST I0, I900

IFE; Life the indomitable, the multifarious ;
Life, as it rises in the scale, becoming con-
scious of itself—the thought of this recurs again
and again to one’s mind, and each time with a
greater sense of power, and of a sort of conso-
lation. What limit need be assigned, one asks
oneself, to its capabilities, to the endless trans-
formations, to the possibilities, as yet unguessed
at, which may have been destined for it by its
Inventor from the beginning of things? If the
mere personal consciousness, the precarious per-
sonal life, is rarely without an element of dis-
comfort, in this larger sense that personal life all
but disappears, and with the loss of it comes—
not perhaps actual joy, that could hardly be
looked for—but at least a great exhilaration,
an extraordinary sense of width, of serenity,
and of detachment.
As the mind descends deeper and deeper into
that serene abyss it seems to shake itself free for
the time being from all that confused, battling,

A GARDEN DIARY 225

disturbing sea in which its daily lot is cast. As
that downward course continues, all that apper-
tains to the surface becomes more and more
dreamlike, as it might to a diver, and the mind
widens and strengthens insensibly with each
descending fathom. “Life” is indeed a marvel-
lous shibboleth ; a spell that unlocks innumerable
doors ; a word of varied and manifold meanings.
Merely to write it down, merely to utter it, seems
to clear the atmosphere. Mental fogs of all
kinds at that touch roll up their dingy tents,
and depart. An impression of morning—fresh,
imperishable morning—hovers around it; youth,
health, fecundity, vigour belong to it. All the
winds of Spring—“‘driving sweet buds, like flocks
to feed in air’—rush after it, and fan it on its
course. The sense of the good green earth, and
of all those good green things that belong to
it, pours in a stream of joy through even the
dreariest veins. ‘And if one little planet is able
to show it in this inexhaustible profusion, what
of all’ the other planets?” one thinks, ‘What
of those countless other worlds, all belonging to
the same great plan; all built and upheld by the
same architectonic hand; all strung, as it were,
upon one great string, and vibrating eternally to
a single immortal touch ?”

226 A GARDEN DIARY

AucusTt 18, 1900

TANDING, shortly after dusk yesterday

evening, upon the edge of the slope which
drops suddenly into the valley enclosing our
village and its church, my ear was filled with a
variety of sounds, all of them familiar, yet none
somehow quite recognisable; all with a certain
strangeness about them, born no doubt of the
mist and of the oncoming obscurity.

Sounds which reach our ears after nightfall
never seem to be quite the same sounds as in the
daytime, even though they may be produced by
exactly the same means. Commonplace in reality,
they are never perfectly commonplace in their
effect. They awaken curious echoes. They
bring back odd, and_half-vanished thoughts.
They play the same rather uncanny tricks with
the brain as they doubtless did in the days of
the Patriarchs, or of the Shepherd Kings. The
bark of a dog half a mile away will conjure up
visions of hunting scenes, swift and phantasma-
goric as the pageant of a dream. The sharp
“click-clack” of a horse’s hoof; the crunching
of a waggon-wheel; most of all, perhaps, the

A GARDEN DIARY 227

thin, lamentable, bleating of sheep floating up
from the valley; all these set vibrating fibres
within us which have their roots as far back in
the history of the race as anything well can be.
Our life of to-day, with all its crowded impedi-
menta, tends at such moments to sink suddenly,
and to disappear. We realise—if only during
the duration of a lightning flash—that we are
standing, not in the least upon any apex, merely
upon some small peak on one of the sides of the
great organic mountain. That we are looking
at a scene which has witnessed the arrival of
our race, as of other races, upon it, and which
will assuredly one day witness its departure again.
That all that we can discern is but, as it were, a
few front streaks upon the surface of an ocean,
rolling on without bourne or limit. And at that
realisation the mind is apt to start, and to shiver
instinctively, as before some yawning gulf, opening
unexpectedly below the feet.

Such little mental peaks afford, in truth, but
a dizzy standing ground, and are best, perhaps
for that reason, not ascended too often. Just as
the trade of the astronomer is said to need a
sound leaven of stolidity before it can be safely
embarked upon, so only a very strong head can
with safety peer long into a void, hardly less
perturbing and intoxicating than that into which
it is his business to pry. Those capricious little
particles, upon which all our comfort depends,

228 A GARDEN DIARY

dislike it, and they are probably right in doing
so. It is true that what we call the Past, that
which is entirely put away, and done with,
might seem to be a harmless enough subject of
contemplation. So conceivably it might be, were
it not for the fact that in following it one is apt
to find oneself brought suddenly face to face with
the other, and the far more formidable brother ;
the one whose kingdom lies, not behind us, but
ahead. At those dim barriers all real advance is
inexorably stayed ; into the recesses beyond them
no secular lantern has ever peered; while even
our most authoritative, our most convinced guides,
can at best assure us as to its geography with
hesitating, and often curiously conflicting voices.

To abstain from all attempts at peering into
that obscurity is more perhaps than can be asked
of mortals. The less of such peerings we indulge
in, however, surely the better, because the saner,
because, also, the more trustful. Of all the catar-
acts of words, poured in verbal Niagaras over
this momentous topic, have there been many, I
wonder, wiser or truer than these of old Hooker?
I write them down as they have lodged in my
memory ; probably therefore quite incorrectly.

“Rash were it for the feeble mind of man to
wade far into the doings of the Almighty. For
though ‘tis Joy to know Him, and Pride to make
mention of His name, yet our deepest Wisdom
is to know that we know Him not, and our truest
Homage is our Silence.”

A GARDEN DIARY 229

AUGUST 25, 1900

Be gropings along unlit ways, and towards
an undiscoverable goal, what a pleasant
experience it is to turn suddenly back to the
well-trodden paths of a near and a tried com-
panionship! It is almost an exact parallel to the
sensations of the child who, having rushed out of
its home into the wild winter night, full of hollow
reverberations, and perturbing gleams, suddenly
retreats, and finds itself once more beside the
hearth, with an absolutely new sense of its
security, and wide-armed delightfulness.

Upon few topics has more ink been expended
than upon this one of friendship. As regards
one point all the pens have | think been agreed,
and that is that diversity constitutes its soundest
basis. If a truism, this is at least one of those
truisms that every day’s experience throws into
new relief. Friendship demands absolutely no
conformity, but lives, thrives, and has its being
upon the most absolutely radical differences.
Friend and friend may differ by nearly every-

230 A GARDEN DIARY

thing that can differentiate one human being from
another. By the tenour of their thoughts; by
the circumstances of their lives; by the very
texture of their brains, their souls, their hearts,
their entire natures. Friendship makes light of
such little discrepancies as these. Its roots push
down to a stratum where even the largest of them
become mere accidents, and at that serene depth
they meet and lock securely under them all.

To say that such a tie is the great ameliorator
of life, the soother of its sorrows, the encourager
of its brighter moments, is to say ridiculously
little. To say that it is one that we could hardly
endure to think of existing without, is to say
almost less. The very notion of such a depri-
vation produces a sort of vertigo; a species of
mental confusion, akin to the thought of losing
identity itself. Worse, indeed, for it is not merely
the everyday, the vulgar self, that such a loss—
supposing it to be complete—would deprive one
of. It is that other, better, and more shining
self, which only really exists inside the enchanted
walls of a loving, sympathetic friendship. Within
those fostering walls it grows, expands, and
flourishes, but outside of them it sickens, pines
away, and dies.

It is a very singular tie, when one reflects
a little upon it; so close often that no nearness
of blood, no identity of name, could, so far as
one can see, make it any closer. It seems to

A GARDEN DIARY 231

be antecedent, not alone to itself, but to the
whole social warp and woof, of which it is an
outcome. Just as the trees in one wood seem,
to anyone who wanders often in it, to have ac-
quired a sort of identity, so two who have walked
for some time very closely together, though they
may differ as widely as an ash does from a pine,
as an oak does from a hornbeam, acquire a sort
of similarity, due to the same sunshine having
warmed, the same storms having shaken and
darkened both. It is well to speak a good word
now and then of a personage whom one habitu-
ally abuses, so let it be recorded in favour of that
odd compound of good and ill which we call
our existence that, if it has thwarted our desires,
dwarfed our ambitions, nipped in our joys, chilled
back our aspirations, cut down our hopes, and
not infrequently wrung our hearts, at least
it has given us our friends!

232 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER 4, 1900

he toh LY people live fast in these days, even
the very slowest of them! I find myself
turning back of a morning to the thoughts of
the Transvaal, and of the struggle still going on
there, with the oddest sense of renewal ; as of one
trying to rekindle dead fires, or to reawaken some
set of well-nigh obliterated emotions. When did
it begin, this war, which seems to have been going
on throughout the greater part of one’s lifetime ?
which the newspapers have again and again an-
nounced to be just over, but with which they
nevertheless manage to fill several columns every
morning? It is perhaps a mere personal impres-
sion, due to closer anxieties, but to myself the
fears and perturbations of last spring seem often
almost incredibly remote. There are moments
when they appear to be as out of date for any
practical purpose as the alarms that convulsed
our grandfathers and grandmothers two genera-
tions ago. E& pur st muove!/ It is still going on,
this war of ours, and seems likely moreover, to

A GARDEN DIARY 233

do so for a considerable time longer. Botha,
De Wet, Delarey, with half a dozen more guer-
rilla leaders, are swarming about, active as ants,
and at least as dangerous as hornets. We have
got Pretoria, but we have emphatically xot got
our new colonies, though both, I see, are now
officially annexed. That we shall get them some
day or other, and that the last of England’s big
daughters will—in the course, say of the coming
century—become as friendly and tolerant of her
as are the other two, a good many people seem
to expect. Possibly. The very moderate view
she takes of the motherly function will certainly
be a help in that direction. In these days
grown-up daughters are not expected fortunately
to be deferential—especially, perhaps, to their
mothers.

The closing scenes of a war have a tendency
to awaken in some speculative minds thoughts of
war as a whole; of the entire attitude of man
as a combative being. So long as the particular
struggle we have been watching remains at the
acute stage, so long especially as the faintest
doubt exists as to its final result, such a merely
academic attitude is impossible. Pride; dignity ;
honour; fear of what may be; anger, perhaps,
at what has been; all these rush in a tide
through even the most tepid veins, and every-
thing else is for the time being as though it were
not. When however the struggle is nearing its

234 A GARDEN DIARY

end; when the trumpets are beginning to sound
the recall, and the fighting, even if it still goes
on, appears on both sides to be growing some-
what perfunctory; then thoughts of what it
all means, thoughts of War in the abstract,
make themselves felt, and in place of hanging
breathlessly over the newspapers, one wonders,
as one saunters to and fro the garden, whether
this same instinct of combativeness really is an
integral part of man’s nature? Whether, in
other words, it is an absolutely incurable disease,
congenital to the species, or merely a sort of
youthful malady, destined, like other youthful
maladies, to pass away, as a very slowly evolv-
ing race attains nearer and nearer to its full
maturity ?

In a year when the roll and rumble of cannon
have never ceased even for a day; when the rattle
of rifle-shot has seemed like something that had
become part of every brain; when all public
life has centred round a single point, and the
most reticent of races has flung its reticence
utterly to the winds; in such a year so remote
and speculative a fashion of looking at the matter
strikes even the speculator himself as somewhat
thin, and cold-blooded. ‘What right,” he turns
round, and asks himself hotly, “what right have
you, or such as you, people who, far from taking
any part in the struggle, have kept out of even
the very wind and whiff of it! Who have char-

A GARDEN DIARY 235

tered no yachts, nursed no wounded, sung no
war songs, or even—lowest of all the efforts of
patriotism—so much as composed any! Who
have remained at home the whole time; tending
your own gardens, culling your own fancies, and
sorrowing over your own sorrows. What right
have such as, you—idlers, cumberers, that you
are!—so much as to mention the word ‘ war”
at all?

