>>Tr^l

THE LIBRARY

THE UNIVERSITY OF
BRITISH COLUMBIA

Digitized by the Internet Arciiive

in 2010 witii funding from

University of Britisii Columbia Library

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

MOEE POT-POUREI

FP.OM A SUKKEY GARDEN

MOEE POT-POUEEI

FEOM A SUEEEY GAEDEN

BY

MES C. W. EARLE

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE

1899

[All rights reserved]

'Eeading good Books of Morality is a

little flat and dead. Observing our faults in

others is sometimes improper for our case ;

but the best Keceipt (best, I say, to work

and best to take) is the Admonition of a

Friend '

Bacon

TO THE EEADEES OF

'POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN'

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

CONTENTS

SEPTEMBER

PAOE

Reasons for writing another ' Pot-Pourri ' — Advice of friends —
Criticisms grave and gay — Eeturn home after three months
abroad — Disappointment with dry garden — Kingfisher —
Sedicm spectabile and insects — Gardening — Cooking . , 1

OCTOBER

Gardening— Echeverias — Ignorance about bulbs — Gossamer
time and insects — The East Coast — A new rockery — Oxalis
florihunda as a vegetable — Previous ' Po^Po^trris ' — Cooking
receipts, various — Journey to Frankfort in 1897 — Cronberg
— Boecklin's Todten-Insel — Jewish Cemetery — Goethe's
house — Staedal Art Institute — German treatment of tuber-
culosis ........... 46

NOVEMBER

Present of ' The Botanist ' — Echeveria and Euphorbia splen-
dens — Cowper on greenhouses — Cultivation of greenhouse
plants — Bookseller at Frankfort — Dr. Wallace on Lilies
— Eeceipts — Winter in the country — The sorting of old
letters 85

DECEMBER

Lonely evenings and more papers — Figs from France — Horn-
beams and Weeping Hornbeams — Wire netting round small
fruit-trees — Damsons — Pioman Hyacinths and Paper-white
Narcissus — Effect of coloured glass on plants — Use of corru-
gated iron — Lord Lyndoch — Cultivation of Mistletoe — A list
of plants — Anniversary present-giving — Christmas decora-
tions— Acetylene gas — The old learning to live alone —
Eeceipts 113

viii MORE POT-POURRI

JANUARY 1899

PAGE

Difficulties of growing Daphne indica — Journey last year to
Ireland — Cutting down and re-planting trees— Apples —
Skimmed milk — Manure heaps— Winter Honeysuckle —
Botanical Gardens in Dublin — Botticelli's drawings —
Tissot's Bible — Rippingille's patent stove — Blue flowers —
• Snowdrop-time ' — ' The Sun-children's Budget '—Floral
notes from ' The Scotsman ' — Eeceipts 152

FEBRUARY

Mistresses and servants — Difficulty of getting servants— Girls
instead of boys — Registry Offices — The employments that do
not take up characters — Early rising — Baron Humboldt —
Coverings for larders— Blackbeetles — Children's nurses —
Ignorance of young married women — Some natural histoi-y
books — Forcing blossoming branches — Horticultural Show —
Letter from San Moritz— Receipts 184

MARCH

Confessions about diet — Cures for rheumatism — Effects of tea-
drinking — Sparing animal life a bad reason for vegetarianism
— The Berlin foot-race — Mrs. Crow in Edinburgh — Bagehot
on luxury — A word about babies — German and English
nurseries — Sir Richard Thorne Thome on raw milk— The
New Education — Difficulty of understanding young children
— Gardening — Cooking . .. . .... 21G

APRIL

Newspapers on cremation — More about Suffolk — Maund on
flowers that close — Asparagus growing on the seacoast —
Peacock feathers for firescreens — Dining-room tables —
Petroleum tubs in gardens— Neglect of natural history —
Cactuses again— Old mills— Mr. Burbidge on sweet-smelling
leaves— Florist Auriculas— Seed-sowing— Kitchen garden —
Poultry . , 26a

CONTENTS ix

MAY

l-AGK

The * French Sugar Pea ' — The ' Westminster Gazette ' on
Tulips — The legend of the Crown Imperial — Article on
' Sacred Trees and Flowers ' — Peeling of Poppies — Cooking
receipts — Books on Florence — Mr. Gladstone on travelling —
Journey to Italy — Arrival at Arcetri 301

JUNE

What I saw from my window at Arcetri — Fireflies — Cypresses —
Youthful memories in the ' Cascine ' — Deodar in Cloister
of San Marco — Fete at Santa Margharita — Villas — Gardens
— Want of colour in Tuscany at midsummer — Slight allu-
sion to picture galleries — The cabinet of Cardinal Leopoldo
di Medici — June 24th in Florence — Botanical Garden —
Silence of birds and summer sounds 329

JULY

A night journey — Dawn in the train — Passing Chamberi — A
water-cure near Geneva — Amiel and his ' Journal Intime '
— The New Museum at Geneva — M. Correvon's garden — An
afternoon at Bale — Boecklin again — Cronberg and the
• Palmengarten ' — Planting shrubs to secure an especial
effect — The cultivation of Alpine Strawberries — Receipts . 3G7

AUGUST

A Horticultural Show in August — The old Chelsea Physic
Garden — Towns out of season — Flat-hunting in London —
Overcrowding flats — Marble better than tiles — Curtains and
blinds — A long note on girls and young women . . . 394

INDEX 439

MOEE POT-POUEEI

SEPTEMBER

Eeasons for writing another ' Pot-Pourri ' — Advice of friends —
Criticisms grave and gay — Eeturnhome after three months abroad
— Disappointment with dry garden — Kingfisher — Seduvi specta-
bile and insects — Gardening — Cooking.

September 1st, 1898. — It is now a year and a half since I
finished my first book, and the public have been almost
as appreciative and generous in their praise of it as my
nieces were. Kind letters of all sorts have poured in,
and I have been overwhelmed with suggestions about
the future, and what I should or should not do. Some
have said — and I admit that these, in all friendliness, are
the most earnest in their heartfelt appeals — that I should
rest on my laurels and write no more. They urge that a
second book always falls flat. If on the same subject as
the first, it is generally a failure. If on a new subject, it
is apt to be outside the writer's experience. And then they
quote several incontestable examples which jump to the
recollection of everybody. I really agree with this view
of the case up to the point of not acting upon it.
Nothing can ever bear being done a second time. This
is one of the sadnesses of life, and I do not for a moment
anticipate that No. 2 can please in the same kind of way
as did No. 1. The method not being new, my readers
will know pretty well what to expect ; and this, probably

B

2 MORE POT-POURRI

will immensely sharpen their critical judgment. Then
there were those who said and wrote — and need I state
that they are the flatterers who come most home to the
author's heart, as is but natural ? — ' We have read your
book ; we like it ; we have found it useful and helpful,
entertaining or suggestive. Cannot you give us more ? '
To these I answered : ' Give me time and I will try.'
The result was that throughout the last year I have been
making various notes about my life, things I saw and
things I did, exactly as they occurred. These very likely
will prove less interesting than former notes, which were
more or less connected with the life that was behind me.
One newspaper had it that I must have a very good
memory. As a matter of fact, I have no memory at all,
but from my youth I have kept, more or less continuously,
commonplace books — a jumble of all sorts of things as I
came across them in my very desultory reading. These
notes were often so carelessly kept as not even to
acknowledge where I stole the thought that gave me
pleasure. This accounts for my having quotations at
hand. Another reviewer kindly said I had a ' marked
grace of style.' My dear old mother used to say she
never considered a compliment was worth having that
was not totally undeserved ! I never had the slightest
idea of possessing any style at all. But what is style ?
It is a weary topic when so much is said about ' getting
style ' (like ' getting religion '). Schopenhauer's remarks
on the subject are worth noticing. He writes : ' There
is no quality of style that can be got by reading writers
who possess it. But if the qualities exist in us — exist,
that is to say, potentially — we can call them forth and
bring them into consciousness. We can learn the pur-
poses to which they can be put. We can be strengthened
in an inclination to use them, or get courage to do so.
The only way in which reading can form style is by

SEPTEMBER 3

teaching us the use to which we can put our own natural
gifts. We must have these gifts before we can learn
the use of them. Without them, reading teaches us
nothing.'

One friend wrote : ' I should have liked the book still
better if the moral and domestic reflections had been
jumbled up with the rest, instead of being put like an
appendix at the end.' With this I entirely agree, but my
judgment in the matter was overruled by others. The
most general criticism has been that the various subjects
in the book are not kept enough apart. Some asked :
' Won't you write a cookery book alone ? or a gardening
book alone ? ' I could only say that I am no specialist.
Dozens of such books exist and are much better than
any I could write. I am and must remain an ignorant
amateur. My mind only works, as I said before, on the
lines of collecting knowledge, sweet and bitter, as I walk
along life's way. What I have I can give, but I can
neither create nor imagine. The accusations of the
sudden jumps from gardening to surgery, or from cooking
to art, which astonished my readers, are perfectly true.
But are not these violent and sudden contrasts a marked
characteristic of modern life ? Do we not, many of us,
any morning, go from our letters or newspapers — con-
taining, perhaps, the most tragic human stories, affect-
ing ourselves or those we love — to the ordering of the
dinner for the friend who is to come in the evening, or
seeing that the carriage or the fly is not forgotten for the
guest who is leaving before noon ? Such is life. So my
months must remain quite as varied as before. It is sad
to have to repeat the un-English name of ' Pot-Pourri,'
which annoyed so many and was never very satisfactory
to myself ; but this book in no way aims at being more
than a continuation of the first, a kind of second volume,
a giving more to those who ask for it. The word ' pot-

b2

4 MORE POT-POURRI

pourri' is so generally accepted in England to mean a
sweet and pleasant mixtui'e, that we do not realise that the
original word meant a mixed stew, as do its synonyms
of ' hotch-potch ' and ' olla podrida,' a favourite Spanish
dish consisting of a mixtm'e of various kinds of meat
chopped fine and stewed with vegetables.

Most of the letters I received were of kindly and
affectionate appreciation. But some frankly criticised,
while others marked short-comings. As usual, however,
in such cases perfectly incompatible qualities were re-
quired. For instance, most of my gardening friends were
disappointed at the information about gardening being so
elementary, teUing them little they did not know. They
veiy likely overrated what I had to tell them, but they
entirely missed the point of my omitting to make my
information as detailed and special as I could have done
— first, because I referred them to real gardening books,
and secondly because I wanted what I did tell to be
particularly addressed to beginners with small gardens
who wished to do their best, but had little time to spend
in the study of other books. On the other hand the
ignorant amateurs, for whom it was specially written,
mom-nfully complained that it still did not begin enough
at the beginning. To these I always answered that Mr.
Eobinson must have realised this difficulty, as some years
ago he reprinted the ' Amateur Gardener,' by Mrs.
Loudon (Fredk. Warne & Co.), which is full of this
elementary information, and to be had from any bookseller
for the sum of ninepence.

A third difficulty was the slavish admirer, who in
all soils and even with different climates said : ' I have
strictly carried out your instructions, and utter failure has
been the result.' I wish once more to reiterate that
anything I say, both in the last volume and in this, with
regard to plant life is merely the result of my own

SEPTEMBER 5

personal experience. All that I state is by way of
suggestion, not by any means as a law to be carried out
at all times and in all places. Several letters of approval
I received from working gardeners gave me great pleasure,
and one said that he found the book ' very bright and
holding.' This seems to me a most expressive word. An-
other complaint came from a Londoner, representing the
opinion of the inhabitants of towns. He was in exact con-
trast to the gardener-friend in the suburbs and the country.
He complained bitterly of the long lists of plants, the many
details about gardening, and asked pitifully if this part
might not have been relegated to an appendix, suggesting
that this would make the book much more readable.

One man who professed to be no gardener at all said
his leading idea in gardening was to dismiss the under-
gardener. This is a very common theory with the master
of the house who thinks gardens can be well kept very much
under-handed. As a rule the best gardens are those where
the master of the house superintends the gardening himself.

A woman friend who dislikes both garden books and
gardening wrote: 'Notices of gardjning books might
for the sake of the village idiot, for whom everyone writes,
have been put in a chapter quite at the end. " Fat," as the
actors call it, should come at the beginning of a book to
encourage the reader.' Perhaps she was not wrong, for I
believe, so far as I can gather from the letters, that the
non-gardening people like my book best — gardeners after
all being, as they are the first to acknowledge, one-idea'd.
And yet no, it cannot have been really so, as by far the
most genuine and sympathetic letters I have received
have been from real garden lovers — the sick, the old, the
expatriated, all joining in one paean of praise over the
soul-satisfying occupation of gardening.

A few of the London booksellers were rather amusing
on the subject, and I have considerable sympathy with

6 MORE POT-POURRI

their opinions. One said to a friend of mine, a few
months after the book had come out, that it was going
into the sixth edition and that he ' couldn't conceive why,
as there was nothing in it.' Another shrewdly remarked
that he called the book ' a social success, not a literary
one.' There was a vein running through several letters
which I thought perhaps accounted in some way for the
success of the book, as it proved that many people
wished to give it to someone else because they found in
it a gentle rod wherewith to scourge their neighbour. One
critic said that ' a spirit of benign and motherly mate-
rialism broods over the book ' — an expression which I
thought rather nice, as it was what I had aimed at. A
second said the book was ' full of good spirits from
beginning to end,' and a third discovered that ' a tone of
sadness ran through it all.'

After critics came the friends who amusingly said :
' The book is so extraordinarily like yourself, we can hear
your voice speaking all through it.' Strangers, I am told,
who know me only by reputation or not at all, kindly
settled that it was not written by me, but by some
mysterious unknown person they could not quite hit
upon.

It is quite true, and I wish to state it again, as I did
in my first preface, that I had very real and practical
assistance from one of my nieces, who made a most
efficient secretary. Our method of working was simple
enough. I wrote what I wanted to say and then dictated
it to her. In reading aloud, the more flagrant mistakes
and repetitions struck the ear quicker than the eye, as is
but natural for one more accustomed to speak than to
write. Two or three other people helped me by toning
down my crude opinions and taking out whole sen-
tences that might have been causes of offence. It has
for a long time been a favourite theory of mine that, as

SEPTEMBER 7

people generally write books with a vague hope that they
may be read, it is wise to consult a small number of
people tjrpical of the public and to be guided, without too
much self-esteem, by the opinions of these selected few-
Of course this opens up the further discussion whether,
as I saw it well put the other day in the ' Spectator,'
' Success with the multitude is in itself desirable, or if it
is not rather the hall-mark of a commonplace inferiority.
Who pleases foohsh readers must himself be a fool. If the
general reader is after all quite such a fool as the superior
junta think him is another question altogether. But he
has the marked advantage of holding the verdict in his
hands.' The only raison d'etre of ephemeral literature is
that it should be read. The writer of genius comes under
a different category. He stands on a mountain-top and
breathes a rarer atmosphere, and often can only be under-
stood from a distance. ' Bethia Hardacre ' exactly
expresses this in verse :

I pray to fail, if to succeed
Means faithlessness unto my creed.

Lady Eastlake says on this point : ' Genius, with its
divine inspirations, may be left to find its way to the
admiration of the few and in the end to the acknowledg-
ment of all.' Many will remember when Mr. Quaritch
brought out Fitzgerald's translation of ' Omar Khayyam,'
disgusted at its complete failure, he threw the whole
edition into a ' penny box.' Dante Eossetti found them,
and we all know the rest.

Some people said that what really pleased them most
in the book were the little bits of poetry. Considering
that not one of these was mine, the remark by way of
compliment was rather humorous. Another curious
vein of flattery that ran through dozens of the letters
was expressive of the writers' regret that they had not
written ' Pot-Pourris ' of their own, proving the general

8 MORE POT-POURRI

truth of how easy everything is if we only take the
trouble to do it.

Tho cooking receipts caused panic in some minds and
indignation in others. One poor bachelor told his house-
keeper to try the receipt in ' Pot-Pourri ' for making a soup.
She happened to hit upon the French chef's extravagant
directions for making consommi and, horrified by the
numberless pounds of beef recommended, said : ' Really,
sir, it would be far cheaper to have down a quantity
of tinned soups from the Stores ! ' Another careful
mistress of her own house complained very much of
different meats amounting to six pounds being used
for one pie. But in her case the household consisted of
one thin brother and two thinner maids. My receipts, of
course, were jumbled together for big and little establish-
ments, to be used at the discretion of the housewife. A
French lady writes that I make a mistake in thinking
that it is usual in France to baste chickens with butter,
and that they are much better done with the fat of
bacon, or suet, or even common lard. I myself generally
roast chickens with butter, and find that people like them
very much. But of course only fresh butter must be
used ; never that horror called ' cooking butter.' It is
true that basting them with the fat of good bacon does
make them a better colour.

In a most humorous article from that delightful
writer of the ' Pages from a Private Diary ' in the ' Corn-
hill ' there were several funny allusions to my book. I
quote the following as a specimen : ' While " doing " my
Michaelmas accounts this morning, I found that the
butter book (for we use Tom's dairy) was half as much
again as last quarter, and the reason given by the respon-
sible Eugenia is that Mrs. Earle protests against economy
in butter. On referring to the passage I find that she
suggests instead an economy in meat, and I pointed this

SEPTEMBER 9

out to E. ; but the butcher's book shows no proportionate
diminution. This has led me to reflect how much more
infectious extravagance is than economy.'

One of my most complimentary letters was from an
old friend, Mrs. Eoundell, asking me to allow her to quote
some of my receipts in a new cookery book she was com-
piling. This has since appeared under the name of ' A
Practical Cookery Book ' (Bickers & Son), and is so ex-
cellent that it thoroughly convinces me of my wisdom in
declining to write one myself. My praise of this book
almost suggests a mutual admiration society, as Mrs.
Eoundell is very complimentary to me. She begins by
thanking me for my receipts, and ends by a quotation
from ' Pot-Pourri ' on hospitality and house-keeping. It
will be many a long year before her own book is super-
seded. The receipts are clear and economical, and its
only fault seems to be that at present it costs seven-and-
sixpence.

A literary friend writes that he has a point of dissent
— ' a bit of pedantic purism. Yon s,a,y " chickens." There is
no such word : chicke?^ is a plural. Hose, hosen ; chick,
chicken ; and in old days many more — as house, housen ;
place, pleasen. A farmer's wife, at least in the west, says
correctly that she is going to feed her chicken — meaning
not one, but many.' It is difficult to know when custom
asserts itself sufficiently to change grammar, and my critic
himself admits that many of the words he quotes are ob-
solete. I fear I shall hardly have the courage to say
' truss two fine chicken ' if I come across such a phrase in
a receipt.

I received very few letters on the nurse question.
It had been a good deal discussed in periodicals just
before the book came out.

An old friend, a doctor, wrote : ' Your chapter on
health I take some exception to ; on the question that

lo MORE POT-POURRI

starvation is a cure for most of the minor ailments of life
I agree with you, but I think you are wrong on the
subject of nurses. You onay get some affection and
kindness on the part of a mother, or a sister, or a wife,
but I have always held that in really bad cases all three
make the worst possible nurses, because so few women
can really control their feelings, and where there were
great affection and grave anxiety they would be apt to
fail in some small details which might be of the utmost
importance, where a good trained nurse would not, because
she looks on the patient only as a '* case," which, if she is
a conscientious woman, it is her one object to get well.
My experience also does not tally with yours, that the
nurse is the tool of the doctor and is bound to approve
and agree with him. On the contrary I think many of
them, through " a little learning," think they know quite
as much as, if not more than, the doctor, and often use
their own discretion (?) as to whether they will carry out
all the orders given them. If the doctor finds out this
and remonstrates, he then makes an enemy of a person
who at any time may have an opportunity of doing him
much professional injury.' I am quite ready to acknow-
ledge the correctness of these remarks, and if the nurse
and doctor do not work well together any opposition on
the part of the nurse might make the situation very dis-
agreeable for the doctor, and vice versd. If, on the other
hand, they work extremely well together, the patient may
be the sufferer, supposing the doctor were mistaken about
the case, which does happen with men of the greatest
talent. The too literal carrying-out of the doctor's orders,
especially with regard to medicines and sleeping-draughts,
is often very injurious to the patient. I did not for a
moment mean to imply that love and devotion could
supply the qualities that are the result of training. But a
kind of clear-sightedness and instinct that comes from love

SEPTEMBER ii

and devotion is by no means always to be found in the
professional nurse.

I continue to quote typical letters on various subjects
as they crop up. One kind old clergyman thought so
flatteringly of my powers that he suggests that I
should ' utilise the genius which has popularised your
book in some of those fields into which your book affords
glimpses — why not write on heredity ? ' The fact is, as
I have already said, I am not able to write a treatise on
cooking and gardening, much less could I pretend to
give the world any information on great subjects con-
nected with science ; and heredity more especially is
peculiarly buried in darkness, even for experts. He con-
cludes a long and interesting letter as follows : ' Some
years ago Sir F. Galton sent me a paper of inquiries
(which he was circulating among doctors) as to the
physical and psychical history of three generations of
ancestors.' This idea of Sir F. Galton's has been a
favourite one with me for years. I have always thought
that it would be of the greatest interest in families if a
careful register were kept of people's health, diseases, and
death, so that some idea might be formed of the general
tendencies of family diseases, with their succeeding de-
velopment and treatment during three or four genera-
tions.

It seems satisfactory that a great number of the news-
paper critics gave me credit for common-sense. Some
few passages in ' Sons and Daughters ' raised opposition,
but, I am bound to confess, much less than I expected.
My great disappointment v^as that I got so little actual
criticism — I may even say, so little correction. In this, I
am told, I was ambitious, as most critics compose their
articles by a few quotations, and have neither time nor
inclination to really criticise. There was one excellent
exception in an interesting and friendly article in the

12 MORE POT-POURRI

' Spectator.' This critic seems to doubt, more even than I
did, the courage of parents and nurses as regards giving
independence to young children. But in proof of the
desirability of my i-ecommendations he quotes Stevenson's
admirable saying with regard to a boy : ' It is better for
him to break his neck than for you to break his spirit.'
This article shows the revers dc la mddaillc so well, as
regards the atmosphere of a home, that I copy it. After
approving my suggestions about giving allowances to
both girls and boys, it goes on to say : ' The question of
the frank criticism by children of their home is more
doubtful. It is, of course, better that their dissatisfaction
should, like the measles, " come out," but what about their
home manners ? Criticism is very apt to degenerate
into grumbling, and the spectacle of children or young
people grumbling about domestic arrangements is not
edifying. Grumbling is always rude ; and if manners
make the man, it is an undoubted fact that perfect
manners are incompatible with absolute brutal outspoken-
ness. For instance, the wife and mother who is trying to
attain the really lofty standard aimed at in this book
cannot, of necessity, be absolutely outspoken. If her work
is to be successful, she must not hint that any part of it is
distasteful ; that is, she must conceal some of her feelings.
Surely children should not be brought up to feel that
their father and mother are the only people they may be
rude to. And if the money argument is to be applied to
the wife, it must touch the children too ; they must not be
allowed to take all the luxuries of the house they do not
pay for, and then gi'umble because those luxuries are not
arranged as they like best. And now that we apply this
reasoning a second time, we see that in reality it is rather
an ugly argument. It is a fact, but, like other facts,
such as death and digestion, it need not be obtruded
at every moment. The woman's work may be given from

SEPTEMBER

13

love of her home ; and the children may forbear, also
through love, to tell their mother that the dinner-horn^
is not quite the fashionable one, and "you might have
remembered how I hate that pudding." The mother will
look out for herself and see to the tastes of her family,
and will in talks with one and the other ask for advice
and hints on new ways of arranging the familiar details
of life. And so good manners, which are really the
Christian virtues of patience, charity, and self-control,
will reign in that house, and it will be a far pleasanter
place than if everyone in turn were loudly to volunteer
their opinion of how it ought to be conducted.'

This has truth in it. All individuals must decide for
themselves how to draw the line between good manners
and what may end in whited sepulchres. This is doubly
difficult with children whose natural inclination is to
speak as they feel, for not to do so appears to them
rather as a deception than as a sparing of other people's
feelings. Everyone's experience will tell them how early
children say to others what they dare not say in their
own home. The great difficulty is to keep the love of
children. Goethe says : ' There is a pohteness of the
heart ; this is closely allied to love. Those who possess
this purest fountain of natural politeness find it easy to
express the same in forms of outward propriety.*

Nothing was more amusing to me than this interest-
ing variety in the letters about ' Sons and Daughters.' I
will quote passages from several of them : ' I agree with
your " Daughters " more than I thought I should. You
do not lay such stress as I thought you would on the
necessity of getting married and the " complete " point of
view.' All the same I maintain that an unmarried woman
is not a complete human being.