“Very true,” the other self answers submis-
sively. And yet again, he reflects, as he looks
around him, is it not, after all, just such little
plots as these that the earthquake of battle has
this year shaken the most fiercely? Is it not
such gardens as these—not this one perhaps,
but others almost identical ; flowery places, where
the robins peck about, and where no hostile foot
has ever trod—is it not against these that the
harshest blows have been struck, where the
cruellest wounds have been received? Quick,
quick, as in a dream, fancy conjures up a vision
—a procession, rather—floating along upon the
soft bands of autumn sunshine; a procession of
mothers, of sisters, of betrothed ones, of wives.
As each in turn passes by memory evokes the
face, or the faces, that belong to it; then turns
to linger last and longest with the mothers. Ah,
those mothers! God’s pity, above all others, rest
this year with the mothers. For whom hope can
never be anything again but a delusive word ; for

236 A GARDEN DIARY

whom the future can hold zo compensations ; for
whom the very things that they love the best—
their gardens; the walks they pace along; the
flowers that they stoop to pick—must henceforth
seem all bestreaked and shadowed over by the
red, abhorrent shadow of the battlefield. Truly
the garden is a place of peace, but it may also
be a place of the most cruel, the most unde-
served war, and the bullets that have been speed-
ing thousands of miles away, have too often
found their last, and their deadliest targets within
its circle.

A GARDEN DIARY 237

SEPTEMBER 10, 1900

a aes year has more than run its complete round
since these loosely connected jottings were
begun, so that it is high time that they shut the
cover down upon themselves, and withdrew into
acorner. Diary-keeping, like knitting, like whit-
tling, like any other of the minor distractions,
begins often with more or less effort, yet after
a time becomes, first a habit, finally almost a
necessity. Entered upon without any particular
motive, it creates a place for itself, it fills a
void, it becomes a solace. The practice of the
diarist varies, of course, almost infinitely. It may
mean merely that conscientious daily record, to
which alone the words “journal,” “diary,” “ day-
book” properly belong, or it may enlarge its
scope until it covers all those looser, and neces-
arily more intermittent outpourings, in which
most of us from time to time indulge, whether
for our weal or our woe depends largely upon
circumstances.

One merit it certainly has. Few mediums of

238 A GARDEN DIARY

thought are equally fluid; few admit of greater
variety ; more diversity of mood; more ranging
from topic to topic. Possibly the most satis-
factory of all its developments is when it enables
us to follow some well-beloved pursuit, keeping
pace with its minutest ramifications, losing our-
selves, as it were, in its existence, and thereby
evading half those irritating points, half those
wounding asperities that belong to every human
lot. Amongst such beloved and healing pur-
suits that of gardening stands prominently
forward. I have been assured that there are
superior persons by whom it is held in exceed-
ingly low repute; who regard it as a symptom,
indeed, of mental degeneration, and, as a
resource, below stamp-collecting, and about on
a par with the acquisition of the idiot stitch.
Were it my lot to be acquainted with any such
superior persons there is one punishment that
I must confess I should dearly love to bestow
upon them; which is that they should first
desperately need the comfort of such a solace,
and afterwards—upon due probation and peni-
tence—that they should come to find it! Few
ideas are more bigoted, more essentially narrow
and foolish, than this one about the elevating,
or the non-elevating effect of our pursuits. It
is upon a par with the equally pestilent notion
that it is the narrowness of our lives, or the
obscurity of our lots, that keeps our swelling souls

A GARDEN DIARY 239

from greatness. Greatness, like genius, is de-
pendent upon no such trumpery circumstances,
but is a self-existent quality, not to be concealed
though it were hidden under all the rocks
of Mount Ararat, or had every wave in the
Atlantic piled upon its head. Let us then assert,
roundly assert, that no pursuit—certainly no
natural pursuit—can with any accuracy be called
petty. It is, moreover, the great advantage of
all such out-of-door pursuits that they enable
their followers to confer with Nature at first
hand, and not through any intermediary. This
is recognised in the case of what are called the
higher natural pursuits, but it is equally true of
all. Like many other potentates Nature has her
unpleasant, even her very dangerous aspects,
but it is one of her best points that she is
no respecter of persons. She is an autocrat,
and an autocrat in whose eyes all subjects stand
upon precisely the same level. At her court
there is no superior, and no inferior. Geologist,
botanist, zoologist, horticulturist—beetle-hunter,
stone-breaker, weed-picker, crab-catcher—it
matters not what we call ourselves, or what
others call us, so long as it is herself alone
we follow, she receives us all alike. Within
those imperial and open-doored halls of hers
all rapidly find their own level; all may speak
to her on occasion face to face ; all present their
own credentials, and all are accepted by her with

240 A GARDEN DIARY

the same serene, the same absolutely indifferent
toleration.

It is not even as if her greater secrets were
reserved for the wiser and the more erudite of
her followers, and were withheld from those that
were less erudite, for the same partial revelations,
the same profound concealments, seem, so far as
can be ascertained, to be allotted to all alike.
The Sphinx which looks up out of the heart of
a toadflax or a columbine is the same Sphinx
that speaks out of the stilly night, out of the
clouds, out of the primzeval rocks, out of the
stars, and out of the inviolable sea. ‘And
this,” she possibly murmurs, “is my lesson which
I give to you. Cease to occupy yourself wholly
with the shows of the surface, the toys of to-day;
things which come and go, which pass and end in
an hour. Look a little deeper. Follow any of
these brown roots down to where the motherly
earth receives them, and the dews and the rain
nourish them, and all the complicated chemistry
of my workshops have been at work from the
beginning to bring them to perfection. On and
on, deeper and deeper yet, towards that vaster
laboratory across whose threshold even I have
never glanced. There, in that incredible remote-
ness, thou and I; the small brown worm, and the
goodly oak; the old, worn-out worlds, and the
new, as yet only half-born stars; all the gay
shows of this little green earth, and all the un-

A GARDEN DIARY 241

known things of the immeasurable Cosmos, meet,
and are on a level. There is neither larger or
smaller there, neither younger or older, neither
wiser or more foolish, neither less or more im-
portant. For out of it came that by means of
which all this that we see and know has come.
There, once for all, was uttered that spell of
which this huge teeming universe is but the
outcome. There Life herself was born, and it
may be therefore other powers, greater and more
wide-embracing than even Life herself. But of
what that spell consists, or what the name of it
is, no bird, or beast, or man, or possibly other
creature, has hitherto so much as even begun to
guess.”

242 A GARDEN DIARY

SEPTEMBER II, 1900

O one ends. Yet, even in the very act of

ending, qualms arise. Thinking of what
lies under one’s hand, no longer as a sheaf
of familiar manuscript, but as a full-blown book,
printed, bound, stitched, and a’ the lave o’ it,
misgivings awake, and are lively. Only yester-
day I sounded the praises of the diary, and I
do so still; yet the manifest destiny of every
diary is to live a life of absolute seclusion, and,
when it has served its turn, to feed the fire. It
is true that one may murmur something to
oneself about ‘“‘subjective”; “subjective forms
of literature,” but the words ring hollow, and
have little validity. In a well-known passage
Carlyle has described a visit which he paid
to the Sage of Highgate, whom he found
sitting in his Dodona oak grove—otherwise
Mr. Gilman’s house and garden—‘‘as a kind of
Magus, girt in mystery and enigma.” “TI still
recollect,” Carlyle says, ‘‘his ‘ object,’ and ‘sub-
ject, and how he sang and snuffled them into

A GARDEN DIARY 243

‘om-m-mject’ and ‘sum-m-mject,’ with a kind
of solemn shake or quaver, as he rolled along.”
The diarist need not necessarily roll along, and
has no pretensions certainly to be called a sage,
yet he too is apt now and again to murmur
“‘sum-m-mject,” ‘“sum-m-mjective,” with a sound
that even in his own ears rather resembles
that of some bumble-bee upon a summer's
morning; extremely self-important, that is to
say, but not particularly lucid. It is true that
so far as self-importance is concerned he stands
absolutely excused, seeing that egotism is his
profession. To cease to be egotistic is to cease
to be a diarist altogether. This is as clear as
it is satisfactory, but it can hardly be said to
meet the point. There is nothing odd, of course,
about a man or a woman being confidential with
himself or herself; it is when they proceed to
drop their confidences into other, and less in-
dulgent ears, that the oddity begins.

There are moreover seasons when such out-
pourings seem even less appropriate than others,
and this year—September to September—ap-
pears, looking back, to be one of these. It
has been a black, a despairingly black, twelve
months for thousands; how black, how despair-
ing, few of those thousands would have credited
when it began. Amongst those incredulous ones,
though on somewhat different grounds, the diarist
might have been reckoned. Diary-keeping is

244 A GARDEN DIARY

not entirely a matter of egotism and of intro-
spection, of fun, and of frolic, though it may
appear to the non-diarist to be. What a nice
innocent-looking book it seems, when its spaces
are all blank, and the days they refer to are not
yet born! yet such a book may come to look
like a mere fragment of malicious destiny, bound
in calf or calico. Holding it in his hands the
would-be diarist turns the leaves over one by
one with a smile. How will this, and this, and
this space be filled up? he wonders. What odd
little adventures will they have to record ? What
absurdities of his own, or of others, to recount ?
What books read? what expeditions made?
what trees or shrubs planted? So he sets
jauntily forth on his self-appointed task, to be
met by. What? A thought to give the
lightest pause.

And yet, and yet. Let the very worst come
to pass that can come to pass, even so an atti-
tude of mere unmitigated despair hardly befits
fast disappearing mortals, whose breath is in
their nostrils. Looking backwards may seem
all gloom and pain, and looking forward no
better, possibly rather worse, and yet assuredly
it is #o¢ all gloom, or all pain. Enchanting
things spring up by thousands in the ugliest of
clefts, and the barest of trees may serve as a
perch for some winter-singing robin. Sorrow
itself, carried out into the open air, under the

A GARDEN DIARY 245

benignant arch of heaven, changes in some de-
gree its character. It is Sorrow still, but it is
Sorrow with a difference. It seems to merge
into the category of other things ; terrible ones, it
is true, but still natural—earthquakes, volcanoes,
avalanches, pestilences, and so forth—things that
we shrink from, but that we cannot reasonably
resent. The sense of wrong, of hardship, of
bitterness, of personal injustice, seems by de-
grees to melt away from it, and therefore it
can be better faced. At least it is well that we
should tell ourselves so.

THE END

PLYMOUTH
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON
PRINTERS

A CATALOGUE OF BOOKS
AND ANNOUNCEMENTS OF
METHUEN AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS : LONDON
36 ESSEA STREET
W.C.

CONTENTS
PAGE
FORTHCOMING BOOKS, ; . F ‘ 2
POETRY, és 3 é , i 9
BELLES LETTRES, ANTHOLOGIES, ETC., . . 10
ILLUSTRATED AND GIFT BOOKS, ‘ : : 14
HISTORY, . . m : 4 1s
BIOGRAPHY, . i i : ‘ 17
TRAVEL, ADVENTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY, . 4 18
NAVAL AND MILITARY, Fi i F ‘ 20
GENERAL LITERATURE, , é . 22
PHILOSOPHY, . . é i 7 24
THEOLOGY, i ‘ - i : 24
FICTION, : ‘ : r 30
BOOKS FOR BOYS ANDGIRLS, . ‘ ‘i A 40
THE PEACOCK LIBRARY, r 40
UNIVERSITY EXTENSION SERIES, . 49
SOCIAL QUESTIONS OF TO-DAY : i 41
CLASSICAL TRANSLATIONS, - r 42
EDUCATIONAL BOOKS, ‘ ‘ 43

APRIL 1901

APRIL 1901

Messrs. METHUEN’S
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Travel, Adventure and Topography

THE INDIAN BORDERLAND: Being a Personal Record
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MODERN ABYSSYNIA. By A. B. WYLDE. With a Map and
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by B. W. RANDOLPH, M.A., Principal of the Theological College,
Ely.

A devotional and practical edition of the Prayer Book version of the Psalms.
LYRA APOSTOLICA. With an Introduction by Canon Scott
HOLLAND, and Notes by H. C. BEECHING, M.A.

THE INNER WAY. Selections from the Sermons of F. Tauler.
Edited by A. W. Hutton, M.A.

The Churchman’s Bible
General Editor, J. H. BURN, B.D.

Messrs. METHUEN are issuing a series of expositions upon most of the books
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of the authorised version is explained in sections, which will correspond
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ISAIAH. Edited by W. E. BARNES, D.D. 2vols. cap 8vo.
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THE EPISTLE OF ST. JAMES. Edited by H. W. FULFORD.
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Messrs, METHUEN’S ANNOUNCEMENTS 5

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The Wlorks of Shakespeare
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With Introductions by GEORGE GIssING, Notes by F. G. Kirton,
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SELECTIONS FROM WORDSWORTH. Edited by NowELL
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SELECTIONS FROM WILLIAM BLAKE. Edited by
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THE PURGATORIO OF DANTE. Translated by H. F.
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PRIDE AND PREJUDICE. By JANE AUSTEN. Edited by
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In this book, Miss Lawless, who is a distinguished amateur, gives her experiences
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ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE LATCH. By Sara
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In this delightful book Mrs. Cotes recounts her experiences and impressions of an
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This book deals with National and Departmental inefficiency, and the root causes of
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Scientific
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With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 1235.

DRAGONS OF THE AIR. By H. G. SEELEY, F.R.S. With
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A popular history of the most remarkable flying animals which ever lived. Their
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wo. OS,

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BUNTER’S CRUISE. By CHARLES GLEIG. Illustrated.
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THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA. By Mrs
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The Wovelist

A monthly series of novels by popular authors at Sixpence. Each
Number is as long as the average Six Shilling Novel. Numbers I. to
XIX. are now ready :—

XVIII. IN THE MIDST OF ALARMS. ROBERT Barr.
XIX, HIS GRACE. W. E. Norris,
XX. DODO. E. F. BENSON.
XXI. CHEAP JACK ZITA. S. BARING GOULD.
[Afay.
XXII. WHEN VALMOND CAME TO
PONTIAC. GILBERT PARKER.
[ June.
XXIIL THE HUMAN BOY. EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
uly.
XXIV. THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT #
ANTONIO. ANTHONY Hope,
XXV. BY STROKE OF SWORD. ANDREW BALFOUR.
XXVI. KITTY ALONE. S. BARING GOULD.

Metbuen’s Sirpenny Library
NEW VOLUMES
THE GREEN GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE. Jane H. FINDLATER.

[April.
THE STOLEN BACILLUS. H. G. WELLs., [Aay.
MATTHEW AUSTIN. W. E. Norris. [ June.
THE CONQUEST OF LONDON. Dorotuea GERARD. [ July.
THE MUTABLE MANY. Rosert Barr. [August.

THE WAR WITH THE BOERS. With Maps and Plans. By
H. SIDEBOTHAM. (Double Number, Is.) [September.

A CATALOGUE OF

Messrs. METHUEN’S
PUBLICATIONS

Poetry

Rudyard Kipling. BARRACK-ROOM
BALLADS. By Rupyarp KIPLING.
6822 Thousand, Crown 8vo. 65.
Leather, 6s, net.

‘Mr. Kipling’s verse is strong, vivid, full
of character. . . . Unmistakeable genius
rings in every line.’ —Times.

‘The ballads teem with imagination, they
palpitate with emotion. We read them
with laughter and tears ; the metres throb
in our pulses, the cunningly ordered
words tingle with life ; andif this be not
poetry, what is? "Pall Mail Gazette.

Rudyard Kipling. THE SEVEN
SEAS. By RuDYARD KIPLING.
57th Thousand. Cr. 8vo. Buckram,
gilt top. 6s, Leather, 6s. net.

‘The Empire has found a singer ; it is no
depreciation of the songs to say that
statesmen may have, one way or other,
to take account of them.'—Manchester
Guardian.

‘Animated through and through with in-
dubitable genius.’—Dazly Telegraph.

“Q." POEMS AND BALLADS. By
“Q.”" Crown 8v0. 35. 6d.

*“(Q.”". GREEN BAYS: Verses and
Parodies. By ‘‘Q." Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

E. Mackay. A SONG OF THE SEA.
By Eric Mackay. Second Edition.
Feap. 800. 55.

H. Ibsen. BRAND. A Drama by
HEnRIK IssEN. Translated by
WILLIAM WILSON. Third Edition.
Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

A.D. Godley. LYRA FRIVOLA. By
A. D. GoDLEY, M.A., Fellow of
Magdalen College, Oxford. TZhird
Edition. Pott 8vo. 25. 6d.
‘Combines a pretty wit with remarkably

neat versification. . Every one will
wish there was more of it’ — Times.

A. D. Godley. VERSES TO ORDER.
By A. D. GoDLEy. Crown 8vo.
2s. 6d. net.

‘A capital specimen of light academic
poetry,’—Sz. James's Gazette,

J. G. Cordery. THE ODYSSEY OF
HOMER. A Translation by J. G.
CORDERY. Crown 8vo. 75. 6d.

Herbert Trench, DEIRDRE WED:
and Other Poems. By HERBERT
TRENCH. Crown 8vo. 55.

‘A notable poem. ‘Deirdre Wed” will
secure for Mr. Trench an acknowledged
place—and a high place—among con-
temporary poets.’—Sz. James's Gazette.

Edgar Wallace. WRIT IN BAR-
RACKS. By EDGAR WALLACE.
Crown 8vo0. 35. 6d.

“As good as soldier songs can be.’—Daily
Chronicle.

‘Soldier rhymes with much humour and
pathos.’ —Oztlook.

Io

MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Belles Lettres, Anthologies, ete.

R. L. Stevenson. VAILIMA LET-
TERS, By RoBerT Louis STEVEN-
SON. With an Etched Portrait by
WILLIAM STRANG. Third Edition.
Crown 8vo. Buckram. 6s.

‘A fascinating book.'—Standard.

‘Unique in Literature.'—Daily Chronicle.

G. Wyndham, THE POEMS OF WIL-
LIAM SHAKESPEARE. _ Edited
with an Introduction and Notes by
GEORGE WyYNDHAM, M.P. Demy
8v0. Buckram, gilt top. 10s. 6d.

This edition contains the ‘ Venus,’ ‘Lucrece,’
and Sonnets, and is prefaced with an
elaborate introduction of over 140 pp.

‘We have no hesitation in describing Mr.
George Wyndham’s introduction as a
masterly piece of criticism, and all who
love our Elizabethan literature will finda
very garden of delight in it.'—Spectator.

Edward FitzGerald. THE RUBAI-
YAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM.
Translated by EDWARD FITZGERALD,
With a Commentary by H. M.
BATSON, anda Biography of Omar by
E. D. Ross. 6s, Also an Edition
on large paper limited to 50 copies.

‘Both introduction and commentary are ex-
cellent.’—Review of Week.

‘One of the most desirable of the many re-
prints of Omar.'—Glasgow Herald.

W. E. Henley. ENGLISH LYRICS.
Selected and Edited by W. E.
HENLEY. Crown 8vo. Gilt top.
35. 6d.

‘It isa body of choice and lovely poetry.'—
Birmingham Gazette.

Henley and Whibley. A BOOK OF
ENGLISH PROSE. Collected by
W. E. HENLEY and CHARLES
WHIBLEY. Crown 8vo. Buckram,
gilt top. 6s.

H. C. Beeching. LYRA SACRA: An
Anthology of Sacred Verse. Edited
by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. Crown
8v0o. Buckram. 65.

‘A charming selection, which maintains a
lofty standard of excellence.’— Times.

“Q.” THE GOLDEN POMP. A Pro-
cession of English Lyrics. Arranged
by A. T. QUILLER CouCcH. Crown
8v0. Buckram. 6s.

W. B. Yeats. AN ANTHOLOGY OF
IRISH VERSE. Edited by W. B.

YeEATS. Revised and Enlarged

Edition. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

‘An attractive and catholic selection.’—
Times.

G. W. Steevens. MONOLOGUES OF
THE DEAD. By G. W. STEEVENS.
Foolscap 8vo. 35. 6d.

W. M. Dixon. A PRIMER OF
TENNYSON. By W. M. Dixon,
M.A. Cr, 8v0. 2s. 6d.

‘Much sound and well-expressed criticism.
The bibliography is a boon.’—Speaker.

W. A. Craigie A PRIMER OF
BURNS. By W. A. CRAIGIE.
Crown 8vo. 25. 6d.

‘A valuable addition to the literature of the
poet.’—TZimes.

L, Magnus. A PRIMER OF WORDS-
WORTH. By LauriE MAGNUS.
Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

A valuable contribution to Wordsworthian
literature.’—Literature.

Sterne. THE LIFEAND OPINIONS
OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, By
LAWRENCE STERNE. With an In-
troduction by CHARLES WHIBLEY,
and a Portrait. 2 vols. 7s.

Congreve. THE COMEDIES OF
WILLIAM CONGREVE. With an
Introduction by G. S. STREET, and
a Portrait. 2 vols. 7s.

Morier. THE ADVENTURES OF
HAJJI BABA OF ISPAHAN. By
JAMES MorIER. With an Introduc-
tion by E, G. BROWNE, M.A, anda
Portrait. 2 vols. 75.

Walton. THE LIVES OF DONNE,
WOTTON, HOOKER, HERBERT
AND SANDERSON. By IzAak
WALTON, With an Introduction by
VERNON BLACKBURN, and a Por-
trait. 35. 6d.

MEssRs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Johnson, THE LIVES OF THE
ENGLISH POETS. By SAMUEL
Jounson, LL.D. With an Intro-
duction by J. H. MILLAR, and a Por-
trait. 3 vols. tos. 6d.

Burns. THE POEMS OF ROBERT
BURNS. Edited by ANDREW LANG
and W. A. CRAIGIE. With Portrait,
Peas Edition. Demy 8vo, gilt top.

SF.

II

‘Among editions in one volume, this will
take the place of authority.'— 7ismes.

F. Langbridge. BALLADS OF THE
BRAVE; Poems of Chivalry, Enter-
prise, Courage, and Constancy.
Edited by Rev. F. LANGBRIDGE.

Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.

School Edition, 2s. 6d.

‘The book is full of splendid things.’—
World.

Metbuen’s Standard Library

Gibbon. MEMOIRS OF MY LIFE
AND WRITINGS. By EDWARD
GIBBON, Edited, with an Introduc-
tion and Notes, by G. BIRKBECK
HIuu, LL.D. Crown 8vo0, 6s,

‘An admirable edition of one of the most
interesting personal records of a literary
life. Its notes and its numerous appen-
dices are a repertory of almost all that
can be known about Gibbon.’—Man-
chester Guardian.

Gibbon. THE DECLINE AND
FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
By EDWARD GIBBON. A New Edi-
tion, Edited with Notes, Appendices,
and Maps, by J. B. Bury, LL.D.,
Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin.
In Seven Volumes, Demy 8vo, Gilt
top. 8s. 6d. each. Also Cr. 8vo. 65.
each,

‘ At last there is an adequate modern edition
of Gibbon. . . . The best edition the
nineteenth century could produce.—
Manchester Guardian.

‘ A great piece of editing.'—Academy.

‘The greatest of English, perhaps of all,
historians has never been presented to
the public in a more convenient and
attractive form. No higher praise can
be bestowed upon Professor Bury than

to say, as may be said with truth, that
he is worthy of being ranked with Guizot
and Milman.’—Dazly News.

Dante. LA COMMEDIA ODI
DANTE ALIGHIERI. The Italian
Text edited by PaGeT TOYNBEE,
M.A. Crown 8vo0. 6s.

‘A carefully-revised text, printed with
beautiful clearness.’—Glasgow Herald.

c. G Crump. THE HISTORY OF
THE LIFE OF THOMAS ELL-
WOOD. Edited by C. G. CRump,
M.A. Crown 8vo. 6s.

This edition is the only one which contains
the complete book as originally pub-
lished. It contains a long Introduction
and many Footnotes.

Tennyson. THE EARLY POEMS OF
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,
Edited, with Notes and an Introduc-
tion by J. CHURTON COLLINS, M.A.
Crown 8vo. 65.

An elaborate edition of the celebrated
volume which was published in_ its
final and definitive form in 1853. This
edition contains a long Introduction and
copious Notes, textual and explanatory.
It also contains in an Appendix all
the Poems which Tennyson afterwards
omitted.