' I think the chapter on " Sons " the better of thei two.
But I think independence in boys is far easier to manage

14 MORE POT-POURRI

than in givls. School-life brings boys to their proper
level. Home-life with absolute freedom rather leads to a
girl becoming too confident that her own opinion must
be the right one. She rubs up against so few who can or
will take her down. The independent girl generally rules
those of her own age. Of course you cannot lay down a
hard-and-fast rule for any child. Each one has its differ-
ent character, to be formed and improved by those who
live with it. This ought to be done by the mother, bat it
is more often left to an ignorant governess, who does not
try to understand the child, who has her own narrow-
minded ideas of right and wrong, and never makes allow-
ance for high spirit and temper.'

' You must remember that the people I was brought
up amongst take their duties as parents seriously, if
narrowly — and many of these, as far as they still exist,
will be a little startled at some of your theories, and the tm-
moral (mind, I don't say M?imoral) tone. Parents and child-
ren are a subject of perennial interest. We have all been
the one, and many of us the other — and the rest of us stand
in loco parentis to some at least of the younger generation.
But as long as the world lasts there will be difficulties in
that relation. Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait is a
saw which has many meanings. I totally disagree with
your idea that the young must never be sacrificed to the
old, or the healthy to the sick. Why, your own remarks
on nursing testify to the good that may come of such a
sacrifice.'

This last sentence proves to me that my remarks were
not clear, and the impression conveyed is certainly not
what I intended. What I really think is that the old
have no right to command the young to sacrifice their
lives to them. But, on the other hand, the voluntary
sacrifice by the young of their own lives, though it should
be carefully watched by those about them, is certainly not

SEPTEMBER

15

without immense benefit to themselves, self-sacrifice being
acknowledged by all moralists to be the greatest strength-
ener of human character. There is, however, the great
risk and danger of self-suppression.

I continue my quotations :

• You put the question of unselfishness in parents or
children as being a difficult one, but I have always felt that
to help each person to be as they ought to be, in the best
and highest way for their own characters, is the only right
love and influence that each can have for the other, no
matter in what relations of life. If you either spoil a child
or a parent or husband or wife, so that you make them
behave wrongly, you are sure to be distressed by their not
doing right, and other people feel the same.' Everyone
must agree that to make those we love behave well is the
object to be attained. The difficulty is the best method
of bringing it about. Is it by unselfish example or by exact-
ing unselfishness on the part of others ? Who can say ?

Here is a severe condemnation from a father of several
children : ' I don't agree one bit with your theoretical
subordination of old to young. I think it innately ridicu-
lous, essentially false, and at once morbid, superficial,
and mischievous.'

Nobody actually wrote it to me, but I heard it from
several people, that the advice about giving the latch-key
to very young boys harassed and worried a great number
of mothers. Why, I do not quite understand ; as showing
confidence in the boy seems to me the beginning of all
true relations between a mother and a gi'O wing-up son.
I still think that if boys are unfit to have a key at seven-
teen, or the recommended allowance at an earlier age, it
shows that their education has been somewhat defective
in fitting them, not for doing well at school, but for the
general struggle of Hfe as they get older, which is learnt
so well by children in a lower class of life. There might.

1 6 MORE POT-POURRI

of course, be an exception in a family, but that merely
means that he is more deficient in common-sense than
his brothers, and should be gradually strengthened by
some method fitted to his peculiar case. It is a dehght-
ful feeling of comfort to me to think that, whatever I
suggest, nobody need follow it unless it seems to them
good ; but I wrote nothing without deliberate thought and
practical experience.

As a rule the book seemed to please the old and the
young, rather than the middle-aged. Occasionally, how-
ever, some few parents wrote appreciating my hints about
the modern danger of childi-en growing up more and more
apart from their parents. In our grandmothers' days
this only happened among what have been called the
' upper ten thousand.' Now it pervades all classes, down
to the labourer who has to send his children to the infant
and Board school. Not that schools of any sort are neces-
sarily bad in themselves, but it is a new position which has
to be faced with courage and thoughtful ness by the parents.

A young mother wrote full of faith in her ovni excellent
principles of how to bring up children, and hovr easy she
had found it to gain an influence on their lives. This
cocksureness, natural and even wholesome in the young,
often brings about a good deal of disappointment. You
may make a soil ever so good, and you may plant ever so
good a seed, but even then there can be no security as to
results. The very child who is most impressionable and
easy to form in youth is also most affected by others
as time goes on. The result of a powerful influence
which we cannot even trace is what often makes children,
as they grow up, almost unrecognisable to their parents.
The forming of character, however, is totally diff'erent from
moulding the impressionable clay, and, like casting bread
upon the waters, it may return to us after many days.

Here are some pathetic groans from an intensely

SEPTEMBER 17

anxious mother of an only daughter : ' Needless to say
that the chapter of your book which chiefly interested me
is " Daughters," the education of my own being the burn-
ing question with me just now. You are certainly very
comforting in what you say of " casual and superficial
education," but I fear that would not satisfy the professed
and professing educationalist. In our case, want of
robustness on M.'s part has obliged us to put up with home
education, and of course it is then a mere chance whether
you happen to get a governess who can really teach ; for
the teacher is born, not made. When, however, I read
the " Parents' Eeview " or the educational literature it re-
commends, I suffer agonies of remorse from the conscious-
ness of not having made enough of these early years.
My ambition is humble. I only wish my child to be
average, but not to be at a disadvantage if, later on, she
is prompted to take some part in the real work of the
world. And yet how can I with my own old-fashioned
defective education train her in the right way ? This
fiend of education sits like a nightmare on me almost day
and night — " Almost thou persuadest me it is impossible
to be a parent." When I get up from the perusal of these
books, I feel castigated to such an extent that my mind
feels sore all over, and into those wounds you pour the
oil and wine of consolation. My husband, highly educated
as he is himself, is very much inclined to take your view,
and has, if anything, kept me back rather than urged me
on, always fearing that, instead of arousing an interest in
a subject, one should simply cause a lasting distaste, if it
is offered too early to the immature mind. We cannot,
however, put off this " training of faculty " indefinitely,
and I am becoming more and more awake to the fact that
my child in her cosy, comfortable home does not know as
much as I, immured in a boarding-school, knew at her age.
The most tantalising part of the matter is that when I

O

i8 MORE POT-POURRI

can shake off this incubus of dtity, she and I are so happy
together. I suppose there is some similarity in our
minds and tastes that makes her very responsive to me.
I cannot bring myself, owing doubtless to my own defec-
tive bringing-up, to stand at a distance, as it were, and
criticise severely. As M. has no classes this afternoon,
we are oif to the British Museum — a sort of treat we both
thoroughly enjoy. But, as you know, I am given to
misgivings ; the question arises sometimes whether the
companionship of my mature mind is the best. " Child-
hood ought to be with childhood " is constantly being
repeated to me.'

This letter seemed to me so touching that I sent it to
a friend of mine much interested in the subject. She
returned it wuth the following remarks, which express in
strong terms very much what I feel myself : ' I quite
agree — one of the most interesting letters you've had.
But it is harrowing to me the way this poor mother
won't let herself benefit by your advice, although she
seems to approve of it. You ask for my comments. I
should say she gives the receipt of what her line of con-
duct should be in the sentence " When I can shake off
this incubus of duty she and I are so happy together. I
suppose there is some similarity in our minds and tastes
that makes her very responsive to me." Just fancy a
mother having that opportunity and not using it ! There's
hardly a parent in fifty could boast as much. Personal
contact and sympathy with an older person means hot-
house growth to the mental capabilities of a child. The
one fear is lest it should overforce them. What do the
geography, history, arithmetic, and all the details of
early education matter ? The child's general intelligence
and power of acquiring knowledge from her own observa-
tion, which is the only true educator, will develop much
more fully and rapidly in the mother's company than

SEPTEMBER 19

with a governess, especially if the mother lays herself
out to share all her knowledge so far as possible
with her child. As she grows up, the child will be
the first to discover where she is at a disadvantage
compared to others. If she is indifferent about this, I
should say no one else need mind for her, and she will be
none the worse. But if she minds, and she probably will,
she can then acquire the belated knowledge in half the
time and with half the money spent on teachers that
would be required if spread out over a childhood more or
less reluctant to learn. Do try and stop the lady from
taking in " educational literature," for I'm sure it's not
only useless but harmful to fret one's conscience unless
it leads to conviction, and fortunately this mother seems
not convinced by the " professing educationalists." . . .
If the child is already fifteen or sixteen, the only modi-
fication I should make to what I have said would be
to recommend putting most forcibly before the girl
herself that if she has to, or wishes to, " take some
part in the real work of the world " she must utilise
her best faculties to the full and try to diminish her
deficiencies.'

The burning question of what girls should or should not
read called forth a good deal of comment and opposition.
The following was one of the best of the letters on this
subject : ' I think that, allowing for hereditary instincts
and inherited character, or want of it, there can be
no hard-and-fast rule as to allowing girl children to
read without restriction. So much allowance must be
made for the enormous difference in children, who are,
quite unconsciously to themselves, swayed by tempera-
ment or feelings the real nature of which they are
ignorant and innocent of. This question opens up a very
wide field, and perhaps in your book you could only
afford space for generalisation on such a subject. I also

c2

20 MORE POT-POURRI

feel that children, like older people and plants and any
living thing, are subject to the eternal and terrible order
of change ; have phases during which their whole nature
may become either lethargic and indifferent, or on the
other hand be dominated by sexual feeling, receptive or
otherwise. One girl at the budding period feels and sees
nothing harmful to her mind and morals ; while another,
hitherto pure and simple-minded, may have her imagina-
tion stimulated and her morbid curiosity partially grati-
fied by access to all and any kind of reading, and this
may have the effect of soiling a mind in the first and
most delicate stage of development. Children, too, are
extraordinarily unexpected in their phases, and often
turn out so much better or worse than one thought with-
out any apparent reason.' As regards the reading, in
spite of all that has been said, I cannot alter my view
that on the whole it is better to leave a great deal of
liberty from childhood upwards, allowing the child to
form her own taste, it being better to manage the reading
of the young by advice than by restrictions.

September 3rd. — A few days ago I returned home after
being abroad and away from my garden for over three
months. I left towards the end of May, when all was
fresh and green, bursting with bud and life, and full of
the promise of the coming summer. In three months
all seemed over ; the little place looked dried up and
miserable, small, ugly, disappointing— in fact, hardly
worth possessing at all.

I felt dreadfully depressed, but of course all this was
in great measure due to the time of year, the end of
August being the very worst month for this garden, and
one that I have never attempted to struggle with, yielding
rather to the difficulties and generally going away. Shall
I also confess my own character had something to do
with it? Many people say, 'Absence makes the heart

SEPTEMBER 21

grow fonder.' This is not my case under any circum-
stances, and especially not with my little home and
garden. The more I live here, the more I tend and
cherish it ; the more pains I bestow upon it, the more I
love it.

When I am urged to travel and change, I only feel
that I agree with Mr. Watson in these lines :

Nay, bid me not my cares to leave.
Who cannot from their shadow flee.

I do but win a short reprieve,
'Scaping to pleasure and to thee.

I may at best a moment's grace,

And grant of liberty, obtain ;
Respited for a little space,

To go back into bonds again.

After being away for only a short time I come back
with the keenest excitement. But when I have been
away for some long time and got interested in other
things, I come back in an ungardening mood, have forgot-
ten all the horticultural names, and — if the time of year is
unfavourable— I see, too clearly, nothing but the faults,
and have a much too direct answer to Burns's prayer in
the last verse of his queer little poem, * To a Louse, on
seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church ' :

O wad some pow'r the giftie gi'e us
To see oursels as others see us !
It wad frae monie a blunder free us

And foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us.

And ev'n Devotion !

I love what I am with, but with me, alas ! les absents
ont t02ijours tort, and for weeks I had been used to greater
beauties and wider interests. Here the dome of heaven

2 2 MORE POT-POURRI

is lower, and no cypresses point upwards. The moral to
me is quite clear : gardeners should only go away from
home to learn, not to see how beautiful the world is else-
where without any gardens at all, the science of life being
to make the best of what we have to our hand, not to
pine for what we have not.

September 5th. — The dryness continues, and we wait
in vain for rain. The weather makes us doubly appreciate
the small square of cool water just in front of the dining-
room window, and the pleasure it seems to bring to bird
and insect. Great fat thrushes splash themselves in the
shallow edges specially prepared for them with big
stones, as they seem much afraid of deep water. Two of
us were sitting at early breakfast when my companion
said to me in a subdued voice, ' Look there ! ' I saw,
perched on a hanging branch of the rose growing on the
Pergola, the most beautiful Kingfisher. His blue wings
flashed in the sunshine, and, turning his red breast, it
glowed like that of a tropical bird. In a few seconds he
flew away. I have never before seen a Kingfisher in
this dry garden, and I can only account for it, as we are
more than a mile from the river, by something peculiar
in the season and his being attracted, in his search for
food, by the gold-fish in my little fountain. A friend told
me that the same thing happened in her garden, and that
the Kingfisher, never seen before, beat himself against
the glass window.

One of the few things that looked really well in the
garden when I came home was the Cape annual, Nemesia
strumosa. The dryness apparently had suited the
flowering capabilities of the annual, but, finding that it
was forming no seed, I watered it daily, as it is one of
the plants from which it is w^ell worth while to save the
seed, selecting it from the best-coloured flowers. The
seed wants a good deal of care in the gathering, as it is so

SEPTEMBER

23

very ephemeral — unripe one day and gone the next.
For a person of my age it means groping on the ground
each morning with one's spectacles on. I certainly must
add it to the list of annuals worth growing in a small
garden. "We sow it in place the middle of May.

September 7th. — The old-fashioned Zauschiieria Cali-
fornica, when well grown, is a very pretty plant with
its soft gray leaves and scarlet flowers. I have had it for
years, and it has stood any amount of moving about into
different places. It never died, and yet never flowered.
I grew it on rockwork, I grew it in shade, I grew it in
the sun. It formed bushy little plants, but never had a
single flower. My patience was nearly coming to an end,
and I fell back on the gardener's usual solace — that the
soil did not suit it. When I paid a visit to Mr. Thompson
of Ipswich I found it flowering most satisfactorily, and
learnt from him the eternal story that what it wanted
was good feeding. It should have very good rich soil,
plenty of manure, and be put in a place that is free from
damp in winter. This is the difficulty with so many of
the foreign plants we try to grow. They want damp in
their flowering-time, when we are dry ; and dryness in the
winter, when we are wet. I came home, broke up my
Zauschneria, planted it in on the edge of a raised vine-
border in full sunshine and with very well rotted manure.
Helped, no doubt, also by the sunny season, it has
flowered splendidly this year, and is even finer than the
one I had seen at Ipswich. I think it is the better, like
many other things, for watering when the buds are
formed. I see in an un-modern gardening book that it only
came to England in 1847. We find no difficulty in pro-
pagating it by division in spring. Cuttings strike easily
in a little heat, and form blooming plants in the same
season.

Phloxes have done very badly this year, whether

24 MORE POT-POURRI

removed from the reserve garden or left alone. In very
dry seasons it is best quickly to cut them down ; they
flower again well when the rain comes. Michauxia cam-
panuloides is flowering now for the second time. I have
never grown it before, and its first bloom was in June,
while I was away, so that I did not see it in its prime.
The seed unfortunately does not ripen here, but it seems
to me a plant worthy of all the trouble that biennials
give ; and experiments should be tried in growing it. I
am now going to try it grown the second year in pots,
under glass, in a cool house, in the same way as a
Campanula pyramidalis is grown. I expect it will be
very fine. When grown out of doors it should be moved
from the seed-bed into a dry sunny place, and it wants as
much water as you can give it when about to flower. It is
figured in vol. xvii. of Curtis's ' Botanical Magazine,' but
the flower there depicted gives little idea of the beauty of
the whole plant, although the unusual shape and love-
liness of the flower itself are well rendered. Michauxia
tchinatclieivii (see Thompson's list) is new to me and, I
am told, good.

The Belladonna Lilies, treated as described in my
first book, have flowered excellently, many having two
flower-stems from apparently the same bulb. I imme-
diately sent to Holland for two dozen more, as I believe
there has been a disease among them in some places and
that they are now rather scarce. As an example of how
small a thing will affect the flowering of Cape bulbs, I
noted this spring that the leaves in the more northern
part of my little bed got injured by frost and east wind —
not very severely, but slightly — and out of that dozen
bulbs only one flowered.

A favourite little plant of mine which I have had for
years has flowered unusually well this year. It is called
Tricyrtis hirta, and is a small Japanese Lily — very quiet in

SEPTEMBER 25

colour, and spotted all over %Yith lilac spots ; but beautiful
in its growth, and well worth cultivating. The dry rock-
work seems to suit it, but I generally water it when
coming into flower. Every year as it comes round it is a
pleasurable excitement to see it develop its late flowers.
In a book by Mrs. Brightwen (' Glimpses into Plant Life :
an Easy Guide to the Study of Botany,' Fisher Unwin)
it is alluded to as a typical poUenation plant. She
says : ' We have seen that there are all kinds of
devices by which the pollen of one flower may be made
sure to reach the stigma of another ; but if by any means
this crossing fails, if the weather is such that insects are
scarce or other conditions cause failure, then, in the case
of many flowers, most curious contrivances are provided
to secure seed by self-poUenation. Truly this is one of
the most beautiful of God's wonders in floral construction.
One of the gems of my own flower-garden is a lovely
little Japanese toad-lily {Tricyrtis Jiirta). In this flower
there are three styles which stand well above the stamens ;
the points of the styles are bent over, and the stigmatic
surface grows mature before the anthers shed their pollen.
If, however, no insect visits the flowers, pollenation is
effected in the following way : the styles bend down and
place their forked points in direct contact with the open
anther-lobes, the style assuming almost the form of a
semicircle. This is done very deliberately, for it is often
a week before the act is complete.' I think that ' Glimpses
into Plant Life ' is a book that everyone interested in
country life or a garden would very much enjoy. The
illustrations are clear and good, and explain the text
satisfactorily.

Nothing is more useful at this time of year in a
window or a greenhouse than the Vallota imrimrea. It is
perfectly easy of cultivation, if the leaves are encouraged
in their growth and thoroughly sunned and dried off.

26 MORE POT-POURRI

The bulb should be very rarely re-potted and well
watered in its growing state. I am always hearing that
people lose their plants ; this is probably from the
gardener's over-care and keeping them too warm and
wet through the winter. I am going to try them out of
doors next year, as Mr. Eobinson recommends, now that
I have plenty of offsets, but I confess I have never seen
them doing well in England out of doors. They probably
do not fear cold, as I saw many in full flower on cottage
window-sills in Norway.

The west sides of rockeries are often very dull,
especially in autumn. I find Origanum hybridum is a
charming, interesting, curious little plant that flowers
freely in a dry place in August and September. It is
almost exactly the same as the old 0. dictamnus figured
in vol. xix. of Curtis's 'Botanical Magazine.' Curtis
says : ' Turner, whose Herbal was printed in 1568,
writes thus concerning it: "I have seen it gi'owynge in
England in Master Eiches gardin naturally, but it
groweth nowhere ellis that I know of saving only in
Candy." ' This is rather a nice way of telling us where
the plant comes from. It seems easy of cultivation, and
worth growing. Caryopteris macranthe is a little blue
dwarf shrub that I have hardly ever seen anywhere, but
which I grow and increase here quite easily, and find it
very attractive. It wants a dry situation, and flowers
better if cut back after flowering. It should be fed with
a little mulching and watering when it comes into bud.
I increase it easily from cuttings in spring.

As time goes on I become fonder and fonder of the
generally abused Polygonums. Mr. Robinson, in his latest
edition of ' The English Flower Garden,' speaks of them also
with much favour, and gives a splendid list of the varieties ;
but even he does not lay stress enough upon what entirely
different plants they become if sufficiently thinned out and

SEPTEMBER 27

the suckers pulled off each spring. Otherwise they are
ragged, intolerable weeds. If P. sachalinense is planted
even under shade or in half-shade, thinned out to three or
four shoots, and watered or hosed in dry weather, the
yearly growth is absolutely tropical. It turns a rich yel-
low colour in early autumn, and forms a splendid feature
in places where many plants would not grow at all, such as
under Fir-trees or in very poor soil. P. molle I do not
think Mr. Eobinson names, and yet it is a beautiful
thing ; though some years, if in an exposed place, it flowers
so late that it gets injured by frost. It requires dividing
every autumn, re-planting in better soil, and thinning
every spring ; it is well, if it can be watered, to grow it
under some tree or shrub, which protects it in case of
early frost. It is worth some trouble, as its flowering
branches, almost like feathery white lilac, are very hand-
some, coming as they do so late in the year. P. leicJitUni
is a very dwarf kind I brought from Germany, and will, I
think, prove a useful little plant on the rockery for
September flowering. The light blue Cape Phcmbago
capensis is doing very well this hot year, and is covered,
out of doors, with its lovely cool china-blue flowers. No
other colour in the garden is quite like it. It looks
especially well planted against the posts of a verandah.
We pot up the old plants in October, cut them back, tie
them up — when they take very little room — and keep them
rather dry all the winter in a cold shed just safe from the
frost. We bring them on a little in the spring, and plant
them out the end of May against a warm wall, though
I am not at all sure that this last is necessary. All
they want is sunshine and copious waterings. They are
commonly treated in this way in German gardens.
Mr. Eobinson says they can be increased by division of
the roots, but we also find cuttings strike easily in
spring ; and three or four young plants in a pot, as they

28 MORE POT-POURRI

flower at the top, are very pretty in a greenhouse or
window. Solanum jasminoidcs can be treated in exactly
the same way, though it will live out through ordinary
winters, especially if sheltered by some other growth.

Last spring ray jealousy was excited by seeing
Camellias flowering very well out of doors. The prin-
ciple on which they were managed was to plant them in
a thick shrubbery with overhanging branches of Rhodo-
dendron or some other evergreen shrub. The gi'ound
was prepared with a good deal of peat. In consequence
of the successful healthy look of these Camellias I have
myself planted out two large old trees. The great
secret of success is that they should face due north, and
be well watered in dry weather. If Dielytra spectabilis
is planted in the same way, facing north and under the
protection of some shrub, it flowers well out of doors. It
always gets injured by spring winds and frosts in the
open borders here.

September 10th. — All the Funkias are worth growing,
but all might be left out of a small garden except Funkia
sieboldi. That, anyhow, must be grown out of doors, as
it is a beautiful plant, gives no trouble, flowers every
year, and lasts very well in water. If kept in a pot it
flowers at the same time as out of doors, but under glass
the flowers are distinctly finer. It is not vei'y often seen,
but is quite the handsomest, I think, of the Funkias.

A friend asks me to recommend a really good book on
the kitchen garden, including the proper treatment of
fruit-trees. I know no one book complete ; the information
on vegetables and fruit must be gleaned apart. For detailed
directions on the culture of vegetables none comes near
the translation of Vilmorin's, mentioned before. But for
ordinary pui'poses and as a cheap book Sutton's ' The
Culture of Vegetables and Flowers ' (Simpkin, Marshall,
Hamilton, Kent & Co.) is excellent. ' Profitable Fruit-

SEPTEMBER 29

growing,' by John Wright, F.E.H.S. (171 Fleet Street,
London), is clear, comprehensive, and concise, giving
excellent information on pruning and general cultivation
of all outdoor fruit-trees, and currants, gooseberries, and
raspberries. It makes no allusion to orchard houses, nor
to vines under glass or out of doors.

Samphire is a herb I have never yet tried to grow. I
believe it is only to be had wild in its integrity from
Norfolk, where they still make quite an industry of
gathering and pickling it. The fresh Samphire is only to
be found in August and September.