The Wlorks of Shakespeare
General Editor, EDWARD DOWDEN, Litt. D.
Messrs. METHUEN have in preparation an Edition of Shakespeare in

single Plays.

Each play will be edited with « full Introduction, Textual

Notes, and a Commentary at the foot of the page.

The first volume is :

HAMLET. Edited by EDWARD
DowvEN. Demy 8vo. 35. 6d.
‘An admirable edition. ... A comely

volume, admirably printed and produced,
and containing all that a student of

‘ Hamlet” need require.'—Speaker.
‘ Fully up to the level of recent scholarship,

both English and German.'—Academy.

12 MEssRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

ROMEO AND JULIET. Edited by , ‘No editionof Shakespeareis likely to prove

EpwARD Dowben, Litt.D. Demy more attractive and satisfactory than this

8v0, 35. 6a. one. It is beautifully printed and paged

‘The edition promises to be one of the best and handsomely and simply bound.’—
extant.’—Glasgow Herald. St. James's Gazette.

Tbe Wovels of Charles Dickens
Crown 8vo. Each Volume, cloth 35. net ; leather 4s. 6d. net.

Messrs. METHUEN have in preparation an edition of those novels of Charles
Dickens which have now passed out of copyright. Mr. George Gissing,
whose critical study of Dickens is both sympathetic and acute, has written an
Introduction to each of the books, and a very attractive feature of this edition
will be the illustrations of the old houses, inns, and buildings, which Dickens
described, and which have now in many instances disappeared under the
touch of modern civilisation. Another valuable feature will be a series of
topographical and general notes to each book by Mr. F. G. Kitton. The books
will be produced with the greatest care as to printing, paper and binding.

The first volumes are :

THE PICKWICK PAPERS. With; NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. With
Illustrations by E. H. New. Zwo| Illustrations by R. J. WILLIAMS.
Volumes. Two Volumes.

* As pleasant a copy as any one could desire. BLEAK HOUSE, With Illustrations
The notes add much to the value of the by BEATRICEALCOCK. Twovolumes.

edition, and Mr. New’s illustrations are r ¥
also historical. The volumes promise well OLIVER TWIST. With Illustrations

for the success of the edition.’—Scotsman. by G, H. New.

Little Biograpbies
fap. 8vo. Each volume, cloth, 3s. 6d.

Messrs. METHUEN are publishing « new series bearing the above title.
Each book will contain the biography of a character famous in war, art,
literature or science, and will be written by an acknowledged expert. The
books will be charmingly produced and will be well illustrated. They
will make delightful gift books.

THE LIFE OF DANTE ALIGHIERI. By PAaGET ToyYNBEE. With 12

Tilustrations.
‘This excellent little volume is a clear, compact, and convenient summary of the whole

subject.’—Academy.
The Little Library
With Introductions, Notes, and Photogravure Frontispieces.

Pott 8vo. Each Volume, cloth 1s. 6d. net, leather 2s, 6d. net.

‘ Altogether good to look upon, and to handle.’—Ox¢look.
‘In printing, binding, lightness, etc., this is a perfect series.'—Pi/ot.
‘It is difficult to conceive more attractive volumes.’—S#. James's Gazette.
‘Very delicious little books.’—Literature.
‘Delightful editions.’—Record.
‘Exceedingly tastefully produced.’—Morning Leader.
VANITY FAIR. By W. M. THACKERAY. With an Introduction by S. Gwynn.
Three Volumes.

MEssrs, METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

THE PRINCESS. By ALFRED, Lorp
TENNYSON. Edited by ELIZABETH
WoRrDSWORTH.

IN MEMORIAM. By ALFRED, LoRD
TENNYSON. Edited, with an Intro-
duction and Notes, by H. C. BEECH-
ING, M.A.

THE EARLY POEMS OF ALFRED,
LORD TENNYSON. Edited by J.
C. Coins, M.A.

MAUD. By ALFRED, LoRD TENNY-
SON. Edited by ELIZABETH WoRDs-
WORTH.

A LITTLE BOOK OF ENGLISH
LYRICS. With Notes.

EOTHEN. By A. W. KINGLAKE.
With an Introduction and Notes.

13
CRANFORD. By Mrs. GASKELL.
Edited by E. V. Lucas.

THE INFERNO OF DANTE. Trans-
lated by H. F. Cary. Edited by
PAGET TOYNBEE.

JOHN HALIFAX, GENTLEMAN.
By Mrs. CRAIK. Edited by ANNIE
MATHESON. Two volumes.

A LITTLE BOOK OF SCOTTISH
VERSE. Arranged and edited by
T. F. HENDERSON,

A LITTLE BOOK OF ENGLISH
PROSE. Arranged and edited by
Mrs. P. A, BARNETT.

The Little Guides
Pott 8vo, cloth 3s. ; leather, 35. 6d. net.

OXFORD AND ITS COLLEGES.
By J. WeELts, M.A., Fellow and
Tutor of Wadham College. __Illus-
tratedby E.H. NEW. Fourth Edition,

‘An admirable and accurate little treatise,
attractively illustrated.’— World.

CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COL-
LEGES. By A. HAMILTON THOMP-
SON. Illustrated by E. H. New.

‘It is brightly written and learned, and is
just such a book as a cultured visitor
needs.’—Scotsman.

SHAKESPEARE'S COUNTRY. By
B. C. WINDLE, F.R.S., M.A. Illus-
trated byE. H. NEW. Second Edition.

‘One of the most charming guide books.
Both for the library and as a travelling
companion the book is equally choice
and serviceable.’—Academy.

SUSSEX. By F. G. BRABANT, M.A,
Illustrated by E. H. NEw,

‘A charming little book; as full of sound
information as it is practical in concep-
tion.’— Atheneum.

‘ Accurate, complete, and agreeably written.’
—Literature.

WESTMINSTER ABBEY. ByG. E.
TROUTBECK. Illustrated by F. D.
BEDFORD,

‘A delightful miniature hand - book.’—
Glasgow Herald.

‘In comeliness, and perhaps in complete-
ness, this work must take the first
place.’—Academy.

‘A really first-rate guide-book.’—

Literature.

14

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Illustrated and Gift Books

Edwin Glasgow. SKETCHES OF
WADHAM COLLEGE, OXFORD.
By EDWIN GLAsGow. 25, 6d. net.

Tennyson. THE EARLY POEMS
OF ALFRED, LORD TENNY-
SON. Edited, with Notes and
an Introduction by J. CHURTON
Cotuins, M.A. With 1o Illustra
tions in Photogravure by W. E. F.
BRITTEN. Demy 8vo. tos. 6d.
‘The illustrations have refinement and

reserve and are finely composed.’—-
Literature.

Gelett Burgess. GOOPS AND HOW
TO BE THEM. By GELETT
BurGess. With numerous IIlustra-
tions. Small 4to. 6s.

‘An amusing volume.'—G/asgow Herald.

‘ The illustrations are particularly good.'—

Spectator.

Gelett Burgess) THE LIVELY
CITY OF LIGG. By GELETT
BurGEss. With 53 Illustrations,
8 of which are coloured. Smadi qto.

1S.

‘Lively indeed ... Modern in the ex-
treme, and ingenious, this picture-story-
book should win warm approval.'—Pad/
Mall Gazette.

Phil May. THE PHIL MAY
ALBUM. 4fo. 6s.

‘There is a laugh in each drawing.’—
Standard.

A. H. Milne. ULYSSES; OR, DE
ROUGEMONT OF TROY. De-
scribed and depicted by A, H. MILNE.
Small quarto. 35. 6d.

‘Clever, droll, smart.'.—Guardian.

Edmund Selous. TOMMY SMITH'S
ANIMALS. By Epmunp SELous.
Illustrated by G. W. ORD. Feap, 8vo.
2s. 6d.

A little book designed to teach children
respect and reverence for animals.

‘A quaint, fascinating little book: a nur-
sery classic.’—A thenaum.

8. Baring Gould. THE CROCK OF
GOLD. Fairy Stories told by S.
BARING GOULD. Crown 8vo. 65.
‘Twelve delightful fairy tales.'\—Puach.

M. L. Gwynn. A BIRTHDAY BOOK.
Arranged and Edited by M. L.
Gwynn, Demy 8vo. 125. 6d.

This is a birthday-book of exceptional
dignity, and the extracts have been
chosen with particular care.

John Bunyan. THE PILGRIM’S
PROGRESS. By JoHN BuNyYAN.
Edited, with an Introduction, by C. H.
FirTH, M.A. With 39 Illustrations
by R. ANNING BELL. Crown 8vo, 6s.
‘The best ‘‘ Pilgrim's Progress." ’—

Educational Times.

F. D. Bedford. NURSERY RHYMES.
With many Coloured Pictures by F.
D. eo Super Royal 8vo.
2s. 6d,

8. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF
FAIRY TALES retold by S. BARING
GOULD. With numerous Illustra-
tions and Initial Letters by ARTHUR
J. GASKIN, Second Edition, Cr. 8vo.
Buckram. 6s.

8. Baring Gould. OLD ENGLISH
FAIRY TALES. Collected and
edited by S. BARING GOULD, With
Numerous Illustrations by F. D,
BEDFORD. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
Buckram. 6s.

‘A charming volume.'—Guardian.

§. Baring Gould. A BOOK OF
NURSERY SONGS AND
RHYMES. Edited by S. BARING
GOULD, and Illustrated by the Bir-
mingham Art School. Buckram, gilt
top. Crown 8vo. 6s.

H. ©. Beeching. A BOOK OF
CHRISTMAS VERSE. Edited by
H. C. BEECHING, M.A., and Illus-
trated by WALTER CRANE. Cr. 8vo,
gilt top. 35. 6d.

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

History

Flinders Petrie. A HISTORY OF
EGYPT,FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES
TO THE PRESENT Day. Edited by
W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L.,
LL.D., Professor of Egyptology at
University College. Fudly [ilustrated.
In Six Volumes. Cr. 8vo. 65. each.

VoL. I. PREHISTORIC TIMES TO

XVITH Dynasty. W. M. F.
Petrie. Fourth Edition.

Vou. Il. THe XVIITH AND
XVIIITH Dynasties. W.M.
F, Petrie. Third Edition.

VoL. IV. THE EGypr OF THE
PTOLEMIES. J. P. Mahaffy.

VoL. V. RoMAN EcyrT, J. G.
Milne.

‘A history written in the spirit of scientific
precision so worthily represented by Dr.
Petrie and his school cannot but pro-
mote sound and accurate study, and
supply a vacant place in the English
literature of Egyptology.’—Times.

Flinders Petrie. RELIGION AND
CONSCIENCE IN ANCIENT
EGYPT. By W. M. FLINDERS
PETRIE, D.C.L., LL.D. Fully Illus-
trated. Crown 8vo. 25. Gd.

‘ The lectures will afford a fund of valuable

information for students of ancient
ethics.'— Manchester Guardian.

Flinders Petrie. SYRIA AND
EGYPT, FROM THE TELL EL
AMARNA TABLETS. By W. M.
FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L., LL.D.
Crown 8vo. 25. 6d.

‘A marvellous record. The addition made
to our knowledge is nothing short of
amazing.’—7Times.

Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN TALES.
Edited by W. M. FLINDERS PETRIE.
Illustrated by TRISTRAM ELLIs. Jn
Two Volumes. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d. each.

‘Invaluable as a picture of life in Palestine
and Egypt.'—Daily News.

Flinders Petrie. EGYPTIAN DECO-
RATIVE ART. By W. M. FLIN-
DERS PETRIE. With 120 Illustrations.
Cr. 8vo. 35. 6a.

‘In these lectures he displays rare skill in
elucidating the development of decora-
tive art in Egypt.’—Zzmes.

Cc. W. Oman. A HISTORY OF THE
ART OF WAR. Vol. u.: The
Middle Ages, from the Fourth to the
Fourteenth Century. . .
Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls’,
Oxford. Illustrated. Demy 8vo, 21s.

‘The whole art of war in its historic evolu-
tion has never been treated on such an
ample and comprehensive scale, and we
question if any recent contribution to
the exact history of the world has pos-
sessed more enduring value.'—Daily
Chronicle.

8. Baring Gould. THE TRAGEDY
OF THE CASARS. With nume-
rous Illustrations from Busts, Gems,
Cameos, etc. ByS. BARING GOULD.
Fifth Edition. Royal 8vo. 155.

‘A most splendid and fascinating book ona
subject of undying interest. The great
feature of the book is the use the author
has made of the existing portraits of
the Caesars and the admirable critical
subtlety he has exhibited in dealing with
this line of research. It is brilliantly
written, and the illustrations are sup-
plied on a scale of profuse magnificence.’
—Daily Chronicle.

F. W. Maitland. CANON LAW IN
ENGLAND. By F. W. MAITLAND,
LL.D., Downing Professor of the
Laws of England in the University
of Cambridge. Royal 8vo. 7s. 6d.

‘Professor Maitland has put students of
English law under a fresh debt. ‘I‘hese
essays are landmarks in the study of the
history of Canon Law.’—Times.

16

H. de B. Gibbins. INDUSTRY IN
ENGLAND: HISTORICAL OUT-
LINES. By H. DE B. GIBBINS,
Litt.D., M.A. With 5 Maps. Se-
cond Edition. Demy 8vo. tos. 6d.

HE E. Egerton. A HISTORY OF
BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY.
By H. E. EGerton, M.A, Demy
8vo. 125. 6d.

‘It is a good book, distinguished by accu-
racy in detail, clear arrangement of facts,
and a broad grasp of principles.'—
Manchester Guardian.

Albert Sorel THE EASTERN
QUESTION IN THE EIGH-
TEENTH CENTURY. By ALBERT
SorEL. Translated by F. C. BRAM-
WELL, M.A. Cr. 8v0. 35. 6a.

. H Grinling. A HISTORY OF
“THE GREAT NORTHERN RAIL-
WAY, 1845-95. By C. H. Grin-
LING. With Hinatretions. Demy 8vo.
tos, 6d.

‘Mr. Grinling has done for a Railway what

Macaulay did for English History.'—

The Engineer.

W. Sterry. ANNALS OF ETON
COLLEGE. By W. STErRRY, M.A.
With ped Illustrations. Demy
8v0. 75. 6

‘A treasury of quaint and i interesting read-
ing. Mr. Sterry has by his skill and
vivacity given these records new life.'—
Academy.

G.W.Fisher. ANNALS OF SHREWS-
BURY SCHOOL. By G.
FisHEeR, M.A. With numerous Illus-
trations. Demy 8vo. tos. 6d.

‘This careful, book.’—Dazily
Chronicle.

‘A book of which Old Salopians are sure
to be proud.’—G/obe.

J. Sargeaunt. ANNALS OF WEST-
MINSTER SCHOOL. By J. Sar-
GEAUNT, M.A. With numerous
Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d.

erudite

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A. Clark. THE COLLEGES OF
OXFORD: Their History and their
Traditions. Edited by A. CLARK,
M.A., Fellow of Lincoln College.
8vo. 12s. 6d,

‘A work which will be appealed to for
many years as the standard book.'—
Atheneum.

T. M. Taylor. ACONSTITUTIONAL
AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF
ROME. By T. M. Taytor, M.A.,
Fellow of Gonville and Caius College,
Cambridge. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

‘ We fully recognise the value of this care-
fully written work, and admire especially
the fairness and sobriety of his judgment
and the human interest with which he
has anspired a subject which in some
hands becomes a mere series of cold
abstractions. It is a work that will be
stimulating to the student of Roman
history.'—A thenaeum.

J. Wells. A SHORT HISTORY OF
ROME. By J. WELLS, M.A,
Fellow and Tutor of Wadham Coll.,
Oxford. Third Edition. With 3
Maps. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

This book is intended for the Middle and
Upper Forms of Public Schools and for
Pass Students at the Universities. It
contains copious Tables, etc.

‘An original work written on an original
plan, and with uncommon freshness and
vigour.’ — Speaker.

0. Browning. A SHORT HISTORY
OF MEDIAVAL ITALY, a.p.
1250-1530. By OSCAR BROWNING,
Fellow and Tutor of King's College,
Cambridge. Jz Two Volumes. Cr.
8vo. 55. each.

VOL. I. 1250-1409.—Guelphs and
Ghibellines.

VoL. II, 1409-1530.—The Age of
the Condottieri.

O'Grady. THE STORY OF IRE-
LAND. By STANDISH O'GRapDy,
Author of ‘Finnand hisCompanions,’
Crown 8vo, 25. 6d.

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Byzantine Terts
Edited by J. B. Bury, M.A.

ZACHARIAH OF MITYLENE.
Translated into English by F. J.

HAMILTON, D.D., and E.
Brooxs. Demy 8vo. 125. 6d. net.
EVAGRIUS. Edited by Professor

Léon PARMENTIER and M, BIDEZ.

Demy 8vo. tos. 6d. net.

THE HISTORY OF PSELLUS
By C. SATHAS. Demy 8vo. 155.
net.

Biography

R. L. Stevenson. THE LETTERS
OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVEN-
SON TO HIS FAMILY AND
FRIENDS. Selected and Edited,
with Notes and Introductions, by
SIDNEY COLVIN. Pourthand Cheaper
Edition. Crown 8vo, 12s.
‘Irresistible in their raciness, their variety,
their animation .. . of extraordinary
fascination. A delightful inheritance,
the truest record of a “‘richly com-
pounded spirit” that the literature of
our time has preserved.’— Times.

J. G. Millaiss THE LIFE AND
LETTERS OF SIR JOHN
EVERETT MILLAIS, President of
the Royal Academy. By his Son,
J. G. Mitiais. With 319 Illus-
trations, of which 9 are in Photo-
gravure. Second Edition. 2 vols.
Royal 8vo. 325. net.

‘ The illustrations make the book delightful
to handle or to read. The eye lingers
lovingly upon the beautiful pictures.’—
Standard.

‘This splendid work.’—World. _

‘Of such absorbing interest is it, of such
completeness in scope and beauty.
Special tribute must be paid to the
extraordinary completeness of the illus-
trations.'—Graphic.

§. Baring Gould. THE LIFE OF
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE. By
S. BARING GOULD. With over 450
Illustrations in the Text and 12
Photogravure Plates. Large quarto.
Gilt top. 36s.

‘The main feature of this gorgeous volume
is its great wealth of beautiful photo-

gravures and finely-executed wood
engravings, constituting a complete
pictorial chronicle of Napoleon I.’s
personal history from the days ofhis early
childhood at Ajaccio to the date of his
second interment.’—Daily Telegraph.

W. A. Bettesworth, THE WALKERS
OF SOUTHGATE : Being the Chro-
nicles of a Cricketing Family. By
W. A. BETTESWORTH. Illustrated.
Demy 8vo. 155.

‘A volume which every lover of the game
of games should add to his library.'"—
Outlook.

‘A most engaging contribution to cricket
pees ... a lasting joy..—Vanity

‘air.

P. H. Colomb. MEMOIRS OF AD-
MIRAL SIR A. COOPER KEY.
By Admiral P. H. CoLomz. With
a Portrait. Demy 8vo. 16s.

Cc. Cooper King. THE STORY OF
THEBRITISH ARMY. By Colonel
CoopER KING. Illustrated. Demy
8v0. 75. 6d,

‘An authoritative and accurate story of
ene ee military progress.'—Daily
ae

R. Southey. ENGLISH SEAMEN
(Howard, Clifford, Hawkins, Drake,
Cavendish). By ROBERT SOUTHEY.
Edited, with an Introduction, by
Daviv Hannay. Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘A brave, inspiriting book.’—Black and

White.

A3

18

W. Clark Russell THE LIFE OF
ADMIRAL LORD COLLING-
WOOD. By W. CLARK RUSSELL,
With Illustrations by F, BRANGWYN.
Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

“A book which we should like to see in the

hands of every boy in the country.’—
St. James's Gazette.

Morris Fuller. THE LIFE AND
WRITINGS OF JOHN DAVEN-
ANT, D.D. (1571-1641), Bishop of
Salisbury. By Morris FULLER,
B.D. Demy 8vo. tos. 6d.

J. M. Rigg. ST. ANSELM OF
CANTERBURY: A CHAPTER IN
THE HISTORY OF RELIGION. By
J. M. Rice. Demy 8vo. 73s. 6d.

F. W. Joyce. THE LIFE OF
SIR FREDERICK GORE OUSE-
LEY. By F. W. Joyce, M.A. 7s. 6d.

W. G. Collingwood. THE LIFE OF
JOHN RUSKIN. By W. G.
CoLLinGwoop, M.A. With Por-
traits, and 13 Drawings by Mr.

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Ruskin. Second Edition. 2 vols,
8vo. 325. Cheap Edition. Crown
8vo. 6s.

C. Waldstein. JOHN RUSKIN. By
CHARLES WALDSTEIN, M.A, With
a Photogravure Portrait, Post 8vo. 55.

A, M. PF, Darmesteter, THE LIFE
OF ERNEST RENAN. By
MADAME DARMESTETER. With
Portrait. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.

W. H. Hutton. THE LIFE OF SIR
THOMAS MORE. By W. H.
Hutton, M.A. With Portraits.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 55.

‘The book lays good claim to high rank
among our biographies. It is excellently,
even lovingly, written.'—Scotsman.

8. Baring Gould. THE VICAR OF
MORWENSTOW: A Biography.
By S. BARING GouLp, M.A. A
new and Revised Edition. With
Portrait. Crown 8vo. 35. 6d.

A completely new edition of the well known
biography of R. S, Hawker.

Travel, Adventure and Topography

Sven Hedin. THROUGH ASIA. By
SveN HeEp1n, Gold Medallist of the
Royal Geographical Society. With
goo [Illustrations from Sketches
and Photographs by the Author,
and Maps. 2vols. Royal 8vo. 20s. net.

‘One of the greatest books of the kind
issued during the century. It is im-
possible to give an adequate idea of the
richness of the contents of this book,
nor of its abounding attractions as a story
of travel unsurpassed in geographical
and human interest. Much of it is a
revelation. Altogether the work is one
which in solidity, novelty, and interest
must take a first rank among publica-
tions of its class.’"— Times,

F. H. Skrine and E. D. Ross. THE
HEART OF ASIA. By F. H.
SKRINE and E. D. Ross. With
Maps and many Illustrations by
VERESTCHAGIN. Large Crown 8vo.
Tos, 6d. net,

This volume will form a landmark in our
knowledge of Central Asia... . Illumin-
ating and convincing.’— Zimes.

R. E. Peary. NORTHWARD OVER
THEGREATICE. ByR.E. PEARY,
Gold Medallist of the Royal Geogra-
phical Society. With over 800 Illus-
trations. 2vols. Royal 8vo. 325. net.

‘ His book will take its place among the per-

manent literature of Arctic exploration.
—Tines.

MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

E, A. FitzGerald. THE HIGHEST
ANDES. By E. A. FITZGERALD.
With 2 Maps, 51 Illustrations, 13 of
which are in Photogravure, and a
Panorama. Royal 8vo, 305. net.
Also a Small Edition on Hand-made
Paper, limited to 50 Copies, 4/o,
£51 55

‘ The record of the first ascent of the highest
mountain yet conquered by mortal man.
A volume which will continue to be the

classic book of travel on this region of
the Andes.’—Daily Chronicle.

F. W. Christian. THE CAROLINE
ISLANDS. By F. W. CHRISTIAN.
With many Illustrations and Maps.
Demy 8vo. 125. 6d. net.

‘A real contribution to our knowledge of
the peoples and islands of Micronesia

as well as fascinating as a narrative o
travels and adventure.’—Scotsman.

H. H. Johnston. BRITISH CEN-
TRAL AFRICA. By Sir H. H.
Jounston, K.C.B. With nearly
Two Hundred Illustrations, and Six
Maps. Second Edition. Crown 4to.
185. et.

‘A fascinating book, written with equal
skill and charm—the work at once of a
literary artist and of a man of action
who is singularly wise, brave, and ex-
perienced. It abounds in admirable
sketches.’—Westminster Gazette.