A critic in ' The Guardian ' on ' Pot-Pourri ' says it is a
mistake to prune Chymonanthus fragrans after flowering
in the winter, as I suggested ; and adds, ' it should be done
late in the summer by shortening back the year's growths
to a quarter of their own length or less, to throw the
vigour of the shrub into the short flowering spur rather
than let it run into long, leafy and flowerless branches.'
I think this quite true, but I call that cutting-back.
What I mean by ' pruning ' is taking out real branches, and
I think that is desirable here in this light soil with
nearly all the flowering shrubs directly after flowering,
as well as cutting-back later in the year if they make too
much growth.

I wonder the claret-coloured Vine is so seldom
planted. The foliage is handsome and effective, and the
little bunches of black grapes are interesting, and remind
one of the ornaments in early Gothic churches. The
stunted bunches are quite different in shape from those
of ordinary grapes. They grow well up a pole, and make
a good rough arch. Pancretiums are excellent green-
house plants and well worth growing, especially P.
fragrans. But in a small garden and greenhouse all these
bulbs and plants want remembering and looking after in
order to get a good succession, and the head of the

30 MORE POT-POURRI

garden must help the gardener, as it is absolutely
impossible, with the number of things requiring his con-
stant attention, that he should remember them all himself.

September 11th. — What a week of excitement this has
been, even for those without near relations in that far-
away Nile Valley ! Never in all my life do I remember
what might be called the aggressive, grasping, ruling
spirit of the typical John Bull to have been so united
and so universal. War and the pity of it, and the ques-
tion why it has to be, which was so strong a feeling and
which had such large numbers of supporters in the old
Crimean day and even in the Indian Mutiny time,
seems now simply non-existent. Is this gain or is it
loss? Is it progress or is it retrogression? A most
curious and, to me, poetic description, showing the con-
servativeness of the East, and how certain effects suggest-
ing certain word-paintings were the same in the time of
David as to-day, struck me very forcibly when I read it
in yesterday's ' Spectator,' and I record it here. That a
figure of speech which has long puzzled somewhat
ignorant Bible commentators should be explained, as with
a limelight flash, by the unconscious wording of a war-
correspondent of to-day seems indeed a drawing together
of all historic times :

' The telegraphic despatch conveying the news of the
battle of Omdurman contained an interesting illustration
of a verse of the sixty-eighth Psalm which has caused
some difficulty to commentators. The Prayer Book ver-
sion reads (verse 14) : " When the Almighty scattered
kings for their sake : then were they as white as snow in
Salmon" — i.e., as generally explained, the flashing of the
armour of the slain warriors resembled the snow shining
on the dark boughs of the forest. Unconsciously perhaps
the writer of the telegraphic despatch has used the same
simile. His words are : " After the dense mass of the

SEPTEMBER 31

Dervishes had melted to companies and the companies to
driblets, they broke and fled, leaving the field white with
jibba-clad corpses, like a meadow dotted with snowdrifts." '

Is this really the last of these snow-flecked plains, or
will another Mahdi and other Dervishes arise in future
ages, to once more strew the ground with these white-clad
corpses ?

September ISth. — Last year, about this time, I drove
to Mr. Barr's at Long Ditton, and there I saw, planted out
in an open bed, Tigridias, both white and red ; and they
looked splendid. I have never seen them grown out of
doors in gardens, but Mrs. Loudon in her ' Ladies' Flower
Garden ' (the volume on bulbous plants) speaks of them as
easily cultivated if taken up in the autumn. Mrs. Loudon
says : ' They have tunicated bulbs and very long fibrous
roots which descend perpendicularly. They should be
planted in a very deep rich soil, which should either be of
an open nature, or be kept so by a mixture of a sufiicient
quantity of sand, so as to allow a free passage for the
descent of the roots, in the same way as is necessary for
Hyacinths. If Tigridias are to be raised from seed, the
seeds are sown in March or April on a hot-bed and
transplanted into the open border in May. Here they
may remain till the leaves begin to wither in autumn i
when the young bulbs should be taken up and kept for
planting the ensuing spring. The splendid colours of
this flower and the easiness of its culture render it a
general favourite. Its only faults are that its flowers
have no fragrance, and that they are of very short
duration, never lasting more than a day. But they are
produced in such abundance in succession as to com-
pensate for this defect. It is a native of Mexico. In its
native country its bulb is considered medicinal, and it
was on this account that it was sent to Europe by
Hernandez, physician to Phihp II. of Spain when he

32 MORE POT-POURRI

was employed by the Spanish Government to examine
into ' the virtues ' of the plants of the New World. It
was not introduced into England till 1796. It is suffi-
ciently hardy to be left in the ground all the winter, were
it not on account of the danger to which it would be
exposed from damp. It is better to take it up in
September or October, tie it in bundles, and hang it up
in a dry place till spring. Why it is always grown by
gardeners in pots I do not know. In his last edition
Mr. Kobinson speaks very favourably of growing it out of
doors, and mentions particularly the ivory-white one with
carmine-red base, which I saw last year and thought very
beautiful. What he says about cultivation is exactly
what I have quoted above from Mrs. Loudon. In fact,
treat them exactly as one would the Gandavensis gladioli.
Gerarde in his Herbal speaks with delightful distrust
of the very existence of the Tigridia as described
by travellers. After trying to illustrate the plant from
description he goes on to say : ' The second feigned
picture hath beene taken of the Discouerer and others of
later time, to be a kinde of Dragons not seene of any that
haue written thereof ; which hath moued them to thinke
it a feigned picture likewise ; notwithstanding you shall
receiue the description thereof as it hath come to my
hands. The root (saith my Author) is bulbous or Onion
fashion, outwardly blacke ; from the which springs vp
long leaues, sharpe pointed, narrow, and of a fresh grecne
colour : in the middest of which leaues rise vp naked or
bare stalkes, at the top whereof groweth a pleasant
yeUow floure, stained wdth many small red spots here
and there confusedly cast abroad : and in the middest of
the floure thrusteth forth a long red tongue or stile,
which in time groweth to be the cod or seed-vessell,
crooked or wreathed, wherein is the seed. The virtues
and temperature are not to be spoken of, considering that

SEPTEMBER ss

we assuredly persuade our selues that there are no such
plants, but meere fictions and deuices, as we terme them,
to giue his friend a gudgeon.' ' Giving his friend a
gudgeon ' is apparently a Gerardian expression for what
we should now call in familiar language ' pulling his
leg.'

I alluded before (page 132 of ' Pot-Pourri ') to the
cultivation of the large Japanese Stonecrop {Scdum
spectabile). I have grown to like it more and more,
because it is a very obliging plant, and will grow even in
shade, though the specimens are far finer if grown in good
soil and moved into a sunny place in July or August. I
always take this little trouble, and in September I have
my reward. Many people will not appreciate the great
beauties of this plant because of the colour of the flowers,
which are of rather an inartistic magenta-pink ; but
the insects do not find this so, and the reason I grow so
much of it is that the bees simply love it. The little hard-
working honey-bee, the large handsome bumble-bee, flies
and beetles of all kinds, and the beautiful common butter-
flies, all flop about it with the keenest enjoyment, the
colour of the flower only making a groundwork to their
bright hues on a sunny September morning. I never fail
either to think, as I look at this scene, of a little poem
by Victor Hugo which was the delight of my youth, though
perhaps for non-floral reasons :

La pauvre fleur disait au papillon celeste :

' Ne fuis pas 1
Vols comme nos destins sont differents. Je reste,

Tu t'en vas 1

' Pourtant nous nous aimons, nous vivons sans les hommes

Et loin d'eux,
Et nous nous ressemblons, et Ton dit que nous sommes

Fleurs tous deux I

34 MORE POT-POURRI

' Mais, hdlas ! I'air t'cmporte et la terre m'enchaine ;

Sort cruel !
Je voudrais embaumer ton vol de men haleine

Dans le ciel !

' Mais non, tu vas trop loin ! Parmi des fleurs sans nombre

Vous fuyez,
Et moi je reste seul a voir tourner mon ombre

A mes pieds !

' Tu fuis, puis tu reviens, puis tu t'e^n vas encore

Luire ailleurs.
Aussi me trouves-tu toujours a chaque aurore

Toute en pleurs !

' Oh ! pour que notrc amour coule des jours fiddles,

O mon roi ;
Prends comme moi racine, ou donne moi des ailes

Comme a toi ! '

Now and then quite strange insects appear just once,
and the)i never again. I have heard that is because eggs
of insects are sometimes deposited in baskets or bales
bringing goods from hot countries, which in dry summers
are hatched out in these Northern climates. One summer
my Sedums were covered with a lovely green beetle. I
have never seen him again, but I am too ignorant to know
if he were a stranger or only an insect common in our
gardens and appearing in some summers and not in
others — a usual occurrence with all insects. Sometimes
there are a quantity of one kind, they having triumphed
over their natural enemies and flourished abundantly.
Then for a year or two they disappear entirely. This is
an especial characteristic of butterflies. I thought there
might be some way of encouraging butterflies in my
garden, where they seem to have become rarer, and I
asked a friend who has studied natural history all his life
whether he could help me to do this. His answer was :
' The way to have Ijutterflies is to encourage the food-

SEPTEMBER 35

plants of the caterpillar.' He added : ' Fortunately our
three handsomest English butterflies feed on the nettle
— the Peacock, the Small Tortoiseshell, and the Eed
Admiral. The Purple Emperor is too rare for considera-
tion.' I, being a gardener before all things, did not think
it was at all fortunate that their natural food was nettles.
I had spent my whole life in eradicating nettles, so it is
perhaps not astonishing if butterflies have become less in
my garden.

We have had a great many Figs this year, and they
have ripened well. No doubt they do better since we
have removed suckers and the small autumn Figs that
never ripen here. It is curious how few people in England
realise that, apparently, the Pig- never flowers, and that
what we call the fruit is the flower. Male and female
mixed are inside the Fig, which when it enlarges forms the
receptacle and encloses numerous one-seeded carpels im-
bedded in its pulp. This may be seen quite plainly by
cutting open a slightly unripe Fig. I used to think the
flower of the Fig was so small that it was invisible ! My
little Mulberry-tree, planted only fifteen years ago and
now a good size, did wonderfully well this year. All
over England Mulberries fruited in great quantities
from the hot dry season. They are trees that
require much judicious pruning, and taking out great
branches now and then, or the fruit never ripens
because of the size and thickness of the leaves. I have
lately read that Leonardo da Vinci's great patron at
Milan, Ludovico il Moro, was so named, not from the dark-
ness of his complexion, as Gibbon supposes, but because
he took a Mulberry-tree (moro) for his device — from its
being considered wiser than all other trees, as it buds later
and does not flower until it has escaped the injuries of
winter, when it immediately bears fruit. This the Prince
considered was emblematic of his disposition. To us it

d2

36 MORE POT-POURRI

means that Mulberry-trees should be much more grown
than they are, not only because they are beautiful and
useful, but because of this late budding. The fruit is ex-
cellent cooked with Apples, even if it is not quite ripe.
Sweet Spanish Chestnuts are also very late trees in spring.

Sweet-scented Geraniums cut back in the spring do
best for autumn and winter. For planting out the next
year they should be cut back hard, like show Pelargoniums,
at the end of September.

My trees of Magnolia grandiflora, though still small,
are covered this year with their beautiful flowers. These
are, I am sure, best always cut off. It only strengthens
the trees for forming flower-buds next year.

September 15th. — For those who care to have Sweet-
peas early in the year, it is well to sow them now in the
drills or holes, so as to earth them up a little after they
come through the soil.

Cassia corymhosa is a yellow greenhouse plant now in
flower and very useful. It is so nearly hardy that it will
grow, like the blue Plumbago, against a south waU in the
summer months. It comes from Buenos Ayres, and won't
stand any frost.

September 25th.— I saw a Suffolk garden this September
where I learnt more in an hour than one would do in
most places in a week. It was a beautiful, stately, flat
garden and on a very large scale, with tall trees and broad
exnanses of lawn, which, in spite of my opinion stated
before, and which angered so many of my readers (about
overdoing grass in small places), I do immensely admire
when sufliciently spacious and with spreading timber
feathering to the ground. I saw in this garden the finest
tubs of Hydrangeas I have ever seen anywhere. They
were much raised above the ground, on a half-tub reversed
or on bricks, so that the plants, which had been left alone
for many years, fell all round, covering the tubs almost

SEPTEMBER 37

entirely. The tubs were painted white, and the gardener
told me that instead of putting them into any house or
shed in winter he put them under very thick shrubs. In
his case he was fortunate to have an Ilex grove. Nothing
was cut off the Hydrangeas but the faded flowers. By
this means they get the damp and cold which only
strengthen them in their resting state. In the spring he
cuts out the dead wood, mulches and copiously waters
them when they begin to grow, and the result was
certainly most satisfactory. Hydrangeas strike very
easily in spring; and small young plants, especially if
white or blue — which the pink ones will often turn to if
planted in peat — make useful small decorative plants in
a gi-eenhouse or for late flowering. The tubs of Cape
AgapantMis were less fine in foliage than mine are ; but
they had spike upon spike of bloom, which is really what
one wants. He treated these in the same way as before
described for Hydrangeas, leaving them out all the winter.
Mine were kept in a cool greenhouse, and looked perfectly
healthy, but had hardly any flowers at all this year. It's
the old story. Everything from the Cape stands many kinds
of treatment, but must have a long period of rest in order
to flower well. Under a tall wall facing west in this Suffolk
garden was a glorious border of many of the hardiest
Bamboos, with a few strong-growing herbaceous plants in
between and towards the front. The soil, in spite of the
dryness of the year, was moist and very heavy, and the
gardener told me he never dug up the border or touched
it except to thin out and dig a big wedge out of the
herbaceous plants with his spade in winter, filling up the
hole with strong manure well stamped in. This, where size
of clumps and filling up of large spaces are wanted, is
quite an admirable plan. No re-planting is either neces-
sary or desirable. In a small garden and light soil, where
refinement and specimen plants are desired, re-planting

38 MORE POT-POURRI

and dividing, as well as thinning out, certainly seem
to me to give finer blooms. On the top of a low waM
dividing this garden from another portion of it were some
flower-boxes well filled with trailing and half-hardy plants,
brilliant in colour and easy to water and attend to ; and
the effect was very good, and might be adopted on those
dreary little walls that sometimes divide small villa gardens
from their neighbours. The evaporation from painted
wood is very much less than from flower-pots, and there
is no fear of their being thrown over by a high wind.

Going about, I observe that — next to pruning and
cutting back — there is nothing people are so ignorant
about as watering, especially in dry weather. The
ordinary non-gardening mind seems to think that if a
thing looks blighted or faded or drooping, it is ' below par,'
and that water acts as the required tonic ; whereas it is
often that the dry weather has only hastened the period
of rest, and when that is the case nothing is so hopeless as
watering anything that is not in full growth. Consequently
in mixed borders, unless very carefully done, to a plant
that is coming into bud, watering — and, above all, hosing —
is best left alone ; and much watering in the summer is
very injurious to spring-flowering shrubs. At the same time
copious soaking once or twice a week is necessary very
often to keep newly planted things alive. Half-hardy
planted-out things, annuals, and plants lately moved from
the reserve garden, can safely be watered. In this Suffolk
garden all watering was done at four or five in the morn-
ing, the gardeners leaving off work at two in the afternoon.
This plan, I think, would often work very well both for
masters and men during the long hot days, but gardeners
seldom like it.

SEPTEMBER 39

Keceipts

I indiscreetly asked one of my rather intimate friends
whether he had read ' Pot-Pourri.' He said, rather
hastily : ' No, I gave it to my cook.' This impressed
me with the idea that a good number of people valued
the first ' Pot-Pourri ' a great deal more for its cooking
receipts than for anything else. Consequently the book
quickly leaves the library or the drawing-room for the
kitchen, and I think it would be a distinct assistance to
the cook if I keep these new receipts as much as possible
together, though I allot them a place in each month, as
the times and seasons have such a great influence on
food and garden produce. In this book I reserve to
myself the right to spell recipe ' receipt,' to which some
of my friends objected before. I was taught that reciye
meant a prescription, and it always seems to me a slight
affectation when I see it in a cookery book. I believe
' receipt ' to be quite as old and good a word used in this
sense. In an old cookery book of mine which was
written by a lady and published in 1770 the word is
spelt ' receipt.'

I take a great interest in cooks, and am always most
anxious to help them, having agreed from my youth
upwards with Owen Meredith's delicious lines in
' Lucile ' :

We may live without poetry, music, and art;

We may live without conscience, and live without heart ;

We may live without friends ; we may live without books ;

But civilised man cannot live without cooks.

He may live without books — what is knowledge but grieving ?

He may live without hope^what is hope but deceiving?

He may live without love — what is passion but pining ?

But where is the man that can live without dining ?

There have been some complaints about the cooking

40 MORE POT-POURRI

I'eceipts not being exact enough. I had tried them all
myself, and with success, with several cooks, but I do
not deny they were intended for those who understood
cooking sufficiently to refer to more detailed books when
they felt themselves to be ignorant. I shall continue to
refer to ' Dainty Dishes ' (by Lady Harriet St. Clair) as I
did before, and without it my receipts are incomplete.
Cooks differ very much in how they follow receipts.
Some try to do it literally, but without judgment as
regards increasing or decreasing quantities accox'ding to
the number for whom they have to cook. Other cooks
accept a receipt with the distinct conviction that their
own way is far the best, and naturally then the new
receipt does not turn out very satisfactorily. A good
many cooks carry out a receipt very well the first time,
and then think they know it by heart, and in a high-
handed way never look at it again. All this is where the
eye and the head of the mistress come in. "Without
showing it she must know the peculiarities of her own
particular cook, and by gentle flattery lead her back into
the right way. As my excuse for a certain vagueness
in some of the receipts, I give them as thej^ were given to
me, for I did not by any means invent them all. Even
when they are mine, I instruct the cook, but do not myself
cook.

Some of my nieces scolded me for not putting the
receipt for my bread sauce in my last book, saying they
so seldom found it really good elsewhere. It is made in
every English kitchen, small and big ; and yet how very
rarely is it excellent, as it ought to be, and with what
horror is it viewed by foreigners !

Bread Sauce. — It is very important that the bread
should be grated from a tin loaf, and allowed to dry in a
paper bag for some time before using it. It is absolutely
impossible to make good bread sauce with new bread

SEPTEMBER 41

Cut up an onion in rather large pieces, boil it in milk,
pass it through a sieve, or remove the onion. Pour the
milk boiling over the crumbs, and add a few peppercorns.
Boil the whole in a china saucepan for about twenty
minutes. As the milk is absorbed, add a little more until
it is an even mass, neither too moist nor too dry.
Eemove the peppercorns before serving, and stir in a
large piece of fresh butter. Many people add cream,
which spoils it. Cream makes the sauce tasteless and
fade.

The following is a much simpler receipt, and suggests
a poultice rather more than I quite like ; but it is excellent
to eat, and useful to know, as it can be carried out in a
sick-room or a lodging-house kitchen. Take a breakfast-
cupfu) of fresh breadcrumbs, rubbed, not grated ; a
breakfastcupful of milk. Cut up into it an onion,
and add two or three peppercorns. Boil the milk up
and pour it on the crumbs, which have been put into a
small basin. Cover over, and let it stand for two hours.
Eemove any pieces of onion that show. Warm up before
it is wanted with a small piece of fresh butter the size of
a walnut.

It is also, under the same circumstances, useful to
know that chickens or game of any kind can be perfectly
well roasted in a baking-tin on a little kettle-stand in
front of any ordinary fire in the following way : Put a little
bacon fat in the pan, lay the bird in it on its side with
the back towards the fire. Baste well. When sufficiently
done, turn it on to the other leg, with the back still
towards the fire. For ten minutes at the end, with a
large fowl or pheasant, turn the breast to the fire,
basting it well. The time a bird will take to roast must
depend on its size. Woodcocks, snipe, and larks will
take a very short time.

Vegetable Marrow. — Peel a young vegetable

42 MORE POT-POURRI

marrow, cut it across in slices the thickness of a finc;er,
and put them in a tin in a moderate oven with a little
piece of hutter on each. Bake for nearly an hour. Pre-
pare some pieces of toast slightly buttered and hot. Lay
a slice of the vegetable marrow on each piece. Warm in
butter a little of the sweet-chutney (see ' Pot-Pourri,'
page 126); put half a teaspoouful of it on to each
slice, and serve.

If vegetable marrows get past being young, let them
ripen well, then dry and store them on a shelf in the
fruit-house or elsewhere. In winter break one up by
hammering a knife through it, clean out the seeds, cut
the pieces into small dice half an inch square, boil them
with very little salt in cold water till soft, strain them, and
make a nice thick white sauce {BecJmmeV). Put the marrow
in the sauce, add a small piece of sugar, and serve hot.
Pumpkins can be treated in the same way.

If you have grown the little ridge cucumbers — those
recommended in Sutton's book do very well either in a
cool house or outside — and have had any left over in this
month, which I never have, this German receipt for pre-
serving them — in Germany they always grow them in
large quantities— is very useful and good.

Cucumbers preserved in salt (in a barrel or stone
jar). — Pick the outdoor cucumbers when about three
inches long and one inch thick. Brush them in a large
tub of cold water till quite clean. Spread them on a table
to dry. Meanwhile boil up a large quantity of water.
Measure it carefully, and for each quart of water add a
small teacupful of salt and a small teacupful of vinegar.
Boil all well together, and let it get cold. Then put some
vine-leaves, fennel, tarragon, pimpernel, and a few bay-
leaves and peppercorns at the bottom of a small barrel or
stone jar. Place four layers of cucumber, one of herbs and
leaves, and so on till full. Cover the top thickly with

SEPTEMBER 43

leaves and pour on the salt water till the jar is quite full.
Put a clean slate over the top of the jar, and weight it with
a stone. They should stand for at least six weeks.

A Puree of Vegetables. — A pretty dish can be made
with a puree of any kind of green vegetable surrounded
by macaroni cut into small pieces, boiled plain with a little
onion in the water, drained, and warmed up in a little
strong stock (or water), butter, and a little sugar. The
New Zealand Spinach or the Spinach Beet is sure to be
still quite good in the garden.

A friend of mine who has been much in the East
makes the following comments on my curry receipt and
my cooking of rice : ' You say meat in curry is to be cut
in dice. An old Indian uncle of mine always taught his
cooks to make curries, and there were never better
curries ; and he always said. No dice, but thinnish slices
about the size of two small mouthfuls. I think he was
right.' The Indian uncle also said that rice can never be
really properly cooked except in earthenware vessels. I
think I agree with both these criticisms.

Here is a good receipt for those troubled with a super-
abundance of grouse.

Grouse Salad. — Select fresh salad material. Place
this in a shallow dish on which has been constructed a
border of hard-boiled eggs, set off with pieces of anchovies
and sliced beetroot.

Sauce. — Two tablespoonfuls of eschalots minced
small, seven teaspoonfuls of chopped tarragon and
chervil, five dessertspoonfuls of pounded sugar, the
yolks of two eggs, five saltspoonfuls of pepper and salt
mixed, and a very small pinch of cayenne. Mix slowly
with twelve or thirteen tablespoonfuls of salad oil and six
dessertspoonfuls of chilli vinegar. Add half a pint of
whipped cream.

The grouse may be roasted or fried. Build up

44 MORE POT-POURRI

the grouse tastefully in pyramidal form on the green-
stuff, then pour the sauce over the whole, and serve.

This I'eceipt for pickled damsons was sent me by one
of my very kind readers, with a bottle of the same, which
certainly was quite excellent.

Pickled Damsons. — Six pounds of damsons, six
pounds of sugar, two quarts of vinegar, quarter of an
ounce of cinnamon (stick), quarter of an ounce of cloves,
one onion (about as large as a nutmeg), half table-
spoonful of cayenne tied in muslin, and a little salt.

Put all except the damsons into a pan and boil ; then
pour the liquid over the fruit, and allow the whole to remain
until the next day, when strain it, putting the fruit back
into a basin ; boil up the liquid, and pour it over the fruit
again. Let the whole stand for another twenty-four hours,
and on the third day boil for four or five minutes. Strain
and press through a sieve, to remove the stones and skins.
The pickle will then be ready to bottle for use.