L. Decle) THREE YEARS IN
SAVAGE AFRICA. By LIONEL
DECLE. With 100 Illustrations and
5 Maps. Second Edition. Demy 8vo.
tos. 6d. net,

A. Hulme Beaman. TWENTY
YEARS IN THE NEAR EAST.
By A. HULME BEAMAN. Demy
8vo. With Portrait. os. 64.

Henri of Orleans. FROM TONKIN
TO INDIA. By PrINcE HENRI OF
ORLEANS. Translated by HAMLEY
BENT, M.A. With 1oo Illustrations
anda Map. Cr. 4¢o, gilt top. 255.

19

J.W.Robertson-Scott. THE PEOPLE
OF CHINA. ByJ. W. ROBERTSON-
Scott. Witha Map. Crown 8vo.
35. 6a.

‘A vivid impression ... This excellent,
brightly written epitome.’ —Daily News.

‘Excellently well done. . . . Enthralling.’
—Weekly Dispatch.

8. L. Hinde. THE FALL OF THE
CONGO ARABS. ByS. L. HINDE.
With Plans, etc. Demy 8vo, 125. 6d.

A. St. H. Gibbons. EXPLORATION
AND HUNTING IN CENTRAL
AFRICA. By Major A. Str. H.
Giezons. With full-page Illustra-
tions by C. WHYMPER, and Maps.
Demy 8vo. 155.

8. Baring Gould. DARTMOOR: A
Descriptive and Historical Sketch.
By S. BARING GouULD. With Plans
and Numerous Illustrations. Crown
8v0. 6s.

‘A most delightful guide, companion, and
instructor.’—Scotsman.

‘Informed with close personal knowledge.’
—Saturday Review,

§. Baring Gould. THE BOOK OF
THE WEST. By S. BaRrinG
GOULD. With numerous IIlustra-
tions. Zwovolumes. Vol. 1. Devon.
Second Edition. Vol. 11. Cornwall.
Crown 8vo. 6s. each.

‘They are very attractive little volumes,
they have numerous very pretty and
interesting pictures, the story is fresh
and bracing as the air of Dartmoor, and
the legend weird as twilight over Doz-
mare Pool, and they give us a very good
idea of this enchanting and beautiful
district.—Guardian.

8. Baring Gould. THE DESERTS
OF SOUTHERN FRANCE. By
S. BARING GOULD. 2 vols, Demy
8vo. 325.

J. F. Fraser. ROUND THE WORLD
ON AWHEEL. By JOHN FOSTER
FRASER. With roo Illustrations.
Crown 8vo. 65.

‘ A classic of cycling, graphic and witty.’—
Yorkshire Post.

BR. L. Jefferson. A NEW RIDE TO
KHIVA. By R. L. JEFFERSON.
Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 6s.

20

K. Trotter. THE NIGER
SOURCES. By Colonel J. K.
TROTTER, R.A. With a Map and
Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 55.

W. Crooke THE NORTH-
WESTERN PROVINCES OF
INDIA: THEIR ETHNOLOGY AND
ADMINISTRATION. By W. CROOKE,
With Maps and Illustrations, Demy
8vo. 10s. 6d.

A. Boisragon. THE BENIN MAS-
SACRE. By CapTaIn BOISRAGON.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 35. 6d.

‘If the story had been written four hundred
ears ago it would be read to-day as an
English classic.’—Scotsman.

J.

H. 8. Cowper. THE HILL OF THE
GRACES: or, THE GREAT STONE
TEMPLES OF TRIPOLI. By H. S.
CowPeER, F.S.A. With Maps, Plans,

MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

and 75 Illustrations.
ros. 6d.

W. B. Worsfold. SOUTH AFRICA.

By W. B. WorsFOLD, M.A. With

a Map. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo0. 6s.

‘A monumental work compressed into a
very moderate compass.’— World.

Katherine and Gilbert Macquoid. IN
PARIS. By KATHERINE and GIL-
BERT MAacquolp. Illustrated by
THOMAS R. MACQUOID, R.I. With
2maps. Crown 8vo. 15.

‘A useful little guide, judiciously supplied
with information.’—A theneum.

A. H. Keane. THE BOER STATES:
A History and Description of the
Transvaal and the Orange Free State.
By A. H. Keane, M.A. With
Map. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Demy 8v0.

Naval and Military

F. H. E. Cunliffee THE HISTORY
OF THE BOER WAR, By F. H.
E. CunuiFFE, Fellow of All Souls’
College, Oxford. With many Illus-
trations, Plans, and Portraits, Jz 2
vols. Vol. I., 155.

This book contains the narrative of the war
from its beginning to the relief of Lady-
smith, and is magnificently illustrated.
It has been recognised on all hands as

the most serious and reasoned contribu- |

tion to the history of the war, and will

remain for many years the standard ,

authority.

©The excellence of the work is double ; for
the narrative is vivid and temperate, and
the illustrations form a picture gallery
of the war which is not likely to be
rivalled. . An ideal gift book.’—
Academy.

G. 8. Robertson. CHITRAL: The
Story of a Minor Siege. By Sir
G. S. RoBertson, K.C.S.I. With
numerous! llustrations, Mapand Plans.
Second Edition. Demy 8vo. tos. 6d.

‘A book which the Elizabethans would have
thought wonderful. More thrilling, more
Piquant, and more human than any
novel.’— Newcastle Chronicle.

‘As fascinating as Sir Walter Scott's best
fiction.'— Daily Telegraph.

| R. 8. 8, Baden-Powell. THE DOWN-

FALL OF PREMPEH. A Diary of
Life in Ashanti, 1895. By Maj.-Gen.
BADEN-POWELL. With 2r Illustra-
tions and a Map. Third Edition.
| Large Crown 8vo. 6s.

R. 8. 8. Baden-Powell. THE MATA-
| BELECAMPAIGN, 1896. By Maj.-
Gen, BADEN-POWELL. With nearly
roo Illustrations. Cheager Edition.
Large Crown 8vo. 6s.

|J. B. Atkins. THE RELIEF OF
LADYSMITH. By Jonn BLack

ATKINS. Witb 16 Plans and IlIlus-
trations. Third Edition. Crown
8v0. 65.

‘Mr. Atkins has a genius for the painting
of war which entitles him already to be
ranked with Forbes and Steevens, and
encourages us to hope that he may one
day rise to the level of Napier and
Kinglake.’—Pal/ Mall Gasette.

H. W. Nevinson. LADYSMITH: The
Diary of a Siege. By H. W. NEviN-
SON. With 16 Illustrations and a
Plan. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘There 1s no exaggeration here, no strain-
ing after effect. But there is the truest

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

realism, the impression of things as they
are seen, set forth in well-chosen words
and well-balanced phrases, with a mea-
sured self-restraint that marks the true
artist. Mr. Nevinson is to be congratu-
lated on the excellent work that he has
done.’—Daily Chronicle.

Barclay Lloyd. A THOUSAND
MILES WITH THE C.LV. By
Captain BarcLay Lioyp. With
an Introduction by Colonel Mac-
KINNON, and a Portrait and Map.
Crown 8vo. 65.

A personal narrative of the campaign of

the C.1.V., lively and realistic. Colonel
Mackinnon commends the book.

Filson Young. THE RELIEF OF
MAFEKING. By FILson Younec.
With Maps and Illustrations, Crown
8v0. 65.

‘A very remarkable picture.’— World.

‘ Those who like happy writing should get
this book.’—Daily Chronicle.

‘ Vivid.’—Birmingham Post.

‘Has the courage to tell the whole of what
he saw.’—Manchester Guardian.

‘Vivid impression.’—Glasgow Herald.

J. Angus Hamilton. THE SIEGE
OF MAFEKING By J. ANncus
HAMILTON. With many Illustra-
tions. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘A vivid picture.’— World.

‘A thrilling story.’—Odserver.

H, F. Prevost Battersby. IN THE
WEB OF A WAR. By H. F.
PREVOST BATTERSBY. With Plans,
and Portrait of the Author. Crown
8v0, 6s.

"One of the finest eye-witness books likely
to be written aboutthe war.’—Pall Mall
Gazette.

‘The pathos, the comedy, the majesty of
war are all in these pages.'"—Daily
Mail.

Howard C. Hillegas., WITH THE

BOER FORCES. By Howarop C. }:

HILLEGAS. With 24 Illustrations.

Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.
‘A most interesting book. It has many
and great merits.’—A theneum.
‘Has extreme interest and scarcely less
value.’—Pall Mall Gazette.

2I

E. H. Alderson. WITH THE
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left the hands of the author.

‘A nearer approach to the original than
has yet existed in English.'— Academy.

A BOOK OF DEVOTIONS. By J.
W. STANBRIDGE, B.D., Rector of
Bainton, Canon of York, and some-
time Fellow of St. John’s College,
Oxford,

It is probably the best book of itskind. It

deserves high commendation.'—Church
Gazette.

29

LYRA INNOCENTIUM. By Joun
KEBLE. Edited, with Introduction
and Notes, by WALTER LOcK, D.D.,
Warden of Keble College, Oxford.
‘This sweet and fragrant book has never

been published more attractively.’—
Academy.

A SERIOUS CALL TO A DEVOUT
AND HOLY LIFE. By WILLIAM
Law. Edited, with an Introduction,
by C. BieG, D.D., late Student of
Christ Church,

This is a reprint, word for word and line for
line, of the Editio Princeps.

THE TEMPLE. By GEorGeE HER-
BERT. Edited, with an Introduction
and Notes, by E. C. S. GIBSON,
D.D., Vicar of Leeds.

This edition contains Walton's Life of

Herbert, and the text is that of the first
edition.

A GUIDE TO ETERNITY. By
Cardinal Bona. Edited, with an
Introduction and Notes, by J. W.
STANBRIDGE, B.D., late Fellow of
St. John’s College, Oxford.

Leaders of Religion
Edited by H. C. BEECHING, M.A. With Portraits, Crown 8v0. 35. 6d.

A series of short biographies of the most prominent leaders of religious
life and thought of all ages and countries.

The following are ready—

CARDINAL NEWMAN. By R. H.
HUTTON.

JOHN WESLEY.
TON, M.A.

BISHOP WILBERFORCE. By G.
W. DANIELL, M.A.

CARDINAL MANNING. By A. W.
Hutton, M.A.

CHARLES SIMEON, By H.C. G.
MouL_eE, D.D.

JOHN KEBLE. By WALTER Lock,
D.D.

By J. H. OvER-

THOMAS CHALMERS.
OLIPHANT.

LANCELOT ANDREWES.
L. OTTLEY, M.A.

By Mrs.
By R.

AUGUSTINE OF CANTERBURY.
By E. L. Cutts, D.D.
WILLIAM LAUD.
Hutton, B.D.
JOHN KNOX. By F. MacCunn.
ee HOWE. By R. F. Horton,

BISHOP KEN. By F. A. CLARKE,

GEORGE FOX, THE QUAKER.
By T. Hopckn, D.C.L.

JOHN DONNE.- By AuGustus
Jessopp, D.D.

THOMAS CRANMER, By. A. J.
MASON.

BISHOP LATIMER. By R.M. Car-
LYLE and A. J. CARLYLE, M.A.

By W. H.

Other volumes will be announced in due course.

30

Messrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Fiction

Marie Corelli’s Novels

Crown 8vo.

A ROMANCE OF TWO WORLDS.
Twenty-first Edition.

VENDETTA. Sixteenth Edition.

THELMA. Twenty-Fourth Edition.

ARDATH: THE STORY OF A
DEAD SELF. Twelfth Edition.

THE SOUL OF LILITH. Tenth
Edition,

WORMWOOD. Tenth Edition.

BARABBAS: A DREAM OF THE
WORLD'S TRAGEDY. Thirty-
sixth Edition.

‘The tender reverence of the treatment
and the imaginative beauty of the writ-
ing have reconciled us to the daring of
the conception, and the conviction is
forced on us that even so exalted a sub-
ject cannot be made too familiar to us,
provided it be presented in the true spirit
of Christian faith. The amplifications
of the Scripture narrative are often con-
ceived with high poeticinsight, and this
“Dream of the World’s Tragedy” is
a lofty and not inadequate paraphrase
of the supreme climax of the inspired
narrative.’"—Dudblin Review.