Both the following receipts are Belgian. The eight
stumps of endive make my economical hair stand on
end, as the curly endive, which is the one intended,
is a very shy grower in this hot soil, and we blanch
it rather preciously under boards for November salads.
But the broad-leaved Batavian endive is very nearly as
good, only it requires longer cooking. Take eight stumps
of endive, a good bit of butter (say, the size of two walnuts),
a good teaspoonful of flour, half a teacupful of milk,
and a little salt. Throw away the bad leaves, cut the
others in small pieces till near the stump. Wash several
times, so that the sand may sink. Let the endive boil in
plenty of water with a little salt for about an hour ; then
put it on a sieve to drip out well. Make a sauce of the
milk, flour, and butter, and let it stew for a few minutes.

Purslane. — The purslane after being picked and
washed is put on a gentle fire to melt, without adding

SEPTEMBER 45

any water. When quite soft add some salt (a very little)
to taste. If too watery, pour it off ; then add butter (a
rather larger piece than the size of a walnut), and care-
fully mix a well-beaten egg ; or, if this does not suit the
taste, bind it with a little flour.

Here is an excellent aromatic herb-seasoning which
does equally well for use with vegetables or meat. I
found it in an old-fashioned book called ' The Gentle-
woman,' published in 1864, which I shall notice again
further on. The author took this receipt from Francatelli,
the famous cook of the day. Take of nutmegs one
ounce ; mace, one ounce ; cloves, two ounces ; dried
bay-leaves, one ounce ; basil, three ounces ; marjoram,
three ounces ; winter savoury, two ounces ; thyme, three
ounces ; cayenne pepper, half an ounce ; grated lemon-
peel, half an ounce ; two cloves of garlic. All to be well
pulverised in a mortar and sifted through a fine wire
sieve, and put away in dry corked bottles. We made
this last year, and used it frequently through the winter
for flavouring a great many things, such as purees of
cabbage, preserved French beans, soups, sauces, etc. I
reduced the cayenne pepper to half the prescribed
quantity.

Blackberry Jelly. — Boil the blackberries. Strain
them and stiffen with isinglass. This keeps splendidly,
and is not too sweet.

46 MORE POT POURRI

OCTOBER

Gardening — Echeverias — Ignorance about bulbs — Gossamer time and
insects— The East Coast— A new rockery — Oxalis floribunda as
a vegetable — Previous ' Pot-Pourris ' — Cooking receipts, various
— Journey to Frankfort in 1897 — Cronberg — Boecklin's Todten-
Insel - Jewish Cemetery — Goethe's house— Staedal Art Institute
— German treatment of tuberculosis.

October 5th. — The other day I was going round the
garden, giving away plants, when I came to a bed where
there were several fine Echeverias. They had been
planted out to grow naturally into better plants. I
ofifered my friend some, but she said with a shudder :
' What ! those artichoke-looking things ? No, thank you.'
I think the dislike of these plants arises very likely from
their having been used so much in those old-fashioned
beds arranged in fancy designs as ugly and incongruous
as the patterns on a Turkish smoking-cap.

These plants are not only kind friends that give little
trouble, and can be grown in pots and allowed to assume
their natural growth, but they are also exceedingly
beautiful. I have an Echeveria mctallica crispa grown to
a large plant in a pot. It has been perhaps retarded in its
growth by dryness this summer, and is now throwing up
a fine pink flower-spike. The whole tone of the plant is
lovely to a degree, shot with pale purples, grays, and
pinks, and as full of drawing as the cone of an Italian
pine. The thick stem is beautifully marked by the leaves
as they have dried up and fallen away. The plant is
altogether very picturesque in its quaint growth, and

OCTOBER 47

admirably adapted for a room or window-sill in late
autumn, and reminds one of the corner of a Dutch
picture. The Echeverias and Cotyledons are closely
allied (natural order Grassulacea), and there are many
varieties of these plants, all requiring much the same
treatment — protection and very little watering in winter,
but otherwise next to no care. They can be increased
easily by cuttings at any time, starved and re-potted at
will, which alters their flowering-time. They will grow
in china pots, with only a few stones for drainage ; or will
hang out of Japanese vases, suspended by wires, contain-
ing hardly any earth. A large earthenware pan of the
ordinary Echeveria glauca is a very pretty sight in
summer, and does w^ell in a north window. It can be
planted with a little peat, charcoal, and a few stones.

I never knew till this year that Marvels of Peru can be
kept, like Dahlias, free from frost and started the follow-
ing spring, when they make much handsomer plants than
if grow^n each year from seed. In gardens where you are
pressed for room — and where is it that you are not ? — it is
an excellent plan to make a hole in the ground, put some
straw at the bottom, and lay in Geraniums, Dahhas,
Marvels of Peru, and many other half-hardy things, cover
them wdth straw, and earth up just as you would potatoes
or mangolds in a field.

October 10th. — It is extraordinary how vague are
people's ideas about plants, bulbs, etc. ; and it is not till
one is asked questions that one realises how much most
people have to learn. I was asked the other day by a
friend, who had had a lot of Narcissus bulbs given her, if
she might plant them in a Tea-rose bed ! That is the
last place where they ought to be put, as, if planted in too
rich a soil, they all go to leaf and flower badly ; and Eoses
are the better for being heavily mulched in the winter and
spring.

48 MORE POT-POURRI

Mr. Robert Sydenham, of Tenby Street, Bii-mingham,
publishes a catalogue of bulbs, in which are the clearest
possible instructions of how to cultivate them, both in
pots and in the open, with an interesting account of his
own first experiences. If these instructions are carefully
followed, I do not believe the disappointing failures, so
often seen when amateurs try to force bulbs, will occur.
He also makes it quite plain which are the bulbs that
should be planted in poor places and left alone, and those
which have to be taken up, dried, and re-planted. Tulips,
at least in this soil, require much better feeding than any
of the Narcissus tribe, and are certainly the better for
taking up and drying after their leaves have thoroughly
died down. I planted my Eoman Hyacinths according
to Mr. Sydenham's directions early in October, and the
result was more satisfactory than I have ever had before,
and they were in full flower by Christmas. It is a very
pretty conceit to plant Hyacinths in shallow earthenware
or china pans with jaddoo, cocoanut fibre or moss, and
place small stones and charcoal at the bottom for the
roots to chng to as they grow up. They must be
kept very wet. Planted in this way they look much
more decorative in the room than when grown in pots or
glasses. Any fancy or ornamental vase can be used for
the purpose, whether it is flat or not. Many kind hints
have been given me by various correspondents about the
growing of Hepaticas. One lady said that small beds
with pieces of sandstone were a great help. Another
writes as follows : ' I thought you might be glad of
certain facts about Hepaticas that have come under my
own observation. When a child I lived in Somersetshire,
where the soil was heavy clay. The most beautiful
show of Hepaticas I ever saw anywhere was a row in an
old lady's garden close under a thick hedge of Laures-
tinus with a due north aspect. They were single-blue

OCTOBER 49

and double-pink. In the same village there was for
many years a large clump of double -pink close under
a cottage wall with a south-east aspect. That also
flowered abundantly, so for double-pink at any rate shade
is not essential, though I remember that the late James
Backhouse told me many years ago that the Hepaticas
did best and flowered earliest with a north aspect, as then
they went to sleep sooner in the autumn. The wild ones
in Swiss and French woods are always where they would
be shaded in summer, and grow with the Primroses. I
was also unsuccessful with Hepaticas for many years as
long as I grew them on the flat, but when I at last tried
them on the shady side of the rockery between the stones
the blue ones have done well, the plants increasing in
size year by year and flowering abundantly.' I found by
my letters that a good many people thought when I did
not mention some plants that I either had not got them, or
did not care for them, or did not know them. The last
was sometimes the case, but I have of course a great many
things in the garden, grown in the usual way and doing
well, which I did not mention.

October 15th. — I suppose there are still some few
people who plant trees for their children or grandchildren,
although it is rather the fashion to expect gardens and
woods to be made in a day, and always to be planting
quick-growing things, Scotch Firs being discarded and the
ugly-growing Pinus austriaca planted in its stead, etc. One
of the loveliest things I know in this neighbourhood is a
road running through a Beech-tree copse, planted thickly
but varying in depth on each side of the road. The trees
when they were young were evidently cut down, as many
of them have two or three stems. At all times of the
year the drive up this chalk slope is perfectly enchanting
— whether in the autumn, when the stems are gray and
green against the leaf-strewn ground, rich and golden in

50 MORE POT-POURRI

the slanting sunlight ; or in spring, when the tiny leaves
make flickering light and shade ; or in the cool thickness
on a summer's day. The fact that nothing grows under
beech-wood gives a very distinguished and unusual effect,
accustomed as we are to the dull walls of evergreens.
For the young who wish to plant a most unusual
approach, I can suggest nothing better.

The planting along the roads and hedgerows in
England of Apples, Cherries and Damsons, would cost
no more than any other trees, and would be both orna-
mental and useful. These three fruit-trees, once well
planted, require no other care. The impression is that
the fruit would be stolen, but I believe that to be a matter
of custom, and when once people understand that taking
fruit is stealing they cease to do it. Growing fruit-trees
in open fields is universal on the Continent, and I am told
that they are never touched.

My love of autumn with its recurring beauty does not
dull with age or loneliness, and I am often astonished at
the interest that is still so keen about all that surrounds
me. Perhaps it ought not to be so, for I find quoted in
my notebook the following complaint :

How much is lost when neither heart nor eye
Rose-winged desire or fabling hope deceives ;
When boyhood with quick throb has ceased to spy
The dubious apple in the yellow leaves ;
When, rising from the turf where youth reposed.
We find but deserts in the far-sought shore ;
When the huge book of fairy-land lies closed,
And those strong brazen clasps will yield no more I

October 16th. — The beautiful gossamer time has come
again. Most mothers now cultivate in their children a
love of flowers, but it is astonishing how rarely a love
of insects is taught. I do not mean a mawkish fear of
kilHng them, for very often they have to be killed. I

OCTOBER 51

remember a boy who was fond on wet summer days of
killing flies on his nursery window. I remonstrated and
said it was cruel, upon which he answered : ' Why ?
Father goes out fishing, and brothers go out shooting ; why
may I not kill flies ? ' The only answer that came to my
mind was that I could stop the one and I could not the other ;
this remained for ever with him as an injustice. But I
do think that probably the more children understand and
admire, the less they would wish wantonly to kill, and at
any rate it might do away with so much of that groundless
dread and uncontrollable nervous fear of insects which
stick to some people through life. I know some girls
who have to leave the room if moths — innocent, soft,
downy moths Income in, attracted to their doom by the
cruel lamp. I know others who dare not pick certain
flowers for fear of an earwig, which from its silly name they
believe to be really a dangerous enemy. Others, again, will
injure their health and remain all through the hot summer
nights, perhaps in quite a small room, with window and
door closed, for fear of the inroad of some winged wanderer
of the darkness. All this seems to me so silly, so ignorant,
so unnecessary ! And if children were early introduced to
the wonders of insect life — ants, bees, butterflies, moths,
etc. — I think they would fear them as little as the ordinary
house-fly, which is really more objectionable than many
of them. I never cared much for spiders till I heard a most
interesting lecture about them, when I longed to know
more. The process by which they weave their beautiful
webs has only been understood in comparatively recent
years. Everyone knows now that the gossamer which
covers our commons is spun by spiders. In old days all
sorts of fairy traditions hung about it, as it was quite
unlike the web of other spiders. The lecturer said that
spiders place themselves with their face to the gentle
breeze. This carries the thin thread they have power to

E 2

52 MORE POT-POURRI

eject, with its glutinous end, into the air till it reaches
some branch or stone or corner of leaf, to which it adheres
instantly. When this happens the spider turns quickly
round and pulls, like any British tar, with his two front
claws till the fairy rope is tight. Then he fixes it and
can travel along it, and that is the first stage in the
' weaving,' as the old language puts it, of his beautiful web.
Spiders belong to a kingdom ruled by women, and the
female eats up the male if she finds him troublesome and
unsatisfactory. There is a very good book about British
spiders by E. F. Staveley (L. Eeeve & Co.), which would
tell all that anyone might want to know about these
insects. The first page illustrates spiders' heads, with the
varying numbers of eyes the different kinds possess.

' Gleanings in Natural History,' by Edward Jesse, is
a book I can indeed recommend to all lovers of natural
history. The first edition is dated ' Hampton Court,
1842.' For all of us who live near Hampton Court the
book has a double interest, as he was Surveyor of Her
Majesty's Parks and Palaces, and lived there, and many
of his anecdotes are connected with the neighbourhood.
His opening words are : ' One of the chief objects I had
in writing the following pages was to portray the
character of animals, and to endeavour to excite more
kindly feelings towards them.' It is a kind of half-
way book between Gilbert White and the scientific
writings of the present day ; and all natural instincts and
facts are accounted for in what the most ignorant, since
the days of Darwin, would describe as the unscientific
language belonging to that date. To my mind, that in
no way detracts from the interest of its shrewd observa-
tions on the facts of Nature.

To name another book in this place, ' Country
Pleasures : Chronicle of a Year chiefly in a Garden,'
by George Milner, has been lately republished and

OCTOBER 53

thoroughly deserves it, as it is one of the best of its kind,
and must be an especial favourite with all nature lovers.
Its charm is of rather a different kind from either of the
other two. The writing is beautiful, and the quotations
are pointed and chosen with literary taste and knowledge.
Here are two sentences which I give in order that the
charm may be felt. One is dated ' May 22nd,' for the
book is arranged in months, which seems to me the
only natural system when speaking of the year's produce
and colour-effects in field, wood, or garden :

' In the present general outburst of vernal foliage
we naturally forget that the evergreens, as well as
the deciduous trees, are putting forth their new leaves.
This is one of those lesser beauties of the spring, easily
overlooked, but full of interest when once observed. The
yew-tree now shows itself as a mass of leafage, so dark as
to be almost black, but wearing a fringe of yellowish-
green ; the box has six or seven bright new leaves at the
end of each spray, in sharp contrast with the sombre but
polished growth of last year ; the ivy buds are silver-gray,
Uke the willow ; those of the holly are edged with red,
and the rhododendron is a light green. In that deUght-
fully child-like carol of Kit Marlowe, which gave such
pleasure to the gentle soul of dear old Izaak Walton,
the Passionate Shepherd promises to his Love,

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs.'

Once every year in the autumn, and sometimes twice,
I go to the east coast, and the house is so absolutely on
the seashore that this description in ' Country Pleasures '
exactly suits what I feel when I am there. It is, I think,
so good that it may be an inducement for my readers to
get the book for themselves : ' It is often said that the
sea is both monotonous and melancholy, but the longer

54 MORE POT-POURRI

we remain in its close neighbourhood the less are we dis-
posed to allow that it is monotonous. Melancholy it may
be, as it is tierce or wild or lovely by turns, but it is not
monotonous. Rather it is, next to the sky, the most
changeful thing we know : and by this I do not mean
only the obvious motion and restlessness of the waves,
but the more subtle and ever- varying alternation of the
whole aspect of the sea. It is usual to suppose that these
moods are mainly in the mind of the observer ; but that
is not so. The sea, like nature generally, has its own
absolute conditions — conditions which prompt and sug-
gest, rather than follow, emotions in the mind of man.
To feel all this, however, one must live continuously
near the sea.' I do not agree that this is really necessary
in order to appreciate the sea. I think one does feel all
Mr. Milner describes, even if one goes only for a short time,
so long as one lives close to the shore, no going out of the
house being necessary in oi'der to see the sea, still less a long
walk, which means remaining only a few minutes by the
waves. Mr. Milner continues : ' We are so contiguous
to the sea here that, looking through the window as I
write, I can see nothing but the wide stretch of waters,
just as I should if I were sitting in the cabin of a vessel ;
and if I stand at the door I can fling a stone into the
fringe of the tide. Crossing the road, one step brings me
to the shore ; and here you may sit all the day long, with
the sea breeze blowing round you and the sound of the
water ever in your ears. This sound is usually resolvable
into three elements. There is first the great boom of the
waves, the chorus of many waters, far and near, heard in
one deep unison ; then there is a noise as of liquid being
poured continuously out of one vessel into another — that,
I think, is caused by the falling crest of the waves ; and
lastly, there is a low and lisping talk ever going on
between the water and the pebbles.' I call that an ex-

OCTOBER 55

cellentword-rendering of sea-sounds. Then: 'In the pools
and tiny basins there are a thousand fairy creatures,
whose motions you may watch even as you lie reposing —
green and thread-like tentacula issuing and retreating,
purple atoms spinning round and round in some strange
dance which is the beginning and end of their existence,
gorgeous anemones and many a tiny shell, delicately
built and cunningly coloured :

Slight, to be crush 'd with a tap
Of my finger-nail on the sand,

Small, but a work divine.
Frail, but of force to mthstand,
Year upon year, the shock
Of cataract seas that snap

The three-decker's oaken spine
Athwart the ledges of rock.'

In mentioning these books I mean no slight on any
that I am not fortunate enough to know. I have kept to
the same rule which I found necessary with the old
garden-books — of only naming those that I not only
know, but possess.

October 20th. — I have been very busy here hollowing
out new rockeries and digging deep holes, eight to twelve
feet deep, and throwing up the sandy earth on either side,
so making slopes and mounds of earth. Small narrow
paths lead into these hollows, and instead of catching the
water at the bottom, as I did before, I keep the bottom
dry, and sink petroleum barrels level with the ground to
catch the water as it runs down the paths when rain
faUs, or after watering with a hose. In the tall walls of
sandy earth every sort of aspect is to be found, little
hollows are made, and all kinds of treasures can be
planted on the flat or the slope. By making holes in the
sandy walls, and helping to fix the plants with a mixture
of cow-dung and clay, they adhere quite well on the steep

S6 MORE POT-POURRI

slope. On one side of these sunk rockeries, so as still
more to keep off the north-east wind, there is a wall
about four feet in width and four feet high, built up
gradually with pieces of stone and earth between them —
no mortar. This makes an excellent cool depth of soil
for many precious plants. A small boggy bed can be
made, by guiding the rain as it runs away into a hole,
anywhere by the sides of paths and where the earth
slopes. This immensely increases the effect of rainfall
for individual plants, and it is a great help to gardening
on sandy soils. The fault of my rockery, unavoidable
from the situation, is that it has very little eastern
aspect, being shaded in that direction by trees ; and
morning sun is what early Alpines require. As the holes
approach the large trees, the banks are planted with
Ferns, vai'ious Ivies, Periwinkles (Vinca), and shade-
loving plants. Pernettyas, which are lovely little shrubs,
will not do in sun at all ; but in shade they seem to do
excellently, and are quite healthy in sandy soil. All
those I planted in full sun have simply died this dry
year, having been very much parched up. Cotoneaster
microphylla, on the contrary, never berries so well or is
so satisfactory as in a very dry place fully exposed to the
southern sun.

The other day as I was working in this new Alpine
garden a caterpillar fell off a tree just in front of me.
His head was round ; he had a hairy body, plump and
thickest in the middle, covered with moderately abundant
hairs ; and four square-topped bunches of hair of a pale
yellow colour grew on his back. His head and body were
green ; his long, pointed tail bright pink. The spaces
between the tufts of hair were deep black. His legs and pro-
legs were green. I thought I had got hold of some wonder-
ful rare beast, as I had never before found a caterpillar with
a pink tail like a horn. A friend to whom I refer all my

OCTOBER 57

natural history questions informed me that this was the
caterpillar of a moth called the ' Pale Tussock ' because of
the tussocks upon his body. The moth is pale gray coloured,
with various markings, and is fairly common. He feeds
upon most trees, often on Oak, but also on Hazel, Birch, and
— oddly enough — Hops. He will eat Plum and Pear.

October 23rd. — I have found that Crocus speciostis
does admirably in this very hght soil, and comes up year
after year, but is very much better not disturbed, when
it decidedly increases. Young plants of variegated Maple
look very pretty planted in clumps in front of a shrubbery,
especially if backed by small plants of Prumis pissardi.
The planting of Eosemary under shrubs, no matter what
aspect, has answered perfectly, and in this way I have a lot
of the delicious stuff, not only to burn in my own house,
but to give away.

October 25th. — We have improved on the cultivation
of Watercress in a dry garden by sowing it in a wide
trench with the sides supported by two old boards, and
close to a tap so that it can be easily watered. In
October some of the plants are dug up, put into a box
and then placed in a cold frame, so I get fresh Water-
cress for tea through the cold weather. In London it is
easy to get everything more or less good, but this is not
at all the case in the country. What you do not grow
you generally have to do without, and even if Watercress
can be bought there is the additional advantage of safety
in growing it on clean ground instead of buying it out of
a dirty ditch, when it often tastes of mud.

I find that in Germany the roots of the pink Oxalis
floriMinda are eaten as a vegetable, and a most excellent
vegetable it is. It is not quite hardy. The way to treat
it is to take it up about this time of year, eat the big roots,
preserve the small ones in sand, and re-plant them in the
spring. Celeriac and Salsifies are also much better taken

58 MORE POT-POURRI

up now and stored in dry sand under cover, like Carrots.
They grow old and spotty, if left in the ground in the
usual English way.

Before cutting down our Asparagus we collect the
pretty red seeds, sow them at once very thickly in ordi-
nary or fancy china pots, and keep some for later sowing.
The seedlings come in well as an ornament in the green-
house at Christmas, look green and fresh and refined, and
most people do not know what they are. They have the
great merit of costing nothing and of being very easy to
gi'ow for anyone who has a warm greenhouse.

October 2&th. — We are benefiting now by the extra-
ordinarily dry autumn and no early frost. The number
of flowers in the garden is quite surprising. I picked
this morning a large bunch of Nemesia. The Lavenders
are flowering a second time, and there are plenty of Tea-
roses.

The following instructions for growing the TropcBolum
spedosum, which has failed here so often, were sent me
by a lady : ' The two great needs seem to be moisture
— but not great moisture — at the roots and dampness of
atmosphere round the foliage when in summer growth.
These objects are best obtained by — first, in England, or
at least in the southern counties, a north wall ; second, by
being planted about two feet deep in a trench properly
prepared for it ; third, by frequently syringing in the
summer. I have found a trench a foot wide and a foot
and a half deep suit it best. But if the subsoil is clay or
a tenacious soil the trench should be made two feet deep,
the bottom six inches being filled with drainage — pieces
of broken stones or brick. The soil with which it is next
filled should be peat and ordinary loam in equal propor-
tions, with a little sand and leaf-mould thrown in and
thoroughly mixed with the whole. Sphagnum cut and
chopped into small bits— this retains the moisture, which

OCTOBER 59

is as essential as that it should not be stagnant. The
young plants should be put in in the autumn preferably
to the spring. It is important that the soil in which the
roots are growing should vary as little as possible in
moistness, never getting dryer at one time than at
another.'

The two Japanese grasses, Eulnlia Japonica {variecjata
and zebrina), do not throw up their flower panicles here
quite early enough to come to perfection, but I learnt
last summer that if the cane containing the flower (this
is easily distinguished by feeling a certain fulness near
the top) is picked and brought into the house the grass
will dry; it should then be peeled off and the feathery
panicles will display themselves (see illustration in
' English Flower Garden '). They make a pretty and
refined winter decoration, and they are just the right size
to mix with the red-berried pods of Iris fcetidissima.
The seed-branches of Montbretias are also a pretty addi-
tion to a dry winter bouquet.

Plumbago rosea is a very pretty autumn-flowering
greenhouse plant. It wants to be grown in a fairly
warm house ; but, once in flower, a cool greenhouse seems
to suit it well. Its growth is very different from the
other Plumbagos, and the pink of its flower is of an
unusually beautiful hue. It is not difficult to strike.

Eeceipts

I have two amusing little books by the same author —
kind of ' Pot-Pourris ' of the early 'sixties — one called
' Dinners and Dinner Parties ' and the other ' The Gentle-
woman.' They are full of good advice and receipts, some
of which I think are worth copying, but the chief amuse-
ment is to see how the advice they give has grown and
spread, and is so much less really wanted than it was

6o MORE POT-POURRI

thirty-five years ago. The anonymous writer is ex-
tremely sarcastic about the neglect of household duties
by women of all classes. Now, perhaps, the absorption
in domestic arrangements and refined luxuries is almost
carried to the extreme. Most newspapers have menus,
and the cookery books are innumerable. One paragraph
in ' The Gentlewoman ' is headed ' The Great Evil in
England,' and runs as follows : ' The great social evil is
not that which is talked of by gentlemen in black at
midnight meetings ; but it is the great evil that besets
the English from the highest to the lowest. Every man,
woman, and child suffers from it, and thousands die or
only expei'ience a lingering existence from its neglect.
The great social evil is the want of persons of education
and practical knowledge worthy to be entrusted in the
preparation of food with that care and nicety that is
practised in every nation in Europe except England,
whereby health would be no longer jeopardised, and
twenty millions of money would annually be saved.
There would be ample employment for every poor lady
who, for the want of domestic knowledge, is doomed to
life-long misery.' The writer further complains that ladies
do not go to market, that young gentlewomen do not look
after their own wardrobes, and is full of compassion for
the poor father who has the task of providing a sufficient
dowry for each girl. His language must always have
been exaggerated, and it is certainly untrue in our day.
The ' Stores ' have replaced the old markets, and without
doubt ladies, and even gentlemen, do go to them — tire-
some places though they are — and the girls of the present
day are very few who do not look after and think about
their clothes. Fathers still find the same difficulty in
providing dowries for their daughters ; but the girls them-
selves— among them those who have every right, from the
way they have been brought up, to look for dowries — are

OCTOBER 6i

now always striving to do some work of their own. The
over-strained gentility that my author speaks of does
still and must always exist. He touches on too many
subjects for me to go on quoting him. But the employ-
ments he recommends for women, laying especial stress on
nursing, do make one realise the changes and the improve-
ments of the last thirty years. All his advice about stores
and cooking utensils and general management of the
kitchen is excellent. It is carried out far more in the beau-
tiful kitchens of modern Germany than anywhere here. He
is as strong as even I could wish about the use of earthen-
ware casseroles and fireproof dishes. But both servants
and mistresses hate them because of the breakage, which
of course is very troublesome ; and the excessive heat of
our fireplaces makes them more difficult to manage.
English servants, too, are so conservative that it is
extremely difficult to interfere in any way with their
method of work. They only like to do things as they
have always been done.

On looking over these two books I find the receipts so
good and so unlike those in the ordinary cookery book
that I shall copy several of them to disperse through the
months as they seem to me seasonable. It is often
difficult to remember how each generation requires to be
told the same things over again. Among other good and
useful hints, one is to keep a supply of corks for putting
into any bottle that has been opened, so that it can be
turned over on its head in the store closet and thus
prevent the air from getting to the contents. This
ensures your not having to buy a fresh bottle of oil for
every third salad, or a fresh bottle of anchovy when you
require only a teaspoonful. I am afraid the modern
cooks are rare who will take the trouble to attend to
such details.

This dressing of two chickens in different ways for

62 MORE POT-POURRI

one dinner party is rather original, so I copy it out of
' The Gentlewoman ' just as it is :

'Two Chickens for Eight Persons.— Ahandon the
boiled fowl fashion ; order a pair of fowls to be sent without
being trussed, and let the heads and necks be sent with
them. Cut up one of the fowls into pieces — the leg and
thigh into two pieces, the l^ack into three pieces, and the
breast into two pieces, which with the merry-thought will
be fourteen pieces.

' Take a Spanish onion, cut it up small, put it into a
stewpan with tw'o ounces of butter and a little pepper
and salt ; let it stew gently for about an hour until it is
in a complete pulp. Half an hour before you want it
put in the fourteen pieces of chicken, let them stew half
an hour, and when done put into your silver dish a tea-
spoonful of Spanish or French garlic vinegar, or, if that
is not liked, the squeeze of half a lemon, and you will
never again want to taste insipid boiled fowl. Mind, it
requires no water ; the fowl will be done in its own gravy.

' Cut the other fow^l in the same way, viz. fourteen
pieces. Let the heads and necks be picked and scalded,
stew them in half a pint of water, and when all the
goodness is extracted strain off the liquor, put it into a
stewpan with a pint of button mushrooms, a little pepper
and salt, and put in the fourteen pieces of fowl, stew them
until done (about half an hour), thicken with a little
arrowroot. "When you dish them up, put into your silver
dish a tablespoonful of mushroom catchup. These two
fowls will be a variety, will require only the effort of
serving, will be enough for eight or ten persons, and
each convive will want to taste each dish.

' Pigeons when in season cooked in the same manner
are equally good, and make a change — such a change
that those who taste it never forget. Grouse and
partridges treated the same way are better than roasted.

OCTOBER 63

' A young turkey poult dressed in the same way is a
very inviting dish.'

Towards the middle of October I buy two or three
young turkeys in Suffolk, and feed them here till a fort-
night before Christmas. They must be starved twenty-
four hours before killing, and require to hang about a
fortnight. They should not be plucked or cleaned out
till they are going to be cooked.

Chervil Soup. — Pick, wash, and chop fine a very
large handful of chervil. Melt a piece of butter the size
of an egg with two tablespoonfuls of good flour. Stir
smooth. Do not let it colour at all ; then add the chervil
and let it simmer ten minutes, stirring well. Pour on it
sufficient stock or water (water is quite as good as stock, in
my opinion) to make the soup (rather less than more, as
one can easily add a drop if too thick). Let it boil half an
hour. Just before serving the soup put the yolks of
two fresh eggs, one teacupful of milk or cream and a bit
of sweet butter, well mixed together and beaten up, into
the soup tureen ; pour the boiling soup into this
thickening, stirring it well till mixed. The same receipt
exactly applies to sorrel Soup.

To dress Fresh-water Fish.— Bone the fish and
lay it flat in a fireproof dish, with small pieces of butter
underneath the fish. Chop half an onion and three or
four washed anchovies, brown them in a little butter in
a small copper saucepan, pour this mixture all along
over the fish. Strew lightly with very dry breadcrumbs
grated from a brown roll or the crust of a loaf. Add in
the dish a few spoonfuls of good brown sauce, and baste
the fish in the oven till cooked. Serve in the fireproof
dish in which it was cooked.

In Germany they still use fresh-water fish almost as
much as they do in France, and obviously for the same
reasons. A full account of these reasons is most excel-

64 MORE POT-POURRI

lently given in Mrs. Eoundell's ' Practical Cookery Book*
under the head of ' Pond Pish.' Sea fish in England is so
plentiful that I do not believe, in these days of quick
carriage, that fresh-water fish will ever be again a matter
of trade, though even this we cannot say for certain. The
fishmongers and fishermen are so absolutely determined
to ruin our fish supply by covering it with that injm'ious
chemical, boracic acid, very often before it leaves the
coast, that I for one would greatly prefer a freshly netted
pond fish. Boracic acid can be easily recognised, when
the fish is cooked, by the purple line that lies along the
spine in soles, whiting, haddock, plaice, etc. It is intro-
duced under the gill, and I fancy with experience one
would soon recognise it even before the fish is cooked
But the use of it is now so universal, alas ! that a young
cook can hardly be expected to know what fish looked
like without it. I cannot understand why people who
possess large places with rivers, lakes, ponds, game-
keepers, and in fact every facility for having fresh-water
fish, are yet content to do without so good a variety of
food.

One reason is that the cooks do not know how to
cook it properly, and the mistresses of the house do not
take the trouble to teach them. The Izaak Walton
receipts are very inadequate, and depend almost entirely
for success on cooking the fish the very moment it is
taken out of the water. In France fish that cannot be
cooked immediately is always marinaded. (See ' Dainty
Dishes.') Mrs. Eoundell entirely does away with the
terrible superstition that has always haunted my imagina-
tion as a fact, that eels have to be skinned alive as lobsters
are boiled alive. She is silent on the subject of lobsters,
but with regard to eels she distinctly says : * Kill them
first and skin them afterwards.'

Endive. (French receipt.) — Boil the leaves in lots of

OCTOBER 65

salt and water, just as if you were doing spinach or
cabbage. When tender pour the whole thing on to a
large sieve, and as soon as the hot water has drained
away put the sieve under a tap and let cold water run
on it for some minutes. This applies to the boiling of
all green vegetables — cabba.ges, sorrel, cauliflowers, cos-
lettuce, cabbage-lettuce, etc. After the cold water, put
the endive on a chopping-board, or if required to be quite
smooth as a jmree, rub it through a fine hair sieve. In
both these cases return it to the fire, after having first
put, in a china saucepan, a pat of butter to dissolve with
one spoonful of fine flour. Do not put the vegetable
in before the butter and flour are well amalgamated.
When this is achieved, stir the vegetable well up with the
butter and flour and let it simmer for another fifteen
minutes. Add a little cream or milk quite at the last
moment, just to make it soft and pretty. It must not be
thicker than a thin jjuree.

Endive (in the Gei'man way).— Cut up the endive
quite coarsely, wash it in lots of cold water, and throw it
very wet into an earthenware pot in which a large piece
of butter has been dissolved ; no salt nor anything else.
Put the lid on and simmer gently for three or four hours.
Add salt the last minute, and no flour at all.

Canard a la Rouennaise.— Take the fillets of two
ducks. Put them into a buttered saute-pan and poach
for five minutes in a good oven. When done cut them
out with a cutlet-cutter and spread on one side of each fillet
some liver force-meat, then chaud-froid over with some
tomato sauce. When set, dish them flat on the entr6e-dish
with some aspic, some skinned grapes in the centre, and
a grape here and there. Serve with grape salad.

Puree of Carrots. — Get some nice red carrots, slice
them thin. Add an onion also sliced, a little celery, and
a turnip. Braise all together in some weak stock, or

66 MORE POT-POURRI

water, until quite tender. Pass the whole through a
tammy or hair sieve. About a.n hour before serving place
it in a stewpan over the fire and let it gently simmer to
clarify. Season with sugar and salt, and work in a little
cream just before serving.

Poulet a la MarengfO.— Have some nice young
chickens, cut them up neatly, and put them into a saut6-
pan with a little salad oil, one onion, a small piece of
parsley and thyme ; season with pepper and salt, cover
the saute-pan with the lid, and boil till sufficiently
browned. Then add some good brown stock and stew
for some time, finish with a good glass of madeira
(optional). Dish up with fried eggs round. Pry the eggs
in salad oil.

Chestnuts au Jus. — Eemove the outer skin and
throw the chestnuts into boiling water, to enable you to
remove the inner skin as well ; then lay them in cold
water vv'hile the following mixture is prepared : Stir two
tablespoonfuls of sugar into an ounce of butter in a sauce-
pan till the sugar is browned, let it boil up, add a little cold
water. Put in the chestnuts, simmer till tender, but do not
shake them (to avoid crumbling). Just before serving add
a few spoonfuls of very good strong glaze. Onions,
small tui'nips, and oxalises can be done in the same way.
Wc find all these equally good without the meat glaze.

Celeriac Salad. — A most excellent autumn salad is
celeriac well boiled, cut in slices like beetroot, mixed with
a light mayonnaise sauce half oil and half cream, sur-
rounded by a wreath of what they call in Germany
' garden-cress,' which is merely the cress we grow in
spring in a box, allowed to grow out of doors in summer
till about the size of parsley. It grows all the summer
through in the garden, and can be cut over and over again.
When grown in boxes in the winter it should be allowed
to grow on, instead of cutting it quite young

OCTOBER 6?

I have always considered salads a strong point with
me, and was much amused the other day, when reading
Sydney Smith's ' Memoirs ' by his daughter, at the follow-
ing description of his experiences with salads. I think his
receipt so clever that I have extracted it, with the feeling it
was better to have it in two books than in only one, so that
it may give pleasure to more people. He says : ' Our forte
in the culinary line is our salad. I pique myself on our
salads. Saba always dresses them after my recipe. I
have put it into verse. Taste it, and if you like it I will
give it to you. I was not aware how much it had con-
tributed to my reputation till I met Lady at Bowood,

who begged to be introduced to me, saying she had so
long wished to know me. I was of course highly
flattered till she added : " For, Mr. Smith, I have heard
so much of your recipe for salads that I was most anxious
to obtain it from you." Such and so various are the
sources of fame !

To make this condiment your poet begs

The pounded yellow of two hard-boil'd eggs ;

Two boil'd potatoes, passed through kitchen sieve.

Smoothness and softness to the salad give.

Let onion atoms lurk within the bowl

And, half-suspected, animate the whole.

Of mordant mustard add a single spoon.

Distrust the condiment that bites so soon ;

But deem it not, thou man of herbs, a fault

To add a double quantity of salt.

Four times the spoon with oil from Lucca brown,

And twice with vinegar procured from town ;

And lastly o'er the flavour'd compound toss

A magic soupqoyi of anchovy sauce.

Oh, green and glorious! Oh, herbaceous treat !

'Twould tempt the dying anchorite to eat ;

Back to the world he'd turn his fleeting soul,

And plunge his fingers in the salad bowl !

Serenely full, the epicure would say,

' Fate cannot harm me — I have dined to-day.'

f2

68 MORE POT-POURRI

Fried (German) Pudding*. — To make the batter
put two pints of milk to boil with a tiny pinch of salt and
two ounces of butter. When boiling, stir in very smoothly
eight ounces of finest Hungarian flour. (Use no other
flour than Hungarian or Austrian for all sweets and
sauces.) Stir till the batter recedes from the sides of the
stewpan, then pour it into a dish to get cold. Add six
eggs and two spoonfuls of rum, mix gently. Put a deep
iron pan full of frying-fat on the fii'e, but let it get only
moderately hot. Fry the batter in round balls in the
following way. To make this very German pudding
properly, one should have a large tin syringe made speci-
ally for the purpose, but in its absence the batter must
be taken up by small teaspoonfuls and dropped into the
frying-fat. It will form round balls, which should be
constantly moved about with a spoon to get them golden-
coloured all over. When they show little cracks they are
sufficiently done. For this method the batter should
be made a little stiffer than for the syringe by adding
a little more flour. Serve with dissolved fruit syrup or
custard.

Gateau Savarin. — Ingredients : a little less than one
pint of milk, six ounces of Initter, ten eggs, two ounces
of pounded sugar, one pound of good Hungarian flour^
sifted grated peel of two lemons, two ounces of good
German yeast, a pinch of salt. Put one-fifth part of the
flour, the yeast, and the milk together in a deep basin, and
work them to a stiff paste ; cover with a cloth, and stand
in a tepid place till it swells to double its size. Put
all the other ingredients into a much larger basin, mix
them very vigorously and thoroughly with the hands for
ten minutes, then work into this the first paste with
the yeast in it. When all is well incorporated, work
it for another fifteen minutes. Fill the tin or earthen-
ware Savarin shapes with paste to one-third of their height,

OCTOBER 69

having first greased them well inside with melted butter.
Stand them in a warm place till the paste has risen to the
very top. Put them in a rather slow oven for twenty-
five to thirty minutes. When well coloured, but not brown,
turn them out and pour rum punch over them, taking
care not to sodden them.

I had occasion at the end of this month last year
(1897) to go to Germany to the neighbourhood of Frank-
fort. The journey, about twenty-five hours from London,
is wonderfully easy. My friends said : ' What ! go all
that way for ten days ? ' But in fact it means far less
time and money than did a journey to Devonshire, or
even the Isle of Wight, to our grandmothers. I had
never seen the Bhine before in late autumn. The late
vintage was just over, and the vines and the earth seemed
one even brown, diversified at times with yellow leaves
hanging thinly on the poplars, and the low oak brush-
wood bronze and gold against the sky. It seems bathos
to say so, but the Ehine runs so due north and south that
it reminded me of my winter walks in Sloane Street. The
sun was always in one's eyes in the middle of the day, and
behind the hills morning and evening ; and the fogs hung
about the river as they do between the houses in the
street. How entirely the Ehine of Turner and Byron
has ceased to be ! All the beautiful, picturesque boats,
barges, rafts, etc., with white or tan sails, that trailed
their long reflections in the broad river, representing the
commercial industries of the people, which had been
growing from the commencement of history — all this has
completely disappeared. On the Main I saw one or two
of the old-fashioned large rafts, not towed by steamers,
but punted by the graceful little black figures ceaselessly
labouring up and down a small portion of the raft and
pushing it with long poles. On the Rhine everything

70 MORE POT-POURRI

was towed by steamers of various sizes and kinds. As I
sped along in the luxurious railway carriage, and noticed
the road beside the river turning and twisting along the
bank, I could not but think of the changes since the days
when all travelling was done by carriages and lumbering
diligences. In Moore's ' Life of Byron,' which I used to
think such a delightful book, but which now is somewhat
sneered at as unfair book-making by Byron biographers,
there is a detailed account of the way the rich and gieat
journeyed at the beginning of the century : ' Lord Byron
travelled in a huge coach copied from the celebrated one
of Napoleon, taken at Genappe, with additions. Besides
a lit de rei^os it contained a library, a plate chest, and
every apparatus for dining in it. It was not, however,
found sufficiently capacious for his baggage and suite, and
he purchased a caUche at Brussels for his servants.' So
travelled the man whom Lady Caroline Lamb attempts
to describe, in her famous though dull novel of ' Glenavon,'
v^th the motto :

He left a name to all succeeding times
Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

The train sped along and the weather was beautiful.
We were not parboiled in the carriages, as they do not
warm them before the 1st of November. My friend
lived out of Frankfort, on the slopes of the Taunus
Mountains, under the towers of the mediaeval Castle
of Cronberg. Land is not, I fancy, to be bought in
Germany except close to the towns ; all the forests
belong to the State, and are not sold. I was surprised to
find in this delightful home of my Cronberg friends, in
the very kingdom of stoves as we consider Germany,
that one of the rooms was warmed by an Irish stove,
made by Messi^s. Musgi-ave of Bond Street, exactly Hke
the one I find so invaluable for keeping my own little

OCTOBER 7i

house at an even temperature. I cannot imagine why any
Enghsh house not warmed with hot pipes is ever without
one of these stoves. They burn only coke, they require
very little stoking, they keep in a very long time, and
they never unpleasantly dry the air or cause the least
smell. I afterwards found that the shops in Frankfort
were full of English goods. This is some consolation for
us when things we buy are so constantly marked ' made in
Germany.'

My bedroom at Cronberg looked north and faced a
long line of sunlit Taunus Mountains, clothed with oak
woods in all their autumn glory. They were intersected
"vith pine woods, which in previous months must have
looked dull and dark against the summer green, but in
lite October they Vv'ere shining bright against the red
gold of the dying woods. They reminded me of one of
' Bethia Hardacre's ' truest touches of colour :

Silver, and pearl-white sky.

Hills of dim amethyst,
Bracken to gold changed by

Autumn, the Alchemist.

Spikes of bright yellow poplars here and there marked
the road as it wound up the hill to lose itself in the silent
forest. The walls of my bedroom were hung round
with photographs and prints, remembrances brought
back by my cosmopolitan hostess from vraious countries.
They were most of them known to me, but one print was
quite a stranger and very striking. It was of a picture, I
was told, by a Swiss artist called Arnold Boecklin, a
celebrated man, though unknown to me. On the white
margin of the print were written the simple words :
Todten-Insel. The print represents an imaginary burial-
place : A high rocky island with a suggestion of big
caves in the rock and windows made by man. In tlie
middle a little open space with tall upright groups of

72 MORE POT-POURRI

splendid Italian Cypresses, which seem to be mourn-
fully swaying in the wind. Down the rocks on each side
tumble somewhat conventional waterfalls into a fathom-
less ocean, perhaps meant to be typical of Life and
Death. Two white stone posts on each side of a step
mark the entrance to this sombre garden of peace and
rest. On the foregi'ound of calm water floats a black
boat, which approaches this entrance rowed by a solitary
dark figure — a realistic Charon. Across the front of
the boat lies the dead ; and a radiant, draped, mys-
terious mourner, with head bowed over the inevitable
sorrow of mankind, stands erect in the middle of the
boat. The combination of the horizontal dead figure and
the upright mourner, in their white draperies, seems tc
form a shining cross against the deep shade of th«
Cypresses. This print fascinated me with its eternal
facts transcribed into an allegory by a man of genius.
The picture from which it is taken is a replica, with many
alterations, of one painted some years ago which I have
seen. But, judging from the print, I believe that the lasi-
painted one is the finest. Certainly the allegorical details
in this later one are brought out with greater distinctness.
Several of Herr Boecklin's pictures have been bought by h:s
native town of Bale, and later on I will describe howl spent
a night there on purpose to see them. After my return
home I came across an interesting description of Herr
Boecklin and his work in a lately published book called
' The History of Modern Painting,' by Kichard Muther,
from which the following extract will perhaps make others
wish as much as I do to see his pictures. Mr. Muther
says of him that : ' He belonged to the very time when
Eichard Wagner lured the colours of sound from music
with a glow and light such as no master had kindled
before Boecklin's symphonies of colour streamed forth
like a crashing orchestra. The whole scale, from the

OCTOBER 73

most sombre depth to the most chromatic light, was at
his command. In his pictures of spring the colour
laughs, rejoices, and exvilts. In the " Isle of the Dead " it
seems as though a veil of crepe were spread over the sea,
the sky, and the trees. . . . Many of his pictures have
such an ensnaring brilliancy that the eye is never weary
of feasting upon then* floating splendour. Indeed, later
generations wall probably do him honour as the greatest
colour-poet of the century, and at the same time they
will learn from his works that at the close of this same
unstable century there were complete and healthy human
beings. . . . The more modern sentiment became
emancipated, the more did artists venture to feel with
their own nerves and not with those of earlier genera-
tions, and the more it became evident that modern senti-
ment is almost always disordered, recklessly despairing,
unbelieving, and weary of life. Boecklin, the most
modern of modern painters, possesses that quality of iron
health of which modernity knows so little.'

To return to my time in Germany. The weather grew
cold and foggy, and my expeditions from Cronberg into
Frankfort were fewer than I could have wished, and many
sights I did not see at all.

Among the towns of which I have an early though
faint recollection, not even Paris itself is more utterly
and entirely changed than Frankfort. Only here and
there does anything remain that recalls Goethe's descrip-
tion, so familiar to the readers of his ever-enchanting
autobiography, that perfect mixture, ' Truth and Poetry.'
The Jewish cemetery, full of interest with its unbroken
record from the twelfth century, I did not see, though to
my mind it must be one of the most interesting spots in
Europe. This feeling would only be understood by the
English, the awful hatred of the Jews— universal on the
Continent — being happily unknown to us. The world

74 MORE POT-POURRI

changes so much, and yet so much remains the same.
Who would have imagined that at the end of the
nineteenth century Jewish persecution would be the same
as in the Middle Ages ? If it were possible, would not
the gates of the Ghetto be shut in the same cruel and
unjust way as years ago? Hatred of the Jews seems to
me the one real bond that unites France, Germany, and
Kussia. It is generally attributed to Disraeli, but I
believe it was Heine who first said : ' Eveiy nation has
the kind of Jew it deserves.'

I am told that in this Jewish cemetery at Frankfort
the surnames on the tombstones date back in many cases
three hundred years. The old graves have generally only
a first name (one cannot say Christian name) w^ith a
locality mentioned ; as, for instance, ' Hannah of Ham-
bui'g.' The Jews seem to regard this cemetery as an even
truer record of their families than we consider our peerage.
The Judengasse has virtually disappeared. I never saw
it but once in my childhood, when I felt the same kind of
mixed awe and curiosity with which Goethe speaks of it.
There is a sketch of it in that never-to-be-forgotten
volume of our young days, ' The Foreign Tour of Messrs.
Bi'own, Jones, and Eobinson,' by Dickie Doyle. His
drawing gives a somewhat spiteful version of it, but it
is a funny remembrance of this swept-away quarter.
Lewes says Goethe learnt much from the society of the
Jews in the strange, old, filthy, but deeply interesting
Judengasse. Like him, we have all pondered over ' the
sun standing still on Gideon and the moon in the valley
of Ajalon.'

It was with a genuine thrill that I entered Goethe's
house, where he was born, where he lived, where he
played and eat and slept and loved Gretchen, and which
— angry and disappointed at being described as the boy
he really was — he left, with the indifference usual at that

OCTOBER 75

age, to seek his fortunes in the world. As he says himself :
' At certain epochs children part from parents, servants
from masters, proteges from their patrons ; and whether
it succeed or not, such an attempt to stand on one's own
feet, to make one's self independent, to live for one's self,
is always in accordance with the will of Nature.'