THE SORROWS OF SATAN.

Forty-third Edition.
‘A very powerful piece of work. . . . The

6s. each.

conception is magnificent, and is likely
to win an abiding place within the
memory of man... . The author has
immense command of language, and a
limitless audacity. . . . This interesting
and remarkable romance will live long
after much of the ephemeral literature
of the day is forgotten... . A literary
phenomenon. .. novel, and even sub-
lime.'.—W. T. StEap in the Review
of Reviews.

THE MASTER CHRISTIAN.
[z50th Thousand.
‘Tt cannot be denied that ‘‘The Master
Christian” is a powerful book ; that it is
one likely to raise uncomfortable ques-
tions in all but the most self-satisfied
readers, and that it strikes at the root
ofthe failure o the Churches—the decay
of faith—in a manner which shows the
inevitable disaster heaping up. . . The
ood Cardinal Bonpré is a beautiful
gure, fit to stand beside the good
Bishop in “‘ Les Misérables” . . . The
chapter in which the Cardinal appears
with Manuel before Leo x11. is char-
acterised by extraordinary realism and
dramatic intensity ... It isa book with
a serious purpose expressed with abso-
lute unconventionality and passion . . .
And this is to say it is a book worth

reading. —Examiner.

Anthony Hope’s Novels

Crown 8vo.

THE GOD IN THE CAR. WMNinth
Edition.

*A very remarkable book, deserving of
critical analysis impossible within our
limit; brilliant, but not superficial ;
well considered, but not elaborated ;
constructed with the proverbial art that
conceals, but yet allows itself to be
enjoyed by readers to whom fine literary
method is a keen pleasure.’— The World.

A CHANGE OF AIR. Sixth Edition.

‘A graceful, vivacious comedy, true to

human nature. The characters are
traced with a masterly hand.'—77mes.

6s. each.

A MAN OF MARK, Fifth Edition.
Of all Mr. Hope’s books, ‘‘A Man of
Mark” is the one which best compares
with ‘“‘The Prisoner of Zenda.” ’
National Observer.

THE CHRONICLES OF COUNT
ANTONIO. Fourth Edition.

‘It is a perfectly enchanting story of love
and chivalry, and pure romance. The
Count is the most constant, desperate,
and modest and tender of lovers, a peer-
less gentleman, an intrepid fighter, a
faithful friend, and a magnanimous foe.’
—Guard:

ian.

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

PHROSO. Illustrated by H. R.
MILLAR. Fifth Edition.

‘The tale is thoroughly fresh, quick with
vitality, stirring the blood.’—St. James's
Gazette.

‘From cover to cover ‘‘Phroso” not only
engages the attention, but carries the
reader in little whirls of delight from
adventure to adventure.’— Academy.

SIMON DALE. Illustrated. Fifth
Edition,

‘There is searching analysis of human
nature, with a most ingeniously con-
structed plot. Mr. Hope has drawn the
contrasts of his women with marvellous
subtlety and delicacy.’— Times.

31

THE KING'S MIRROR. Third
Edition.

‘In elegance, delicacy, and tact it ranks
with the best of his novels, while in the
wide range of its portraiture and the
subtilty of its analysis it surpasses all his
earlier ventures. '—SZectator.

‘The King’s Mirror” is a strong book,
charged with close analysis and exquisite
irony ; a book full of pathos and moral
fibre—in short, a book to be read.'—
Daily Chronicle.

QUISANTE. Third Edition.

‘The book is notable for a very high liter-
ary quality, and an impress of power
and mastery on every page.’—Daily
Chronicle.

Gilbert Parker’s Novels

Crown 8vo.

PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE.
Fifth Edition.

"Stories happily conceived and finely ex-
ecuted, There is strength and genius in
Mr. Parker’s style.’—Daily Telegraph.

MRS. FALCHION. Fourth Edition.

‘A splendid study of character.’—
Atheneum.

THE TRANSLATION OF A
SAVAGE,

‘The plot is original and one difficult to
work out; but Mr. Parker has done it
with great skill and delicacy.’

— Daily Chronicle.

THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD.
Illustrated. Seventh Edition.
© A rousing and dramatic tale. A book like
this, in which swords flash, great sur-
prises are undertaken, and daring deeds
done, in which men and women live and
love in the old passionate way, is a joy
inexpressible.’—Daily Chronicle.

WHEN VALMOND CAME TO
PONTIAC: The Story of a Lost
Napoleon. /ifth Edition.

‘Here we find romance—real, breathing,

living romance. The character of Val-
mond is drawn unerringly.'"—Pal? Mail

Gazette.

6s. each.

AN ADVENTURER OF THE
NORTH: The Last Adventures of
‘Pretty Pierre.’ Second Edition.

‘ The present book is full of fine and mov-
ing stories of the great North, and it

will add to Mr. Parker’s already high
reputation.’—Glasgow Herald.

THE SEATS OF THE MIGHTY.
Illustrated. leventh Edition.
Mr. Parker has produced a really fine

historical novel.'—A theneum.
‘A great book.’—Black and White.

THE POMP OF THE LAVILET-
TES. Second Edition. 335. 6d.

‘Living, breathing romance, unforced
pathos, and a deeper knowledge of
human nature than Mr. Parker has ever
displayed before.'—Pal/ Mall Gazette.

THE BATTLE OF THE STRONG:
a Romance of Two Kingdoms,
Illustrated. Fourth Edition.

* Nothing more vigorous or more human has
come from Mr. Gilbert Parker than this
novel. It has all the graphic power of
his last book, with truer feeling for the
romance, both of human life and wild
nature.’—Literature.

32 Messrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

S. Baring Gould’s Novels

Crown 8vo. 6s. each.

*To say that a book is by the author of ‘‘Mehalah” is to imply that it contains a
story cast on strong lines, containing dramatic possibilities, vivid and sympathetic descrip-
tions of Nature, and a wealth of ingenious imagery.'—Speaker.

‘That whatever Mr. Baring Gould writes is well worth reading, is a conclusion that may
be very generally accepted. His views of life are fresh and vigorous, his language
pointed and ch istic, the incidents of which he makes use are striking and original,
his characters are life-like, and though somewhat exceptional people, are drawn and
coloured with artistic force. Add to this that his descriptions of scenes and scenery are
painted with the loving eyes and skilled hands of a master of his art, that he is always
fresh and never dull, and it is no wonder that readers have gained confidence in his

power of amusing and satisfying them, and that year by year his popularity widens.’—

Court Circular.

ARMINELL. Fifth Edition.

URITH. Fifth Edition.

IN THE ROAR OF THE SEA,
Seventh Edition.

MRS. CURGENVEN OF CURGEN-
VEN. Fourth Edition.

CHEAP JACK ZITA. Fourth Edition.

THE QUEEN OF LOVE. Fifth
Edition.

MARGERY OF QUETHER. Third
Edition.

JACQUETTA. Third Edition.
KITTY ALONE. Fifth Edition.
NOEMI. Illustrated. Fourth Edition.

THE BROOM-SQUIRE. Illustrated.
Fourth Edition,

THE PENNYCOMEQUICKS.
Third Edition.

DARTMOOR IDYLLS.

GUAVAS THE TINNER.
trated. Second Edition.

BLADYS. Illustrated. Second Edition.

Tllus-

DOMITIA. Illustrated. Second Edi-
tion,

PABO THE PRIEST.

WINEFRED. Illustrated. Second
Edition.

‘A telling picture and a capital story.’—

Times.
‘ Fine realism.'—Birmingham Post.

Conan Doyle. ROUND THE RED
LAMP. By A. CoNAN DOYLE.
Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘The book is far and away the best view
that has been vouchsafed us behind the
scenes of the consulting-room.’—Jélus-
trated London News.

Stanley Weyman. UNDER THE
RED ROBE. By STANLEY WEy-
MAN, Author of ‘A Gentleman of
France.’ With Illustrations by R. C.
WOODVILLE. Fifteenth Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘Every one who reads books at all must
read this thrilling romance, from the
first page of which to the last the breath-
less reader is haled along. An inspira-
tion of manliness and courage.'—Daily
Chronicle.

Lucas Malet. THE WAGES OF
SIN. By Lucas MALET. Thir-
teenth Edition. Crown 8vo, 65.

Lucas Malet. THE CARISSIMA.
By Lucas MALget, Author of ‘The
Wages of Sin,’ etc. Third Edition.
Crown 8vo. 65.

Lucas Malet. THE GATELESS
BARRIER, By Lucas MALET,
Author of ‘The Wages of Sin.’
Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘ The story is told with a sense of styleand a
dramatic vigour that makes it a pleasure
toread, The workmanship arouses en-
thusiasm.’—TZ vanes.

‘The story expresses admirably some true
aspects of the spiritual life as we know
it on this side of the barrier with singular
grace of charm.’—Prlot.

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

W. W. Jacobs. A MASTER OF

CRAFT. By W. W. Jacoss,
Author of ‘Many Cargoes.’ IIlus-
trated. Second Edition, Crown
8vo. 65.

‘Can be unreservedly recommended to all
who have not lost their appetite for
wholesome laughter. '’— Spectator.

‘The best humorous book published for
many a day.’—Black and White.

George Gissing. THE TOWN TRA-
VELLER. By GEORGE GISSING,
Author of ‘Demos,’ ‘In the Year of
Jubilee,’ etc. Second Edition. Cr.
8v0. 6s.

‘It is a bright and witty book above all
things. Polly Sparkes is a splendid bit
of work.’—Pall Mall Gazette.

‘The spirit of Dickens is in it.’-—Bookman.

George Gissing. THE CROWN OF
LIFE. By GEORGE GISSING, Author
of ‘Demos,’ ‘The Town Traveller,’
etc. Crown 8vo, 6s.

‘Mr. Gissing is at his best.'"—Academy.

°A fine novel.'—Oxtlook.

Henry James. THE SOFT SIDE.
By Henry JAMEs, Author of ‘What
Maisie Knew.’ Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘The amazing cleverness marks the great
worker.’— Speaker.

‘The workmanship is simply wonderful.
There is amusement, delight, surprise,
and admiration.’—Jl/ustrated London
News.

8. R. Crockett.
S. R. Crockett, Author of ‘The
Raiders,’ etc. Illustrated. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘Full of gallantry and pathos, of the clash
of arms, and brightened by episodes of
humour and love. . . ..—Westminster
Gazette.

Ss. R. Crockett. THE STANDARD
BEARER. By 8S, R. CROCKETT.
Crown 8vo. 65.

‘A delightful tale.’"— Speaker.

‘Mr. Crockett at his best.’ Literature.

Arthur Morrison. TALES OF
MEAN STREETS. By ARTHUR
Morrison. Fifth Edition. Cr.
8vo. 65.

‘Told with consummate art and extra-
ordinary detail. In the true humanity
of the book lies its justification, the
permanence of its interest, and its in-
dubitable triumph.’— Athenaeum.

LOCHINVAR. By

33

‘A great book. The author's method is
amazingly effective, and produces a
thrilling sense of reality. The writer
lays upon us a master hand. The book
is simply appalling and irresistible in
its interest. It is humorous also; with-
out humour it would not make the mark
it is certain to make.’—World.

Arthur Morrison. A CHILD OF
THE JAGO. By ARTHUR MorRI-

sON. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
‘The book is a masterpiece.’—Pall Mall
Gazette.

‘Told with great vigour and powerful sim-
plicity.’—A thenaum.

Arthur Morrison. TO LONDON
TOWN. By ARTHUR MORRISON,
Author of ‘Tales of Mean Streets,’
etc. Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘We have idyllic pictures, woodland scenes
full of tenderness and grace... . This
is the new Mr. Arthur Morrison gracious
and tender, sympathetic and human.'—
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Arthur Morrison. CUNNING
MURRELL, By ARTHUR Mor-
RISON, Author of ‘A Child of the
Jago,’ etc. Crown 8vo. 65.

‘The plot hangs admirably. The dialogue

is perfect.’—Dazly Mazi.

‘Admirable. . . . Delightful humorous
relief .. . a most artistic and satis-
factory achievement.’—Sfectator.