I am so fond of Goethe's sayings that they stick
somehow in my mind, in spite of my bad memory. He
says somewhere so truly, and it refers to this entrance
into life that all have to face : ' Every man has his decoy,
and every man is led or misled in a way peculiar to
himself.' How frequently Goethe's sayings remind one
of Lord John Eussell's apt definition of a proverb,
' One man's wit and all men's wisdom ' ! Goethe's house
in the Hirschgrahen is now a museum, bought by the
Goethe Society, whose headquarters are at Weimar, and
restored by them with reverent cai"e. Every effort is
made to preserve it and what it contains from decay.
Such guardians are necessary ; they hold the hand of the
destroyer and arrest decay, keeping for posterity what we
ourselves highly value. The old house where Luther rested
for the night on his way to the Diet of Worms was being
levelled to the ground this summer before my eyes, to
make room for a handsome entrance into the courtyard
of a large white stucco house. So incongruous was
this building to the old sixteenth-century street that
had I seen it suddenly I should have said it was a
residence, not in Frankfort, but in the Quartier St.
Germain in Paris. I honour all societies that save us
from this wholesale destruction of the past. In the
Goethe house-museum there w^ere some of Goethe's
drawings which made me sympathise more than I had
ever done before with Lewes's somewhat bitter reproaches
about the time Goethe wasted on drawing. Lewes says :
' All his study and all his practice were vain ; he never

76 MORE POT-POURRI

attained even the excellence of an amateur. To think
of a Goethe thus obstinately cultivating a branch of art
for which he had no talent makes us look with kinder
appreciation on the spectacle, so frequently presented, of
really able men obstinately devoting themselves to pro-
duce poetry no cultivated man can read ; men whose
culture and insight are insufficient to make them perceive
in themselves the difference between aspiration and in-
spiration.'

I also went alone to the suburb of Sachsenhausen to
see the Staedel Art Institute. Frederick Staedel, in 1816,
bequeathed his pictures and engravings and 100,000/. to
his native town. This formed the nucleus of the present
gallery. Many pictures have been added since his death,
and in many ways the collection is an interesting one.
I stood long before a picture which the inscription on
the frame told me had been presented by a Baroness
Eothschild. Having no catalogue, and feehng shy about
asking in German, I neither knew nor guessed what it
was or why it was there. It powerfully arrested my atten-
tion— a life-sized picture of a man of about forty, sitting
in a gray, flowing overcoat, on gray stones in the gray
Campagna of Rome. Afterwards I was told that it was
the famous picture of Goethe by Johann Friedrich
Tischbein. This painter lived from 1750 to 1812 — that is
to say, only a part of the life of Goethe, who was born a
year before Tischbein and died in 1832. He therefore
was thirty-seven when he wrote in the letters from Italy,
December 1786, as follows: 'Latterly I have often ob-
served Tischbein attentively regarding me ; and now it
appears he has long cherished the idea of painting my
portrait. His design is already settled and the canvas
stretched. I am to be drawn the size of life, enveloped
in a white mantle, and sitting on a fallen obelisk, viewing
the ruins of the Campagiia di lioma, which are to fill up

OCTOBER 77

the background of the picture. It will form a beautiful
piece, only it will be rather too large for our Northern
habitations. I indeed may crawl into them, but the
portrait will never be able to enter their door.'

This is the exact description of the picture as it now
is. Later on, in the letters in February of the following
year, Goethe again alludes to the picture : ' The great
portrait of myself which Tischbein had taken in hand
begins already to stand out from the canvas. The painter
has employed a clever statuary to make him a httle
model in clay, which is elegantly draperied with the
mantle. With this he is working away diligently.' The
last fact is curious, as it is exactly the way Meissonier
worked a hundred years after. I went to his studio
shortly after his death, and saw all his little clay models
of cannons, figiires, horses, roads, from which all his
highly finished pictures were painted. The Goethe por-
trait has a distinct dash of affectation in it, and the whole
pose, excusable enough in Goethe, is of a man in the
prime of his life who felt himself to be famous and knew
himself to be handsome. To our ideas the picture is
singularly devoid of colour, almost monochrome ; but it
strikes one as very modern in treatment, considering its
date, and for every reason it must always remain one of
the interesting portraits of the world. In the early part
of this century and during the Napoleonic days, when the
Eothschilds of Frankfort began to spread themselves
through Europe and estabhsh their banking-houses in so
many capitals, the son who went to Naples bought this
great canvas of Tischbein's. In this way it has ulti-
mately found a most fitting home — not in the small house
which, Goethe truly said, would not admit it, but on the
walls of this museum in his native town.

The Staedel Institute has many artistically interesting
pictures most instructive to the student of the old masters,

78 MORE POT-POURRI

both German and Italian. For those who wish to under-
stand modern criticism and the altering of long-accepted
catalogues attributing pictures to wrong artists I can
most strongly recommend ' Italian Painters,' by Giovanni
Morelli (John Murray), translated into English by Con-
stance Jocelyn Pfoulkes. Giovanni Morelli lived at
Bergamo in Lombardy. He left as a legacy to his native
town a small but very remarkable collection of pictures,
the chief treasures of which are Dutch masterpieces. I
imagine the ' Italian Painters ' is almost the root of the
kind of modern criticism which has torn from us of the
older generation many of the faiths of our youth. For
instance, the famous Guide's ' Cenci ' of the Barberini
Palace for more than a century drew tears of pity from the
eyes of poets and their followers as being a most tender
representation of o, famous criminal painted in prison, who,
but for this supposed portrait of her, would never have
been known to posterity. As a fact she was executed six or
seven years before Guido amved in Eome. Neither is the
picture a Guido at all, but a study by some inferior painter
of an unknown model. At least, this, I believe, is the
last word on the subject. The favourite portrait of
Raphael by himself in the Louvre, leaning on his hand,
is not a portrait of him, nor is the picture painted by him.
The great Holbein at Dresden is said now not to be the
original, which is at Darmstadt ; and so on. In this
Frankfort gallerj^ there is an extraordinarily fine and
interesting female portrait, hitherto attributed to Sebas-
tiano del Piombo, but now supposed to be by Sodoma.
It is one of the gems of the collection.

Before leaving England last year (1897) I had been
immensely interested at hearing of the open-air treat-
ment for phthisis as practised in Germany, the parent
establishment of which is at Falkenstein, in the Taunus
Mountains, close to Gronberg, where I was staying. I

OCTOBER 79

wished very much to visit this sanatorium myself, hut
circumstances rendered it impossible.

A good account of it was published just after I came
home, in the ' Practitioner ' for November, by Dr. Karl
Hess, senior physician to the establishment.

It cannot fail to strike us as we walk or drive past the
Brompton Hospital, with its airless situation and its closed
windows, how hopelessly different its conditions and treat-
ment must be from those recommended — and apparently
so successfully carried out — at Falkenstein. In Germany
twenty sister establishments have been started, and the
medical management is supposed to be now so complete
against infection that German parents have no fear of send-
ing delicate children to these cures, at the age of sixteen
or seventeen, to be benefited by the outdoor treatment as
a strengthener against the possibility of their catching
tuberculosis. At Falkenstein, the parent institution, much
meat is insisted on ; but I am told that at Nordrach
Dr. Walther now gives very little meat, and sends away
patients if they take any stimulant at all. He does cram
them, but it is with enormous quantities of milk, cheese,
butter, brown bread, and other farinaceous foods.

When I came home from Germany last year I noted
three things which I hold to be of the utmost importance,
and in which we seemed in England to be decidedly
behind other nations. First, I wished to see estab-
lished public slaughterhouses, duly inspected, not only
in large towns, but in every village where beasts are
slaughtered. It seems to me absurd to expect that the
man who buys a beast, kills it himself, and counts on
selling the meat at a profit, should forego his gains solely
for the public good. Meat is constantly eaten which is
rejected by the Jewish priests, and I believe it is a
statistically established fact that Jews have a great
immunity from both consumption and cancer. It used

So MORE POT-POURRI

to be supposed that this was because they were of a
different race from ourselves. I beheve it is because they
are much cleaner feeders than we are.

Secondly, I would gladly have seen greater intelligence
and knowledge on the part of the public as regards the
danger to children and invalids who live almost exclu-
sively on milk of drinking it unsterilised or unboiled,
since one tuberculous cow infects the whole supply, and
this is not possible to detect by any analysis of the milk.

Thirdly, I wished that the German rational outdoor
treatment of consumptive patients, when once they have
caught tuberculosis, or are so constituted that they are
likely to catch it, should be understood and practised in
England.

The strides that have been made towards the accom-
plishment of these three wishes of mine during the last
year is simply astonishing. The newly formed National
Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, whose
office is in Hanover Square, has for its great object to
instruct people on the infectiousness of tuberculosis and
the best methods of arresting it. Everyone who read the
account of the first meeting of this society at Marl-
borough House must have been struck with the fact that
when the Queen's herd of cows were tested, thirty-six of
them were condemned to be slaughtered.

A century ago, when first invalids were sent to the
Eiviera and Madeira, all the doctors distinctly taught
that the disease was hereditary and not infectious. The
natives of these health resorts soon discovered, to their
cost, that the disease was infectious ; for it spread amongst
the population in the same way as it now has at Davos,
where tuberculosis was formerly unknown. The super-
stition, as the doctors of the 'forties thought it, of the
peasants round Nice — who held that consumption was
really catching — made such an impression on my mother,

OCTOBER 8 I

whose whole soul was bent on saving her children from
the disease of which their father died, that she brought
us up on the lines of that belief, and kept us from every-
one whom she in any way suspected of being consumptive,
even when their complaint may have been but a constitu-
tional cough.

Perhaps this training is what has made me somewhat
sceptical about the medical science of any day being
absolutely conclusive. I sometimes think that the im-
plicit faith that people are apt to place in doctors may be
injurious to the community, and that experience and
quackery sometimes turn out to be scientifically truer than
the medical theory of the hour. Shocking as many will
think the suggestion, I believe this may eventually prove
to be the case even with regard to vaccination as a
necessary preventive against small-pox epidemics, the
great decrease of which may have been effected by many
other circumstances. The itch, scurvy, and leprosy have
practically also disappeared in England with improved
food and cleanliness. Nowadays why should not a case
of small-pox be stamped out as the plague was this year in
Vienna ? Before Jenner's great discovery, even the most
primitive methods of preventing infection were unknown.
It is only within the last twenty years that these have
been brought to anything like perfection, and only in
the last ten years with regard to crowded localities.

To return to tuberculosis. In spite of Tyndall's
wonderfully clear, instructive, and interesting letters to
the ' Times,' published more than twenty years ago, and
which explained most thoroughly the infectiousness of
consumption, the public have remained curiously ignorant
on the subject. As an illustration of this, a sad case
occurred this year not far from here. A signalman who
was mortally ill of consumption remained at his work in
his signal-box on the line as long as it was possible for

a

82 MORE POT-POURRI

him to get there. When the day came that he had to
give in and remain at home to die, a young and healthy
man replaced him in the signal-box, which had in no way
been disinfected or whitewashed, and which, from its
construction, was a sun-trap and the best dust-and-germ-
producer that could be. A cattle-truck would have been
differently treated ! The young man caught the disease
and died in a few months.

I find in talking even to educated people a con-
siderable tone of resentment on this subject. ' "What ! '
they say, ' are our consumptives to be treated like lepers ? '
The poetry that hung about consumption in the early
days of this sentimental century, its association with the
South, with Madeira's orange groves and the sunshine of
the Mediterranean, is now not easy to eradicate. The
modern cure is stern, rough, and unattractive, and it is
difficult at first to believe it to be the best for the hard,
hacking cough and hectic flush of the patients.

The homeward journey from Germany was much
less pleasant than my journey out had been, in con-
sequence of the fatal date having come which decides
that German railway cai-riages shall be heated — or, as
we English think, over-heated. This causes considerable
suffering to those who stupidly, like myself, forget that
an almost summer dress is required with plenty of wraps
to prevent any chill on leaving the carriage. We passed
Coblentz at early winter sunset-time, and I never saw
anything more beautiful than all the tones of blues and
pearly-grays under a sky spread with wave upon wave of
bright pink clouds. Not Turner himself could have come
near to the delicate yet brilliant effect. Skies are fleeting
enough, and the waves of rosy clouds quickly disappear,
but the despairing swiftness of an express train is the
quickest of all ; and in a moment Coblentz, with its towers,
its fortress, and its beautiful sunlit sky, was out of sight.

OCTOBER 83

I do think that if we would enjoy the Rhine in its
beauty we must visit it in winter, when we see it as
Turner saw it. What a pleasure it is now to go to those
rooms on the ground floor of the National Gallery where
Turner's sketches are ! I went there again the other day
to see the Rhine of one's youth. What a king and
creator of Impressionist sketching was Turner in his later
manner ! He lifted the hilltops till they grew pink in
the setting sun, and he trailed the long reflections to
fathomless depths in the broad river. And was not the
fortress defiantly impregnable in those days, and so
rendered by him in those two wonderful pink and yellow
and blue Ehrenbreitstein sketches? How quickly and
easily all his effects and gradations are produced ! If they
were not consummate, we should now call them cheap.
I had not seen these rooms in the National Gallery for
some years. They are beautifully arranged — so warm, so
light, and alas ! so empty. At least, when I was there I
wandered alone. How true it is that what we can have
always we care for so little, and how we toil as tourists
in foreign towns !

It seems rather ridiculous to have brought back from
Germany a French poem. But I heard there for the first
time one of Tosti's earlier songs, the words of which seemed
to me sympathetic and full of charm. They are wi'itten
by a Comtesse de Castellane, and, as they are very little
known apart from the music, I quote them here for the
benefit of the non-singing world — which, after all, is
rather a large one :

VOUS ET MOI

Vos yeux sereins et purs ont voulu me sourire,
Votre main comme une aile a caress6 ma main,

Mais je ne sais trouver, li61as ! rien a vous dire,
Car nous ne marchons pas dans le menu; chemin,

02

84 MORE POT-POURRI

Vous etes le soleil d'un beau jour qui commence,
Et moi la nuit profonde et I'horizon couvert ;

Vous etes fleur, 6toile, et joyeuse cadence,

Vous etes le printemps, et moi je suis I'hiver !

Vous buvez les rayons et respirez les roses,
Car vous etes I'aurore, et moi la fin du jour ;

II faut nous dire adieu sans en chercher les causes,
Car je suis le regret, et vous 6tes I'amour.

There are few acts, in my opinion, so blamable and so
selfish as an old man marrying a young girl. He under-
stands life and she does not, and the responsibility rests
with him. Of course this does not apply to a woman
past thirty who wants a home.

85

NOVEMBER

Present of ' The Botanist ' — Echeveria and Euphorbia splendens —
Cowper on greenhouses — Cultivation of greenhouse plants— Book-
seller at Frankfort — Dr. Wallace on Lilies — Receipts — Winter in
the country -The sorting of old letters.

November 1st. — One of those most pleasant echoes of
my first book came to me to-day. I received a letter,
addressed to the care of my publisher, from a lady who was
so pleased with my commendation of her father's work
('The Botanic Garden,' by B. Maund) that she kindly
asked to be allowed to send me, what I had long wished
to have, the five volumes of his second book, ' The Botanist '
— a gardening periodical which was published only for five
years, as the coloured illustrations were too costly to
be continued. The first number was issued in January
1825. It contains full-page illustrations of stove, green-
house, and new hardy plants — new, that is, in 1825. I
have had it bound, and it is a great addition to my collec-
tion of flower-books. The original drawings were chiefly
made by Mrs. Withers, who was the first flower-painter
of that day. The title-page bears the following inscrip-
tion :

' The Botanist : containing Accurately Coloured Figures
of Tender and Hardy Ornamental Plants, with Descriptions
Scientific and Popular, intended to convey both Moral and
Intellectual Gratification.' A quotation is added from
Sir J. E. Smith : ' The World seems to have discovered
that nothing about which Infinite Wisdom has deigned to

86 MORE POT-POURRI

employ itself can, properly speaking, be unworthy of any
of its creatures, how lofty soever their pursuits and
pretensions may be.' The flowers are beautifully drawn
and delicately coloured, one on a page — not on the same
principle as ' The Botanic Garden.' But it is as full as that
is of interesting information, not the least perhaps being
the derivation of the names of plants, some of which we
use every day. For instance, ' Echeveria ' is derived from
M. Echever, a botanical painter.

Euphorbia splcndens is an interesting and effective
stove-plant. It is a native of Madagascar, and the name
it bears in its own country is ' Soongo-Soongo.' It is among
the plants one need not fear to buy, as cuttings strike
easily under a hand-glass. I mention it, as I bought it
last year at a sale not knowing what it was. Oxalis
bowiei 1 also have, and try to grow it out of doors in a
very sheltered place. Like most of the finer Oxalises, it
is a native of the Cape. I was not here, as I have said, in
the summer this year ; but when I returned, it looked very
dried up and unsatisfactory. This is what William Herbert,
the author of ' Amaryllidacea,' before mentioned, says of
its cultivation : ' This most beautiful and florid plant is
hardy ' (where mine came from it had been out of doors for
years) ' and in the open ground will flower in the autumn.'
(I expect a bell-glass would greatly help this.) ' But it
blossoms most profusely when kept in a pot under glass^
especially if, after a short period of rest at midsummer, it
is placed in a stove or warm greenhouse for a very short
time to make it start freely. Its flowers expand in very
moderate temperature. Like all the Oxalises, the flowers
are very sensible to light, and only expand thoroughly
when the strong clear sunshine falls upon them.' These
early-going-to-sleep plants are rather trying, as they never
took their bc:>t when one wants to show them ofi" in the
afternoon.

NOVEMBER 87

The stalks or canes of Michaelmas Daisies should be
cut down carefully, trimmed, and dried, as they make
excellent sticks for plants in pots or even out of doors,
and are well worth saving.

November Srd. — A lady writes strongly recommending
a Tea-rose called ' Ma Capucine.' ' Such lovely red-scarlet
buds from June to December,' she says. This I have now
ordered. I have moved my white ' Lamarque Eose,' but I
cannot get it to do well here. The Dean of Eochester wrote
me a most kind letter reproaching me for saying I could
not grow Eoses, and implying that the fault is mine. This
I know to be true, but the fact is I am so fond of variety
in flowers, as in all else, that I grudge too much room in
the garden being given to Eoses ; and the attention and
hand-picking they require in the spring, when I am
very busy with other things, cause them to be neglected.

Another correspondent from the north of London
wrote that I exaggerated the difficulty of growing Eoses
near London. He says he has had good success with
his. But then he lives on heavy soil, and that makes an
extraordinary difference in their power of resisting their
enemies — smoke, blight, etc.

This year a Crimson Eambler that failed near a wall
(I believe they never do well on walls) has made prodigious
growth out in the open. I have cut out the old wood,
spread out the long shoots, and tied them down to
canes on either side, so as to increase the flowering
all along the branches. Underneath is a large bed of
' Mrs. Simpkin ' Pinks, and I think the two together
will be pretty.

Noveviher 1th. — I am always being asked about green-
house plants, and how to get variety both for picking or
for ornamenting a small greenhouse next a room. It has
been rather the fashion of late to say : ' Oh ! I don't care
for greenhouse plants ; I only like hardy things.' This

S$ MORE POT-POURRI

surely is a mistake. Cowper, tiiat now-neglected poet,

says :

Wlio loves a garden, loves a greenhouse too.

Unconscious of a less propitious clime,

There blooms exotic beauty, warm and snug,

While the winds whistle and the snows descend.

The spiry Myrtle with unwithering leaf

Shines there and flourishes. The Golden Boast

Of Portugal and Western India there,

The ruddier Orange and the paler Lime,

Peep through their polish'd foliage at the storm,

And seem to smile at what they need not fear.

The Amomum there with intermingling flowers

And Cherries hangs her twigs. Geranium boasts

Her crimson honours, and the spangled Bean,

Ficoides, glitters bright the winter long.

All plants, of every leaf that can endure

The winter's frown if screen'd from its shrewd bite.

Live there and prosper. Those Ausonia claims,

Levantine regions these ; the Azores send

Their Jessamine, her Jessamine remote

Caffraria. Foreigners from many lands.

They form one social shade, as if convened

By magic summons of the Orphean lyre.

Yet just arrangement, rarely brought to pass

But by a master's hand, disposing well

The gay diversities of leaf and flower,

Must lend its aid to illustrate all their charms,

And dress the regular yet various scene.

Plant behind plant aspiring : in the van

The dwarfish ; in the rear retired, but still

Sublime above the rest, the statelier stand.

In spite of what I consider the excellent gardening
spirit in these lines, how curiously non-poetical they are
according to the ideas of our day ! In my edition of
Cowper there is a footnote to the word' Ficoides,' explaining
it as ' Ice-plant,' which is an annual Mesembrianthemum ;
whereas he probably meant some of the perennial flower-
ing Mesembrianthemums, which, I think, are beautiful
things in a winter greenhouse, in a pot, and hanging from

NOVEMBER 89

a shelf. All the same I imagine it wovild be possible to
sow the Ice-plant so late that it might go on growing
through the winter in a pot, though its beauty can never
be so great as on a broiling-hot summer's day.

I agree with every word that Cowper says, and his lines
suggest what I want specially to urge on those who pass
the winter in the country. Greenhouses were new in
Cowper's time and the pleasure of them has probably
been wiped out — or, at any rate, greatly diminished —
by the way people who can afford such luxuries are now
always rushing away in search of sunshine in other
climes, and are content to come back in June and find
their flourishing herbaceous borders, that have been asleep
under manure all the winter, surpassing in luxuriance of
colour and form the gardens of the South. One of the
least helpful volumes of the large edition of Mrs. Loudon's
' Lady's Flower Garden ' is the one called ' Ornamental
Greenhouse Plants ' — so many things she recommends
to grow are now proved to be hardy, and so many others
that we now know to be well worth the trouble of
cultivation for flowering in the winter are omitted alto-
gether. I know no modern book that quite tells one
enough how to keep a small conservatory furnished all
the year round.

Greenhouse flowers can be most interesting and
various, and I propose each month through the winter
to name fresh things as they come on and are brought
into the small conservatory next my sitting-room. I am
too ignorant to speak of any plants except those I grow.
The conservatory faces east and south, so it gets what sun
there is to be had in wdnter. I removed the stages that
were there, except two shelves close to the glass on the
east side. I took up the tiles and dug a bed close to the
north wall, which is against the drawing-room chimney,
and another bed on the west side of the small square.

90 MORE POT-POURRI

These beds make the difference between a greenhouse
and a conservatory. When I speak of a bed I mean that,
though the floor of the greenhouse is tiled, the plants are
planted in the ground. This is very essential in any con-
servatory, whether large or small. On the north side, facing
south, is planted out whathas now grown into a huge plant
of Henry Jacobi. It has been there some years, and is cut
down very severely about this time every year. Next to it
is a quaint plant, one of the Platyceriums, growing on a
piece of board hung on the wall, which requires nothing
but occasional watering. Below that are two French
flower-pots that hang flat against the wall and are filled
with Maidenhair. A plant of the sweet yellow Jasmine and
a plant of pale Heliotrope, both in the ground, are all the
wall will hold on this side. In the middle of the other bed
next the west wall, and also planted out, are a large sweet-
scented double-white Datura; a white Niphetos Eose,
which runs up a pole to the glass roof ; a common Passion-
flower, to make shade in summer ; and a blue Plumbago
capense. By the side of the door, growing up a wire, is a
dark green Smilax, that has been there for many years and
gives no trouble. The other things are in pots, and are con-
stantly changed and moved. I grow both Pancretiums and
Ci'inums ; they are indeed worthy of every attention, and
ought to be in all carefully selected collections. They are
so sweet, so delicate, and so lovely ! — all that we prize most
in single flowers. There are a great many kinds of both
Pancx'etiums and Crinums. (See Johnson's ' Gardener's
Dictionary.') Even the hardier Crinums in pots require
heat at the growing-time, and they often have to be grown
for several years after they are bought before they flower
at all ; but, once started, they seem to flower each year.
I have a Crinum vioorei out of doors which makes its
leaves every year, but has not yet flowered.

I try to arrange the plants in groups in tliis conserva-

NOVEMBER 91

tory. Whether there are ten plants of one kind, or only
two, they are placed together ; and if there are different
plants more or less of one colour, they too are massed to-
gether. I think this makes the most immense difference
in the pleasure to be got out of a greenhouse, and increases
the colour-value of everything grown in it, as the power
of one plant to kill or injure the colour of another is far
more felt in a greenhouse than even in the open border.
I have, now flowering, my usual number of the protected
Chrysanthemums. They are less good than last year, the
wet June and dry August not having suited them. Last
year the hardy early outdoor Chrysanthemums were very
good indeed ; this year the season has been even harder
on them than on the pot-plants. All the same they should
be very much grown in all gardens. They transplant
quite easily from the reserve garden at any time from
August onwards. I have yellow, orange, pink, white,
dark red, and a very dark yellow, which seems to last the
longest and be the hardiest. Some few cottage gardens
have better varieties than I can boast. The great secret for
the late-flowering hardy Chrysanthemums is to get them
against walls and, still better, under the protection of
shrubs. Many of the greenhouse Chrysanthemums will also
flower perfectly out of doors, if only planted late in the
summer under shrubs, as I have just said. In this way they
get a natural protection on cold nights. The last two years
I have grown for the greenhouse, in pots, a Michaelmas
Daisy that is new to me, called Aster grandiflora. It has
a stiff, pretty growth, and is quite hardy ; but it flowers so
late that it does not come to perfection out of doors. It
looks very well under glass in front of a group of white
Chrysanthemums. The flowers are as large as Aster
amelhis, and of the same colour, which is so different in
tone from that of any of the Chrysanthemums. It reminds
me a little of Stokesia cyanea, which I used to grow in the

92 MORE POT-POURRI

same way ; only that did not stand the moving and pot-
ting up nearly so well as this Aster does. I dare say I
did not manage it rightly.

November 8th. — There is a famous seller of old books
in Frankfort named Baer. He lives in the Rossmarkt, and
some of my best old flower-books I have had from him.
I brought home this time one of those books that delight
a collector's heart, a really very fine one. I have been
told by an artist who saw it here that it must have cost
more than 2,000^. to bring it out. The book consists of
two elephant folios bound in old stamped white vellum,
and bringing them back as a parcel was not exactly easy.
There is no letterpress at all in the first volume. It has
two handsome frontispieces in the Dutch manner, with
Flora and another goddess holding a large straw bee-
hive. In the middle is the title, written in Latin and
printed on what is supposed to represent a sheet of
parchment hung from a classical building with columns
on each side. At the bottom is a representation of the
Garden of Eden with trees and various animals, all well
drawn. Ada :• is walking with the Almighty, who is
represented by the figure of an old man surrounded by
what in early Italian art is called a mandorla or almond-
shaped glory. Miss Hope Rea, in ' Tuscan Artists,' says of
this almond-shaped glory : ' In Christian symbolism and art
it is reserved for Christ, and has a profound signification.
Though called a mandorla, or almond, it is really intended
to represent the form of a fish ; and this, from the days of
the Church of the Catacombs, was the accepted symbol of
Christ, because the letters of the Greek *c/i^/ms=fish, give
the initials for the Greek words ' Jesus Christ, Son of God,
the Saviour.' Mrs. Jameson, in ' Sacred and Legendary
Art,' gives the Latin name, vesica piscis, for the oblong
glory surrounding the whole person. She says that it is
' confined to figures of Christ and the Virgin, or Saints

NOVEMBER 93

who are in the act of ascending into heaven.' It is,
therefore, in ignorance that this German of the early
days of the seventeenth century surrounds the Almighty
with this almond-shaped glory instead of a glory round the
head. The book is called ' Hortus Eystettensis,' and was
brought out in 1613 by Basil Besler, an apothecary. On
each side of the columns are two draped male figures
representing Solomon and Cyrus. The whole page is
coloured (highly rather than beautifully) by hand ; and the
large first volume must contain over three hundred pages
with designs of all kinds of flowers and fruit beautifully
drawn and coloured. I believe the book with only out-
line representations of the flowers is not very uncommon,
but coloured copies are exceedingly rare. In fact, Herr
Baer told me he had never seen another. Whether the
colouring dates from the time of printing or not it is
difficult to say. The paper is beautiful, the whole in
excellent condition, and it is a treasure from a collector's
point of view. Binders were careless in those days, as
one sheet is bound upside down. The second volume is
not quite so thick, but the plates are of even greater
beauty. It contains a curious copyright, given by Louis
XIII., King of France and Navarre. The date of the
book being 1613, the young king was only twelve years
old when he granted this protection to his good servant
Basil Besler, who had been put to such great expense
in producing his book.

November 10th. — I find several of the Japanese
Maples so well worth growing and quite hardy here.
They make very little growth, and want dry, sunny,
protected places, where they suffer sometimes from
drought, but recover by the following year, and are
delightful plants. Golden Privet is a very pretty-growing
plant when young, out of doors or in pots. It has been
itiuch used of late in London in window-boxes. I

94 MORE POT-POURRI

have never tried to see if it would keep its leaves in a
room.

November 13th. — I gathered to-day a small but bright,
well-grown Oriental Poppy ; and several of the Delphi-
niums, cut down in summer, have flowered beautifully a
second time. One cannot provide for or be sure of these
out-of-season garden surprises ; but when they come by
chance — some one year, some another — they are very
delightful, interesting, and precious. They are like an
unexpected piece of good fortune, or the return of a long-
absent friend, who, one thought, had quite forgotten one,
and who returns as on the day he left — as friendly, as kind,
and as confidential. Such surprises push back for a
moment the dial of the clock — a thing not to be despised
even as a passing illusion, whether in the late autumn of
a garden or of life.

November 18th. — Two days later than I have ever
before remained down here ! It is such beautiful
weather. In these mild days the singing of birds comes
slightly as a surprise, so different from the silence of
August and September. How little one realises during
this silence that the birds, thrushes especially, begin to
sing now in November, and keep on all through the
winter in mild weather till the end of June. The robin
did not like the dry season ; he began to sing so late this
year.

November 10th. — Most people who have gardens wish
to grow Lilies, and yet very few are really successful with
them. By far the finest I have seen in this part of the
world were grown in an Azalea bed, in more than half-
shade, and copiously hosed all through the hot dry
weather. They were really beautiful. A book called
' Notes on Lilies and their Culture,' by Dr. Wallace of
Colchester, has only lately come to my knowledge, and I
am quite sure anyone who wishes to grow Lihes will not

NOVEMBER 95

get on well without it. It is an admirable book ; in fact,
its only fault is that it is so comprehensive one feels, as
with most of the specialist gardening books, that the rest
of one's life must be spent in trying to understand that
one plant. I think there is a good deal to be said for
this kind of gardening. As the amateur advances in
knowledge he naturally wishes to grow with extra
perfection some plants with which everybody cannot
succeed. And I think, in the case of small gardens near
towns, that it would be a real interest for a man to grow,
let us say, Lilies from Dr. "Wallace's book, or Irises by
the advice of Professor Foster, or Cactuses according to
Mr. Watson. This has been done over and over again in
the case of Eoses ; but rarely, in my experience, with
other plants.

November TIth. — My principal flower-table in summer
is in a cool hall away from the sun. In winter, now that
I live here all the year round, I have it in the sitting-
room, close to a large south window. The sun in summer
quickly kills flowers that are cut and in water, but in
winter this is not so. On the contrary, it seems to cheer
them up and make them open out and look happy. I
will describe this flower-table as it stands before me. At
the back, in a pot, is a baby Araucaria (Puzzle-monkey).
These trees, so ugly when growing on a lawn, are
charming in the baby stage. They can be grown from seed,
and they do very well in a room. This little tree is raised
on a Japanese stand. Beside it is a pot containing a small
orchid, Odontoglossum picturatum, one mass of flowers like
yellow Violets. Various Cypripediums are in front in a
glass, and Imantophyllums that have stood out all the
summer and thrown up a few late autumn flowers ; they
are always most effective picked. There are also pieces cut
from a bright yellow Coronilla flowering out of doors
against a greenhouse wall, a bunch of white Paris Daisies

96 MORE POT-POURRI

that were left out to be killed by the frost and are still
flourishing, and a bunch of the black berries of the common
Privet, which contrast well with a few bright orange
Gazanias, also left out to perish early in the year from
cold and dryness, but of which we always take cuttings,
as it has this great merit of late flowering out of doors.
Finally, there is a precious bunch of Neapolitan Violets.
For the first hour or two after they are picked I always
put a small bell-glass over them, as the warm moisture
from condensation under the glass very much increases
their sweetness.

I do not find it recommended in any of the modern
gardening books that I have, but I am sure, if you want
your Lilacs to flower well and never assume that weedy
choked appearance that they generally have in gardens,
it is most important to remove, every winter, the
numerous suckers that surround Lilac bushes. When
this is done, it is as well to introduce a little manure
round the roots.

Eeceipts

An excellent winter salad is made by mashing potatoes
as if for a purde, and beating them up with a little
lukewarm weak stock or warm water instead of milk, and
no butter. Then dress them with a little chopped chive, oil
and vinegar, pepper and salt. This is good with braised
meats or boiled salt beef, and can be endlessly improved
and vai'ied by covering it up after it is dressed with
chopped hard-boiled eggs, beetroot, cucumbers bottled in
vinegar, anchovies, etc., etc. In fact, with these kinds of
salads one can give hardly any rule, as imagination and
experiments are everything. The ordinary red cabbage
makes a very good salad. It must be out into very fine
shreds, then scalded by pouring a large kettle of boiling
water over it. When cool, but not cold, it should be

NOVEMBER 97

dressed with oil and vinegar, like oiclinary salad, covered
up, and allowed to stand for two or three houi's.

Pheasant stuffed with Woodcocks.— The French
say : ' To the uninitiated this bird is as a sealed book ;
eaten after it has been killed but three days, it is insipid
and bad — neither so delicate as a pullet, nor so odoriferous
as quail. Cooked at the right moment, the flesh is tender
and the flavour sublime, partaking equally of the qualities
of poultry and game. The moment so necessary to be
known and seized on is when decomposition is about to
take place. A trifling odour and a change in the colour
of the breast are manifested, and great care must be taken
not to pluck the bird till it is to be larded and cooked, as
the contact of the air will completely neutralise the aroma,
consisting of a subtle oil, to which hydrogen is fatal.
The bird being larded, the first thing to do is to stuiif it,
which is effected in the following manner : Provide two
woodcocks, bone and divide fchem into two portions, the
one being the flesh, and the other trail, brains, and livers.
You then take the flesh and make a forcemeat by chop-
ping it up with some beef -marrow cooked by steam, a
little rasped bacon, pepper, salt, fine herbs, and so much
of the best truffles as will, with the above, quite fill the
interior of the pheasant. You must take care to secure
this forcemeat in such a manner that it shall not escape,
which is sometimes sufficiently difficult if the bird is in
an advanced state ; however, it is possible to do so in
diverse ways, one of which is by fitting a crust of bread
and attaching it with a bit of ribbon. Take a slice of
]3read one-third of an inch thick and two inches wider
on each side than the bird when laid on it. Then take the
livers, brains, and the trail of the woodcocks ; pound them
up with two large truffles, an anchovy, a little rasped
bacon, and as much of the finest fresh butter as may
seem necessary. Spread then this paste on the toast

H

98 MORE POT-POURRI

equally, and let the pheasant, prepared as above, be
roasted over it in such a manner as that the toast may be
saturated with the juices that drop during the operation
of roasting. When that is done, serve the pheasant grace-
fully laid on its bed (the toast). Garnish with Seville
orange, and be tranquil as to the result.' This extract
from ' Les Classiques de la Table ' (p. 129) I have taken
from ' Tlie Gentlevi^oman.' The gourmets must make
haste and try this dish, for fear that woodcocks, which
are getting very scarce, should disappear altogether. It
is rather a mystery why they are becoming so rare in
England, for they are birds that migi-ate. It has been
suggested as an explanation that sport is now so cosmo-
politan, and breech-loading weapons have so favourably
handicapped the modern gunner, that the woodcock is
being gradually eliminated. Poor little, clever, swift-flying
thing, he is safe nowhere !

Mince-meat for Christmas should be made about
the 20th of this month. 1 think this old Suffolk receipt
is better than the one in ' Dainty Dishes ' or in Mrs.
Roundell's ' Practical Cookery.' The following directions
are for a large quantity, but of course the proportions
can be greatly reduced : Two pounds of beef suet finely
chopped, two pounds of raisins stoned and chopped,
two pounds of currants washed and picked, two pounds
of apples chopped fine, one pound and a half of raw beef
scraped and chopped fine (every little bit of gristle having
first been removed), one pound of finely preserved ginger,
six lemons (juice and peel), twelve oranges (only the
juice), a little salt, one pound and a half of sugar, a little
spice. Mix well with brandy and sherry to taste. Keep
in stone jars in a cool place.

German Way of Warming* up Potatoes.— Boil
them, let them get cold, cut them in thin slices into a

NOVEMBER 99

fireproof dish, add a little butter and milk, grate some
Parmesan cheese on the top, and bake in the oven.

Boiled Beef. — Take six to eight pounds of good fat
top-side or silver-side, beat it very hard on all sides with
a heavy wooden oak-log to break the fibre. Put it into a
deep earthenware pot or copper stewpan, with about five
to five and a half quarts of cold water, adding all its
bones and all the parings and bones you may have over
from the joints, chickens, etc., of previous days. Let it
come gently to the boil, remove all the rising scum, then
add two leeks, two carrots, half a celeriac, one turnip, and
several sprigs of parsley and chervil. Put the lid on so
that a small slit remains open. Place it by the side of
the fire so that it should not get off the boil, and yet only
boil quite gently. Leave to boil for three and a half to
four hours from its first boil. Serve with a garnish of the
vegetables cooked in the broth and little hors-d'auvre of
salted cucumbers, horse-radish grated finely and dressed
with oil and vinegar, beetroot salad, cress salad, celeriac
salad — in fact, endless variations. It is very good with a
plain tomato sauce (French system).

Minced Collops. — Pass as much raw lean gravy beef
as you require two or three times through a mincing
machine. Fry it in about two ounces of butter for a few
minutes. Add pepper, salt, a little flour, and gravy or
water. Let this simmer for about twenty minutes,
keeping it well stirred to prevent it getting lumpy. A
little minced onion may be fried with the butter, and is
a great improvement. This receipt is very useful in wild
countries where the meat is hard and bad, and where
other food is deficient.

How to Dress Cod. — Take some slices of a small
cod, and bake them in the oven in a little butter, with a
squeeze of lemon-juice, exactly as you would do salmon.
Serve with Tartare Sauce, as in ' Dainty Dishes ' ; only,

h2

loo MORE POT-POURRI

instead of putting it in a boat, which means a wastefully
large quantity, serve it in a little flat dish with a small
spoon. Brown bread and butter should also be handed
with it.

November 21st. — This is the first time in my life that
the short days have drawn in shorter and shorter and
that I have found myself alone, having to make up my
mind that being alone is my future, that my time is at
my own disposal, and that I am to live so always, except
for occasional visitors, who will gi'ow fewer as time
goes on.

It is not sad to turn tbe face towards home,
Even though it shows the journey nearly done ;
It is not sad to mark the westering sun,

Even though we know the night doth come.

I do not dread loneliness in itself ; but those who live
with one, if they are kind and just, do take their share of
the burden of life, and it is hard to have no one to whom
one can go with those numberless little things which are
often big things in life's routine, and that one hides away
fi'om those who come in from the outside world as guests,
be they ever so near and dear. It is best to keep oneself
continually occupied, and one realises that though the
end cannot be so very far off, yet the natural love of
life is very strong indeed and an immense help. In a
little volume of poems called ' lonica,' very well known
to a few, but which I believe has not spread to a large
public, there are two poems which I think strike singularly
sympathetic notes. The four lines of ' Eemember,' do
they not come home to one with all the tenderness of a
message ?

You come not, as aforetime, to the headstone every day.
And I, who died, I do not chide because, my friend, you play ;
Only, in playing, think of hira who once was kind and dear.
And, if you see a beauteous thing, just say, ' He is not here.'

NOVEMBER loi

I reverse the position of these poems in the volume,
this short one being at the very end, and the following
almost in the beginning. I wonder if those who don't
know them will like them as much as I do :

You promise heavens free from strife,

Pure truth, and perfect change of will ;
But sweet, sweet is this human life —
So sweet I fain would breathe it still ;
Your chilly stars I can forego,
This warm kind world is all I know.

You say there is no substance here.

One great reality above ;
Back from that void I shrink in fear.
And child-like hide myself in love ;
Show me what angels feel. Till then
I cling, a mere weak man, to men.

You bid me lift my mean desires

From faltering lips and fitful veins.
To sexless souls, ideal quires.

Unwearied voices, wordless strains ;
My mind with fonder welcome owns
One dear dead friend's remembered tones.

Forsooth, the present we must give

To that which cannot pass away ;

All beauteous things for which we live

By laws of time and space decay.

But oh, the very reason why

I clasp them is because they die.

Great grief, like great joy, has a right to be selfish — for
a time, at any rate. Everyone recognises this, and in fact
wishes to minister to it so long as the selfishness does
not extend, as it were, to the grief itself or to a feeling of
rebellion against the inevitable, which tends to hardness
and paralyses the sympathy of friends and relations.
' To the old sorrow is sorrow, to the young it is despair.'
We must not forget this. The highest ideal of how to

I02 MORE POT-POURRI

receive grief with dignity is admirably expressed in this
sonnet by Mr. Aubrey de Vere, though the moral reaches
almost unattainable heights :

Count each affliction, whether light or grave,

God's messenger sent down to thee ; do thou

With courtesy receive him ; rise and bow
And, ere his footsteps cross thy threshold, crave
Permission first his heavenly feet to lave.

Then lay before him all thou hast, allow

No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow
Or mar thy hospitality ; no wave

Of mortal tumult to obliterate
The soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be,

Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate,
Conforming, cleansing, raising, making free,

Strong to control small troubles, to command

Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting to the end.

November 30th. — A long, gloomy, lonely day. I
thought this evening I would look through a large box I
have upstairs full of old letters and papers left to me, and
which I have always intended to sort at my leisure.
They have been there for years, but I have never had
time, in the hurry and business of life, even to glance
through them. It is an employment that requires rather
a peculiar state of mind, a quiet eddy away from the too
rapid swirl of ordinary life. Such an occupation must
recall to the memory of anyone who has ever read it
Professor Max Miiller's preface to his charming little
story called ' German Love,' which was published as long
ago as 1877. The little book treats of love— the eternal
familiar subject — with that touch of genius that makes
originality, and the preface fits so curiously with my
thoughts to-night that I think I must quote it :

' Who has not once in his Hfe sat down at a desk
where shortly before another sat who now rests in the
grave ? Who has not had to open the locks which for
long years hid the most sacred secrets of a heart that

NOVEMBER 103

now lies hidden in the holy calm of the churchyard?
Here are the letters which were so loved by him whom
we all loved so well ; here are pictures and ribbons, and
books with marks on every page. Who can now read
and decipher them '? Who can gather together the faded
and broken leaves of this rose, and endow them once
more with living fragrance? The flames which among
the Greeks received the body of the departed for fiery
destruction — the flames into which the ancients cast
everything that had been most dear to the living — are
still the safest resting-places for such relics. With
trembling hesitation the bereaved friend reads the pages
which no eye had ever seen, save the one now closed for
ever ; and when he has satisfied himself by a rapid glance
that these pages and letters contain nothing which the
world calls important, he throws them hastily on the
glowing coals ; they flame up, and are gone.

' From such flames the following pages were saved.
They were intended at first for the friends only of the lost
one ; but as they have found friends amongst strangers
they may, since so it is to be, wander forth again into the
wide world.'

I began my task, turned over the old mouldy papers
of long, long ago, and came across a bundle of the early
love-letters of my father and mother. So long as I live
I cannot allow them to be consigned to the flames, as
Professor Max Miiller recommends. They are so simple,
so touching and interesting in their old-world language^
that my first impulse was to string them together
anonymously, adding the little tale of the love aflair as
perhaps no one but I could do. But even without names
this might possibly have shocked the taste of people who
are sensitive on the subject of letters. I am not one of
those who object to the publishing of love-letters, given
sufficient time for personal knowledge and recollection of

I04 MORE POT-POURRI

the writers to have crumbled away. Voltaire said : ' On
doit des regards aux vivants : on ne doit aux morts que
la v6rit6.' Had I myself written beautiful love-letters in
my youth, it would be a pi'ide and joy to me to think that
generations unborn should appreciate and enjoy the
depths of my devotion, and forgive my weaknesses for
the one great reason which wall endure for ever, ' because
she loved much.' A little boy asked : ' Why is every-
one called " poor " and " good " when they are put into a
box in the ground ? ' I say : What is it all the world for-
gives in the future, though at the time society must defend
itself by hard judgments and stern morality? What we
all think vile and odious, and what shocks all our best
sensibility, though it is inevitable, is the publication of
even the most commonplace love-letters in the police
or divorce courts. But does not love, above everything
that we share with our common humanity, belong to all ?
Is it not the most brilliant, glorious possession we have ?
Are we not really proud of it even when it is mis-
directed ? Is not the perusal of unselfish, passionate, de-
voted letters — such as, for instance, Mary Wollstonecraft's
letters to Imlay (a perfectly unworthy object) — a better
lesson to women than all the articles, all the lectures,
and all the sermons ever preached ? And why should we
not each of us gain strength through the publication of
letters which sliow the weakness of love in gifted beings
like Keats and Shelley ? I cannot see any objection, and
with pride and joy would I have given, to those who cared
to read it, this interesting little bundle of papers, yellowed
by time, and written by my parents in the sunshine of their
youth, portrajang that nothing really came between the
two but that old struggle — difference of opinion on religious
subjects — and also showing the confident hope on both
sides that love ought to conquer.

Time crystallises, to my mind, such material into

NOVEMBER 105

biography ; and the more absohitely true biography is, the
more interesting it becomes to the public. I have noted
down from some book — perhaps Symonds's Life— that ' the
first canon in the art of unsophisticated letter-writing is
that, just as a speech is intended for hearers rather than
for readers, so is a letter meant for the eye of a friend
and not for the world. The very essence of good letter-
writing is, in truth, the deliberate exclusion of out-
siders and the full surrender of the writer to the spirit
of egotism — amicable, free, light-handed, unpretending,
harmless, but still egotism. The best letters are always
improvisations, directly or indirectly, about yourself and
your correspondent.' Letters of this kind are, in my
opinion, the very ones most worth giving to the public. The
man of the world says : ' Burn all letters, and only write
insignificant notes with little meaning in them so that
there may be nothing for others to keep.' Goethe says :
' Letters are among the most significant memorials
a man can leave behind him.' This seems to me
true of private individuals, as well as of those who have
played a notable or distinguished part on life's stage.
But this is not the general opinion — to which I, being
only a prudent old woman, am content to bow — and once
more return to the box this touching, interesting, and
characteristic love-story of my father and mother. I find,
however, one letter wi'itten by my father, and dated 1834,
which is so impersonal and so different from the ordinary
love-letter to a young girl that I think it can appear an
indiscretion to no one that I should publish it.