Max Pemberton. THE FOOTSTEPS
OF A THRONE. By Max PeEm-
BERTON. Illustrated. Second Edi-
tion. Crown 8vo. 63s.

‘ Full of original incident.’—Scotssan.

‘A story of pure adventure, with a sensa-

tion on every page. —Dazly Mail,

M. Sutherland. ONE HOUR AND
THE NEXT. By THE DUuUCHEss
OF SUTHERLAND. Third Edition.
Crown 8vo. 65.

‘Passionate, vivid, dramatic.’—Literatuse.

‘It possesses marked qualities, descriptive,
and imaginative.’—Morning Post.

Mrs. Clifford. A FLASH OF
SUMMER. By Mrs. W. K. CLiF-
FORD, Author of ‘Aunt Anne,’ etc.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘The story is a very beautiful one, exquis-
itely told.’—Speaker.

Emily Lawless. HURRISH. By the
Honble. EMILy LAWLESS, Author of
‘Maelcho,' etc. Fifth Edition. Cr.
8v0, 65.

34

Emily Lawless. MAELCHO: a Six-
teenth Century Romance. By the
Honble. Emity LAWLESS. Second

Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘A really great book.'—Sfectator.

‘One of the most remarkable literary
achievements of this generation.’—Man-
chester Guardian.

Emily Lawless. TRAITS AND
CONFIDENCES. By the Honble.
EMILY LAWLESS. Crown 8vo0. 65.
Eden Phillpotts. LYING PRO-
PHETS. By EDEN PHILLPOTTS.

Crown 8vo. 6s.

Eden Phillpotts. CHILDREN OF
THE MIST. By EDEN PHILLPOTTS.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

Eden Phillpotts) THE HUMAN
BOY. By EDEN PHILLPOTTs, Author
of ‘Children of the Mist.’ With a
Frontispiece. Mourth Edition. Crown
8v0. 65.

‘Mr. Phillpotts knows exactly what school-
boys do, and can lay bare their inmost
thoughts; likewise he shows an all-per-
vading sense of humour.’—Academy.

Eden Phillpotts. SONS OF THE
MORNING. By EDEN PHILL-
poTtts, Author of ‘The Children of

the Mist.’ Second Edition. Crown
8v0. 65.
‘A book of strange power and fascination.’

—Morning Post.
‘ Full of charm.’—Manchester Guardian.
‘A vivid style and a powerful grasp.’—
Atheneum.

‘ Inimitable humour.'—Daily Graphic.

Jane Barlow. A CREEL OF IRISH
STORIES. By JANE BARLow,
Author of ‘Irish Idylls.’ Second
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘Vivid and singularly real.'—Scotsman.

Jane Barlow. FROM THE EAST
UNTO THE WEST. By JANE
BARLOW. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Mrs. Caffyn. ANNE MAULEVERER.
By Mrs. CarFyn (Iota), Author of
‘The Yellow Aster.’ Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

Benjamin Swift. SIREN CITY. By
BENJAMIN SWIFT, Author of ‘ Nancy
Noon.’ Crown 8vo. 65,

J. H. Findlater. THE GREEN
GRAVES OF BALGOWRIE, By

MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Jane H. FINDLATER. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo. 63s.

‘A powerful and vivid story.'—Standard.

* A beautiful story, sad and strange as truth
itself.'—Vanity Fair.

‘A very charming and pathetic tale.’"—Pa//
Mail Gazette. :

‘ A singularly original, clever, and beautiful
story.'—Guardian.

‘Reveals to us a new writer of undoubted
faculty and reserve force.'—Spectator,

‘ An exquisite idyll, delicate, affecting, and
beautiful.'—Black and White.

J. H. Findlater. A DAUGHTER
OF STRIFE. By JANE HELEN
FINDLATER. Crown 8vo. 6s.

J. H. Findlater. RACHEL. By
Jane H. FINDLATER. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.

‘ A not unworthy successor to ‘ The Green
Graves of Balgowrie.” ’—Cvitic.

Mary Findlater. OVER THE
HILLS. By Mary FINDLATER.
Second Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.

‘A strong and wise book of deep insight and
unflinching truth.’—Birmingham Post.

Mary Findlater. BETTY MUS-

GRAVE. By Mary FINDLATER.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo, 65.

‘Handled with dignity and delicacy. ...
A most touching story.’—Spectator.

Alfred Ollivant. OWD BOB, THE
GREY DOG OF KENMUIR, By
ALFRED OLLIVANT. Fourth Edition.
Cr. 8vo. 65.

“AN aes, shetling. strikingly graphic.’—

Punch.

‘We admire this book. . . . It is onetoread
with admiration and to praise with en-
thusiasm.’— Bookman,

‘It is a fine, open-air, blood-stirring book,
to be enjoyed by every man and woman
to whom a dog is dear.’—Literature.

B. M. Croker. PEGGY OF THE
BARTONS. By B. M. CROKER,
Author of ‘Diana _ Barrington.’

Fourth Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.
‘Mrs. Croker excels in the admirably simple,
easy, and direct flow of her narrative, the
briskness of her dialogue, and the geni-

ality of her portraiture.'"—Spectator.
Mary L. Pendered. AN ENGLISH-
MAN. By Mary L, PENDERED.

Crown 8vo, 65.

MEssrRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

Morley Roberts. THE PLUN-
DERERS. By Morey ROBERTS,

Author of ‘The Colossus,’ etc.
Crown 8vo. 6s.
Violet Hunt. THE HUMAN IN-
TEREST. By ViIoLeT Hunt,

Author of ‘A Hard Woman,’ etc.

Crown 8vo. 63s.

‘Clever observation and unfailing wit.’—
Academy.

‘The insight is keen, the irony is deli-
cate.'— World.

H. G. Wells. THE STOLEN BA-
CILLUS, and other Stories. By
H. G. WELLS. Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

§ The impressions ofa very striking imagina-
tion.’—Saturday Review.

H. G Wells) THE PLATTNER
STORY AND OTHERS. By H. G.
WELLS. Second Edition. Cr. 8vo.
6s.

‘Weird and mysterious, they seem to hold
the reader as by a magic spell.’—Scots-
man.

Sara Jeannette Duncan. A VOYAGE
OF CONSOLATION. By Sara
JEANNETTE DUNCAN, Author of ‘An
American Girl in London.’ Illus-
trated. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
‘A most delightfully bright book.’'—Dazly

Telegraph. | ;
‘The dialogue is full of wit.’—Globe.

Sara Jeannette Duncan. THE PATHEI
OF A STAR. By SARA JEANNETTE
Duncan, Author of ‘A Voyage of
Consolation.’ Illustrated. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo. 65.

Cc. F, Keary. THE JOURNALIST.
By C. F. KEARY. Cy. 8v0. 6s.

W.E. Norris. MATTHEW AUSTIN.
By W. E. Norris, Author of ‘ Made-
moiselle de Mersac,’ etc. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘An intellectually satisfactory and morally
bracing novel.’'—Daily Telegraph.

W.E. Norris. HIS GRACE. By W. E.
Norris. Third Edition. Cr. 8vo.

6s.

W. E. Norris. THE DESPOTIC
LADY AND OTHERS. By W. E.
Norris. Crown 8vo. 6s.

35

W. E. Norris. CLARISSA FURIOSA.
By W. E. Norris. Cr. 8vo. 6s.
‘Asa story it is admirable, as a seu a’esprit
it is capital, as a lay sermon studded
with gems of wit and wisdom it is a
model.'—7ke World.

W. E. Norris. GILES INGILBY. By
W. E. Norris. Illustrated. Second
Edition, Crown 8vo, 6s.

‘Interesting, wholesome, and charmingly
written.’—Glasgow Herald.

W. E. Norris. AN OCTAVE. By
W. E. Norris. Second Edition.
Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘A very perfect exposition of the self-
restraint, the perfect knowledge of so-
ciety and its ways, the delicate sense of
humour, which are the main charac-
teristics of this very accomplished
author.’—Country Life.

W. Clark Russellh MY DANISH
SWEETHEART. By W. CLarK
RUSSELL. Illustrated. Fourth
Edition. Crown 8vo, 6s.

Robert Barr. IN THE MIDST OF
ALARMS. By RospertT_ Barr.
Third Edition. Cr. 8vo. 6s.

‘A book which has abundantly satisfied us
byitscapital humour.’—Daily Chronicle.

‘Mr. Barr has achieved a triumph.’—Pad/
Mall Gazette.

Robert Barr. THE MUTABLE
MANY. By ROBERT BARR. Second
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘Very much the best novel that Mr. Barr
has yet given us. There is much insight
in it, and much excellent humour.’—
Daily Chronicle.

Robert Barr. THE COUNTESS
TEKLA. By ROBERT BARR. Third
Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s. ,

‘Of these medieval romances, which are
now gaining ground, ‘‘The Countess
Tekla” is the very best we have seen.
The story is written in clear English,
and a picturesque, moving style.'—PadZ
Mall Gazette.

Robert Barr. THE STRONG ARM.
By ROBERT BARR, Author of ‘The
Countess Tekla.’ Illustrated. Second
Edition. 8ve. 6s.

‘A collection of tales about German
chivalry, knightly deeds, and villainous
devices of the Middle Ages, by one of
the deftest of story-tellers.’—Jl/ustrated
London News.

36

Andrew Balfour. BY STROKE OF
SWORD. By A. BaLrour. Iilus-
trated. Fourth Edition. Cr. 8vo. 65.

‘A recital of thrilling aa uest told with
unflagging vigour.’—Glob

Andrew Balfour. TO "ARMS! By
ANDREW BALFOUR. Illustrated.
Second Edition. Crown 8vo. 65.

‘The marvellous perils through which Allan
passes are told in powerful and lively
fashion.’—Pall Mall Gazette.

Andrew Balfour, VENGEANCE IS

MINE. By ANDREW BALFOUR,
Author of ‘By Stroke of Sword.’
Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 6s.

‘A vigorous piece of work, well written, and
abounding in stirring ‘incidents.’—G/as-
gow Herald.

J. Maclaren Cobban. THE KING
OF ANDAMAN: A Saviour of
Society. By J. MACLAREN COBBAN.
Crown 8vo. 65.

‘An unquestionably interesting book. It
contains one character, at least, who has
in him the root of immortality. '"—Pall
Mali Gazette.

J. Maclaren Cobban. THE ANGEL
OF THE COVENANT. By J.
MACLAREN COBBAN. Cr. 8vo. 65.

R, Hichens. BYEWAYS. By ROBERT
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DODO: A DETAIL OF THE DAY.
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ROSE A CHARLITTE. By Mar-
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LONE PINE: A ROMANCE OF
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MISSION. By L.S. MCCHESNEY.
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BREWER.

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By Mary

By

38

THE SPIRIT OF STORM.
RONALD Ross.

THE QUEENSBERRY CUP. By
CLIVE P, WOLLEY.

A HOME IN INVERESK. By T.
L. PATON.

MISS ARMSTRONG'S AND
OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES. By
JoHN DAvIDsoN.

DR. CONGALTON'S LEGACY. By
HENRY JOHNSTON.

TIME AND THE WOMAN. By
RICHARD PRYCE.

THIS MAN'S DOMINION. By the
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MESSRS. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

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THE FAITHFUL CITY.
HERBERT MORRAH.

IN THE GREAT DEEP. By J. A.
Barry.

BIJLI, THE DANCER. By JAMES
BLYTHE PATTON,

THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Lucy MAYNARD.

VAUSSORE. By FRANCIS BRUNE.

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A WOMAN OF FORTY. By EsmMé
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THE GODS GIVE MY DONKEY
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THE POISON OF ASPS. By R.
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THE QUIET MRS. FLEMING. By
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DISENCHANTMENT. ByF. MABEL
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MEssrs. METHUEN’S CATALOGUE

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A_DEPLORABLE AFFAIR. By
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39

A MAN WITH BLACK EYE-
LASHES. By H. A. KENNEDY,

A HANDFUL OF EXOTICS. By
S. GORDON.

AN ODD _ EXPERIMENT.
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MY STEWARDSHIP. By E.
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CLARK RUSSELL.

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40

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42

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43

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