They met for the first time by chance on a summer's
afternoon for a little over an hour, and so completely was
it love at first sight on his side that he told my mother
afterwards he would gladly have married her there and
then had it been possible. She belonged to a Tory family,
so bigoted and narrow in their ideas that they could hardly

io6 MORE POT-POURRI

find a parallel in our day ; and on to this training, with her
hatred of worldliness and with all the enthusiasm of her
youthful aspirations, she had grafted an almost Method-
istical view of the duties of a Christian. His views, on
the other hand, were on all points those of an advanced
Liberal of the early days of John Stuart Mill. Circum-
stances kept them apart for four years, and at the end of
three, after an accidental meeting, he wrote her the
following letter. With all its humility, one can easily
see that his object was the enlightenment of a mind
which had been narrowed by its training :

' Sunday night, July 1834.
' Pray do not think I mean to force another letter upon
you. Your word is law to me, and I feel too deeply
obliged to you for all you have so kindly and generously
risked, in order to afford me the gratification of hearing
from you, to think of going myself or endeavouring to
force you one step beyond what you think right and
proper in this respect. I only wish to say one word upon
the two or three books I am venturing to send you. I
was delighted with your intention of continuing German,
because I am convinced that you will derive great
pleasure and benefit from your study of it. It is a
language which, from its power of expressing abstract
ideas, to say nothing of its structure and the facility
which exists in it of forming endless combinations of
words, is of a much higher order than any other
European language. It approaches nearest to the Greek,
and is no bad substitute to those who have never had
an opportunity of studying that language. No foreigner
can learn it without acquiring many new ideas and
rendering clearer some which he possessed before. There
is much, too, in the mind of the Germans as reflected in
their literature, the high tone of sentiment in their moral

NOVEMBER 107

writings, and the constant reference to the ideal in their
philosophy, which could not fail to be interesting and
attractive to you. Unfortunately I do not know how far
you are advanced in your study of the language, but I think
I remember your telling me that you had but just begun
H. I have therefore sent you " Klauer's Manual," the
best book for self-tuition which has been published,
and I have marked in the Index a few of the selections
which are perhaps the easiest to begin with. There is
this advantage in the book, that should you be so far
advanced as not to need the interlinear translation, the
selections which are given without it contain some
admirable passages from the best authors. Should you
be but just beginning I should advise you to learn by
heart only the articles, y^ five personal pronouns, and
y'' three auxihary verbs ; and then, looking over the
conjugation of the regular verb, proceed at once to read
the pieces in the 1^* vol. in the order in which they are
marked, using the 2"*^ vol. (in which they are trans-
lated) as the key. You will find the numbers of the
pieces in the 2"*^ vol. corresponding with those in the
1^*. I have also sent you a little volume of Schiller's
poems, with a few which I like marked. I should advise
you, if any took your fancy, to learn them by heart ; it is
an agreeable way of getting into one's mind a great fund
of words to be serviceable on all occasions. I had some
difficulty in getting you the " Morgen und Abendopfer,"
but I was anxious that you should have these little poems.
They are written by a German clergyman. The poetry
is very pretty and simple, and I like them for the cheer-
ful view which they take of religion. I have also
ventured to send you a little book of selections from
different authors, principally for the sake of those which
have been made from the works of four men whose
writings I have often perused with almost unmixed

io8 MORE POT-POURRI

satisfaction. I mean Jeremy Taylor, South, Bacon, and
Milton. I send them to you, not only as samples which
will, I think, please you, but in the hope that they will
induce you to look further into the works from which
they are taken. I had inserted some loose pages con-
taining parallel passages and observations upon the text,
but think upon the whole it would be to expose you to
observation were I to send the book with them in and
anybody but yourself happened to look into it. I only
send you with it some verses of Southey's which struck
me as very pretty, and which I have but lately met vdth.
You can take them out. Taylor is a writer of the greatest
eloquence and the most exuberant imagination I am
acquainted with in any language. He had at the same
time an humble mind, and was thoroughly imbued with a
ti'ue spirit of Christian charity. South is distinguished
for y^ vigour and nervous energy of his style and
thoughts. He had a thoroughly strong mind — too con-
fident, however, and uncompromising to admit of his being
really tolerant of the opinions of others. His conception
of the state of man before the Fall, though it savours
of course of y^ ideal, is a very remarkable performance.
Bacon had a practical mind, and no man perhaps ever so
thoroughly mastered the subject of human nature as he
did. If you can get his Essays, which are sold almost
everywhere, pray read them — or i-ather, I should say,
study them, for they are models of conciseness. Every
sentence admits of development. They force one to think
for oneself, which is the best service an author can render
one. Justice has not been done to Milton's prose works
in this little book, but, as they are mostly confined to
political subjects, they might not perhaps interest you so
much. Milton's mind was not wholly free from bigotry.
But I love him for his hatred of tyranny and persecu-
tion under every shape, for his unquenchable ardour for

NOVEMBER 109

liberty, and his hearty and fearless advocacy of the en-
lightenment of mankind. Among his poetical works do
you know the "Comus" well? There are parts of it which,
I think, he never surpassed. I am sure you must like
it. His " Paradise Lost " is indeed a study — a noble and
improving one for all who can comprehend his sublime
conceptions and the beautiful and powerful language in
which he has clothed them. But I must think he was
unfortunate in his subject. A lover of pure religion can
hardly fail to think that the effect of parts is to degrade
and humanise the Divinity. I can hardly conceive that
the 3'"'^ Book, in which he propounds the mystery of
the Eedemption and details its origin, should not be in
some degree shocking to a true Christian. The poetry of
it is certainly most sublime, but there is on the whole a
familiarity in the scene described which makes me think
it would have found a fitter place in the writings of a
heathen. I had also got you one or two more books,
but I am afraid to send them, lest you should think I
presume too much upon y^ permission you gave me.
One of them was an Essay upon the nature and true
value of military glory, and another upon the education
of the poor as the best kind of charity we can do them.
Depend upon it, it is so ; and all indiscriminate relief,
given as it generally is for the selfish purpose of gratify-
ing our own benevolence, partakes not of the real nature
of Charity, which regards the good of the object ; and
while it tends to diminish their own exertions in the
present, prevents them from acquiring those habits of
providence and self-dependence which in the long run
constitute their only chance of respectability and happi-
ness. There is no fear the stream of charity will want
channels in which to flow, and I also do not believe that
its sources are the least likely to be dried up. There are
more funds required for education and y^ support of some

no MORE POT-POURRI

kinds of hospitals than will, I fear, ever be supplied. You
would find Mrs. Marcet's " Conversations on Political
Economy " very useful, and there are some good reasons
given in the beginning why ladies should be acquainted
with the principles of the science. Let me recommend
to you, as connected with your German reading, Madame
de Stael's work on Germany. I have derived great
pleasmre from reading it. And though she occasionally
goes out of her depth, and her facts are not always
correct, there is a good deal still of profound reflection
and much valuable information in the work. I will
mention to you a few others of the books which I have
most admired. I am not, however, a miscellaneous reader ;
I wish I could be ; but I have not a retentive memory,
and as reading is to me valuable only in proportion as
I retain what I read, I confine my studies as much as
possible to those works which I can bear to read over and
over again. Of such character is Wordsworth's poetry,
and I should be glad if no day elapsed without my read-
ing some portion of it. If you have his works with you, pray
read the " Euth," the " Laodamia," the " Ode to Duty,"
" Lines written near Tintern Abbey " (I know nothing
more beautiful than this), the "Cumberland Beggar," and
a little poem — I think he calls it the " Yew Tree " or the
" Yew Tree Seat " (for I have not the book with me) — in
which there are some lines beginning, " The man whose
eye is ever on himself doth look on one the least of
Nature's works," etc. I like Coleridge's poetry but less
well. Of all his long pieces I like his translation of
Schiller's Wallenstein the best. It is admirable as a poem,
while it is perfect as a translation. His " Ancient Mariner "
and his " Love " or " Genevieve" are very beautiful.
1 hope you will be able to read my friend's play, which
my sister told you of.' I longed to send it to you. It is
' Philip van Artcvelde.

NOVEMBER iii

a work of genius, and at the same time of great labour.
He is a man of humble birth, but of an exalted mind ; and
that, I am sure, you will think better than being " some
tenth transmitter of a foolish face " ! In religious works
I have best liked Butler's " Analogy " and " Sermons,"
Taylor's and South's sermons, Paley's " Evidences," all
Whateley's works — especially his " Eomish Errors" and
the " Peculiarities of Christianity " — and Davison on pro-
phecy. This is a work which will survive the present day.
Its author is just dead, prematurely. He was a man of
great powers of mind, but his health prevented him
from sustaining any great intellectual labour. Sumner's
" Eecords of the Creation " is a very instructive work as
well as a most interesting one. I should like to recommend
to you also Southey's " Life of Wesley." It is not very
easy to get it, but I am sure it would well repay you for
reading. Among lighter books I will mention Scott's
" Lives of the Novelists." It is not only a very interesting
book, but there is a great deal of sound criticism in it —
particularly, for instance, in his lives of Eichardson and
Fielding — and it would be well if the generahty of novel-
readers had some fixed and firm certain principles of
taste by which to judge of the merits of what they read.
I was much struck, I assure you, with your remarks upon
the " Admiral's Daughter " to my sister. The criticism
seemed to me as just as it was well expressed. What I
had objected to in the work was the intention of placing
the man of intellect and of cultivation in unfavourable
contrast with the man of impulse and feeling. You will
say that religion made the difference ; but I am not aware
that anything which is good in the good man is supposed
to arise from the presence of religion. But I will not
write you a letter, though I feel as if I could go on for
ever. No. I fear, for so long as j^ou desire it, all direct
communication must cease between us. I doubt not you

,112 MORE POT-POURRI

are right. Heaven grant that it may be renewed at no
distant time and under happy circumstances ! May God
for ever bless and protect you ! '

In 1835 they were married, and had eight short years
of great happiness. This was constantly described to me
in a way to make a deep impression on a child's mind,
and to account for a sentimental vein in me that was
perhaps beyond what was usual even in the days when a
very different tone was prevalent among girls than at
present. Though my recollection of my father was of
the faintest, my hero-worship for him amounted almost
to idolatry all through my childhood. I so venerated the
few of his wi'itten sayings that my mother brought to my
notice that I think they powerfully affected my character.
I confess it gave me great pleasure \vhen a few years ago
I saw two references to him in a volume of Lady Carlisle's
letters written from Paris in 1832. The allusion was in
a letter dated ' Paris, September 1st, 1832,' and was as
follows : ' Edward Villiers is here, only for one day. He
is the image of George ' (his eldest brother), ' only hand-
somer and gi-aver. I think him uncommonly pleasing.'
The other notice was on November 5th, when the old
lady says : ' Edward Villiers is my love. He is delight-
ful, excellent, and interesting. A Villiers without any of
the shades.' He died of consumption at Nice in October
1843. In Charles Greville's ' Memoirs ' is the obituary
notice w^hich he wrote for the ' Times ' of November 7th.
It has a certain literary interest, as being so much more
personal in tone and more deliberately the act of a friend
than is usual in notices of the same kind to-day :

' Last night came intelligence from Nice that Edward
Villiers was dead. He went there in a hopeless state,
was worse after his arrival ; then an abscess broke in his
lungs, which gave a momentary gleam of hope, but he

NOVEMBER 113

expired very soon after. I had a very great regard for
him, and he deserved it. He was a man little known to
the world in general — shy, reserved to strangers, cold
and rather austere in his manners, and, being very short-
sighted, made people think he meant to slight them when
he had no such intention. He was not fitted to bustle
into pubUc notice, and such ambition as he had was not
of the noisy and ostentatious kind. But no man was more
beloved by his family and friends, and none could be moi'e
agreeable in a,ny society when he was completely at his
ease. He was most warm-hearted and affectionate, sincere,
obliging, disinterested, unselfish, and of unscrupulous in-
tegrity ; by which I mean integrity in the largest sense,
not merely that which shrinks from doing a dishonourable
or questionable action, but which habitually refers to
conscientious principles in every transaction of life. He
viewed things with the eye of a philosopher, and aimed
at establishing a perfect consistency between his theory
and his practice. He had a remarkably acute and
searching intellect, with habits of patient investigation
and mature dehberation ; his soul was animated by ardent
aspirations after the improvement and the happiness of
mankind, and he abhorred injustice and oppression, in all
their shapes and disguises, with an honest intensity which
produced something of a morbid sentiment in his mind
and sometimes betrayed him into mistaken impressions
and erroneous conclusions.

' The expansive benevolence of his moral sentiments
powerfully influenced his political opinions, and his deep
sympathy with the poor not only rendered him inexorably
severe to the vices of the rich, but made him regard with
aversion and distrust the aristocratic elements of our
institutions, and rendered him an ardent promoter of the
most extensive schemes of progressive reform. But while
he clung with inflexible constancy to his own opinions,

I

114 MORE POT-POURRI

no man was more tolerant of the opinions of others. In
conversation he was animated, brilliant, amusing, and
profound, bringing sincerity, single-mindedness, and
knowledge to bear upon every discussion. His life, though
short, uneventful, and retired, was passed in the contem-
plation of subjects of interest, and worthiest to occupy the
thoughts of a good and wise man ; and the few intimacies
he cultivated were with congenial minds, estimable for
their moral excellence or distinguished by their intel-
lectual qualities and attainments. The world at large
will never know what virtues and talents have been
prematurely snatched away from it, for those only who
have seen Edward Villiers in the unrestraint and un-
reserve of domestic familiarity can appreciate the charm
of his disposition and the vigour of his understanding.
No stranger would have divined that under that cold and
grave exterior there lay concealed an exquisite sensibility,
the most ardent affections, and a mind fertile in every
good and noble quality. To the relations and friends who
were devotedly attached to him the loss is irreparable
and will long be deplored, and the only consolation which
offers itself is to be found in the circumstances of his end.
He was surrounded by kind and affectionate friends, and
expired in the arms of his wife, whose conduct he himself
described to have been that of a heroine as well as an
angel. He was in possession of all his faculties, and was
free from bodily pain. He died with the cheerfulness of
a philosopher and the resignation of a Christian — happy,
devout and hopeful, and joyfully contemplating death in
an assured faith of a resurrection from the dead.'

Only those who have been brought up by a widowed
mother whose whole Hfe had been snapped asunder by
such a loss can quite realise how very peculiar and un-
like other homes it is.

How rare it is to be perfectly natural under a great

NOVEMBER 115

grief ! There is so often an element of self-consciousness,
an honest wondering how our attitude will strike others.
If we use self-control and try to let life flow in its usual
currents, we fear to be thought indifferent, cold, and
hard. If once the smallest display of grief becomes in
any way a habit, it is difiicult to resume again that
perfect sincerity of manner which, after all, is the only
outward expression of true feeling. A short time ago
in 'The Weekly Sun,' in one of Mr. T. P. O'Connor's
wonderful reviews of a Life of Tolstoi, he quotes a passage
which is a very vivid picture of self-consciousness in
grief. ' Tolstoi describes his visit to his mother's death-
chamber : " I could not believe it was her face." How
this comes home to us all ! The change made by death,
the effort of the brain to recognise that what we see before
us is the loved object whom, living, we should instantly
have recognised among a million. Tolstoi continues : " I
looked fixedly at it, and by degrees began to recognise in
it the dear familiar features. I shuddered when I did so,
and knew that this something was my mother. But
why had her closed eyes sunk thus into her head?
Why was she so dreadfully pale ? and why was a dark
spot visible through her transparent skin on one of her
cheeks ? Why was the expression of her face so stern
and so cold ? Why were her lips so bloodless and their
lines so fair, so grand ? Why did they express such un-
earthly calmness that a cold shiver passed through me as
I looked at them ? . . , Both before the funeral and after
I did not cease to weep and feel melancholy. But I do
not like to remember it, because a feeling of self-love
mingled with all its manifestations ; either a desire to
show that I was more afflicted than the rest, or thoughts
about the impression I produced upon others ; or idle
curiosity which made me examine Mimi's cap or the
faces of those around me." ' The I'eviewer adds : ' Now

i2

lib MORE POT-POURRI

I call this passage morbid.' It may be, but the descrip-
tion is extraordinarily true to many under the influence
of grief, though they fail to analyse or understand their
own mental state.

We all say, we all think, we all know, that ' in the
midst of life we are in death ' ; and yet when the blow
falls with appalling starthngness on someone who is near
to us, how we all must feel — with a piercing, heartrending
reality — ' If I had known ' !

If I bad known, 0 loyal heai-t,

When hand to hand we said ' Farewell,'

How for all times our paths would part,
Wliat shadow o'er our friendship fell,

I should have clasped your hand so close
In the warm pressure of my own

That memory still might keep its grasp —
If I had known.

If I had known when far and wide
We loitered through the summer land

What presence wandered by our side,
And o'er you stretched its awful hand,

I should have hushed my careless speech
To listen well to every tone

That from your lips fell low and sweet —
If I had known.

If I had known when your kind eyes
Met mine in parting, true and sad —

Eyes gravely tender, gently wise.

And earnest rather more than glad —

How soon the lids would lie above.
As cold and white as sculptured stone,

I should have treasured every glance —
If I had known.

If I had known that, until Death

Shall with his fingers touch my brow.

And still the quickening of the breath
That stirs with lift's full meaning now.

NOVEMBER 117

So long my feet must tread the way

Of our accustomed paths alone,
I should have prized your presence more —
If I had known.

Christian Eeed (' Weekly Sun,' 1S97).

Oh ! the anguish of that thought — that we can never
atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them,
for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their
pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that
sacred human soul that lived so close to us and was the
divinest thing God had given us to know.

ii8 MORE POT-POURRI

DECEMBER

Lonely evenings and more papers— Figs from France — Hornbeams
and Weeping Hornbeams — Wire netting round small fruit-trees —
Damsons — Roman Hyacinths and Faper-wliite Narcissus — Effect of
coloured glass on plants — Use of corrugated iron — Lord Lyndoch —
Cultivation of Mistletoe— A list of plants — Anniversary present-
giving — Christmas decorations — Acetylene gas — The old learning
live alone — Receipts.

December 1st. — I have been turning out more old
letters, and among other papers with other memories and
connected with other times I found this fragment of what
was evidently intended to be an autobiography of a long
life. As a sketch of a little boy's life nearly seventy years
ago, with its allusions to foreign lands and customs now
nearly extinct, I think it is not entirely devoid of interest.
I omit an account given of the writer's family, the story
of his father and mother, and his own birth in Switzerland :

' My early youth was passed in many different places,
but I have not much recollection of them. One season
we had a house in Hereford Street, Park Lane — a site now
occupied by Hereford Gardens. I remember cows being
milked for purchasers in Hyde Park, and Blacks playing
the cymbals in the bands of the Guards.

' When very young we went to Scotland, where my
father, who was very devoted to every sort of sport,
enjoyed his life immensely. Those days were before the
railway period, and an Englishman in Scotland was a
comparatively r ire person.

' Whilst I was in Edinburgh I went with mv brother

DECEMBER 119

Augustus to a large day-school called the Circus Place
School. It was attended by boys and girls of every
class that could afford to pay the fees, and the little
Scotch roughs used rather to bully us two English lads.
My dear mother, in her anxiety that we should not catch
cold by walking to school in the snow and sitting with
wet feet, used to send us there on bad days — of which
there were a good many in that abominable climate — in
a Sedan chair, the customary conveyance at that time in
Edinburgh. I shall never forget the jeers with which we
were greeted when, on arriving at the school, the chair
was opened by lifting up the top to release the door, and
we were shot out spick and span among the crowd of little
hardy brats who had trudged with their satchels on their
backs through the snow-slush which our mother so
dreaded for us !

' At this time I remember " Pickwick " coming out
in monthly numbers and my father's anxiety for their
appearance as the month's end approached.

' Another subject of recollection is the efforts that were
made to get franks for letters from Members of Parlia-
ment. The penny postage had not then been invented,
and my impression is that a letter to London from
Scotland was charged a shilling. I do not know how
many franks a day a Member had, but I think there was
a limit. If he did not require his full allowance for his
own correspondence he used to oblige his friends by sign-
ing his name on an envelope, as a Secretary of State does
now, and handing it to his applicant. It did not seem to
occur to anyone that the privilege was given to facilitate
a Member's ofticial correspondence, and that handing it on
to others was an abuse of it.

' Whilst in Paris Augustus and I attended a little day-
school of French boys. It was in a small street some-
where near the Eue St. PIonor6. The great pumpkins

t2o MORE POT-POURRI

then so much used in the poorer parts of Paris, exhibited
outside the little shops partly cut and showing their
yellow flesh, are among the recollections of those daily
walks to and from school.

' We used to have our midday meal at the school, and
I have grim memories of the Friday maigre dinner, with
a sour bonne fcmmc soup which did not please our
British beef- and mutton-trained appetites. But what
do I not owe to the admirable woman who assisted her
husband in his educational duties, and who stood over
Augustus and myself while with rigorous efforts she
endeavoured to convert our pronunciation of the French
word for bread from " pang " to " pain " ! How persistent
she was, that dear conscientious Frenchwoman ! How
often, with repeated and exaggerated aspiration of the
final "n," did she drive into our unaccustomed ears the
proper sound of that much (by Britons) murdered mono-
syllable ! And she succeeded at last, and broke the neck
of our initial difficulties in French pronunciation. I
think I was nine years old at this time ; but the gloomy
little garden, with a horizontal gymnastic pole, and the
parallel bars under the one Lime-tree, the whole screened
off from the next-door estate by an ivy-covered trellis, are
present to my sight.

' I have no recollection whatever of the journey from
Paris to Tours. We children, with the tutor and servants,
must have made it by diligence, and perhaps my remem-
brance of it has been obscured by the more vivid
impressions of the joys or the sufferings — the difference
depending upon which direction I was going in — of the
same journey several times performed on my way to and
from a school at Paris which I will refer to later on.

' The house my father had taken at Tours was called
the " Grands Capucins" — I believe, from being a house of
retreat or " pleasaunce " house belonging to a Capucin

DECEMBER 121

monastery. And surely no monks, skilful as they were
in the selection of localities, ever chose a more charming
spot for a small villa-like residence where they could
retire from the austerities and the duties of the convent.

' Situated on the heights which rise on the right bank
of the Loire at this point in its course, and immediately
over the little faubourg of Tours, St. Symphorien, it
commanded an extensive and beautiful view of the river,
the town of Tours, and the rich plains to the south
watered by the rivers Cher and Indre. The grounds, I
fancy, were in extent about five acres, but there were
vineyards and other appurtenances belonging to the
estate, though not comprised in the lease, which made an
almost boundless playground for children, and were so
varied by terraces, caves in the side of the hill, and other
strange incidents of site, that a great excitement was lent
to the games of mimic wars and surprises at which we
were constantly playing. There was a large tank under
one side of the old house— you descended to it by steps
from the garden— and armed with candles, for it was
pitch-dark, and provided with planks, we used to embark
on its water and navigate the mysterious cavern —
an amusement that led to wet feet and friction with
Mrs. Hunt, the old nurse, in consequence.

' The front part of the house was modern ; it stood on a
platform raised above the large formal garden before it.
The boundary of the garden was a terrace-walk looking
down on the river and the town. There were no
steamers, or very few, in those days, and of course no
railway ; and the long strings of flat-bottomed barges with
their great white square sails that carried the merchandise
from Nantes up the river when the wind served made a
striking feature in the scene.

' There was a wine-press attached to the rambling old
house, and the proprietor made his wine from the vine-

122 MORE POT-POURRI

yards every autumn. There was also an old billiard-
table, and we used to do a little wine-pressing of our own
by putting the bunches of fat black gi-apes into the net
pockets and squeezing the juice into a jug. The fruit of
all sorts was magnificent; the greengages, the muscat
grapes on the face of the cliff, the gooseberries, straw- .
berries, currants, and in autumn the walnuts, were
splendid objects for youthful greediness, and are matters
of life-long remembrance to me.

' The grounds and gardens were under the care of a
family who resided in a cottage and bore the name of
Diete. There were the Pere and Mere Diete, good old
sabot- wearing peasants who worked in and overlooked
the vineyards, while their son Martin attended to the
garden. We had a coachman called Joseph, an old
cavalry soldier who interested us children with his tales
of the siege of Antwerp by the French in 1832, and
particularly by his account of a cavalry charge in which
he took part. The noise of its galloping, he used to
say, was like the tonncrrc cU Dieu. His contempt of
the infantry soldier, whom he spoke of as le j^lou-jnou,
was characteristic of the attitude of the dragoon towards
the foot-soldier in all armies.

' Augustus and I learnt to swim in the Loire. We used
to go out in a punt with a maitre de natation, who hooked
us on to a pole by a belt round our waists, and so supported
us in the water till we could keep ourselves afloat. We
also amused ourselves by sailing a toy-boat in the lagunes
and back-waters of the river. One day while so occupied
a French lad of about fifteen or sixteen began throwing
stones at our cutter. Augustus, who was taller than I
and much more daring, rushed at the Frenchman, and
after a struggle with him was thrown on the sand. The
French lad, who had the best of the wrestle, improved his
advantage by taking up handfuls of sand and rubbing it

DECEMBER 123

into Augustus's eyes while he was lying helpless under-
neath. A stout stick the French boy had brought with
him had fallen in the struggle under Augustus. I, see-
ing the position, dragged the stick out from under the
combatants, and began belabouring the Frenchman with
all my might. This soon converted our defeat into a
victory, and the enemy, extricating himself from his
antagonist, fled from the field. The lad's father then
appeared on the scene and relieved himself by a torrent
of abuse. In those days the memories of the old
struggles between England and France were still alive
among the populace, and we were constantly followed by
gamins shouting after us " Goddam Anglish " and other
contemptuous expressions.

' During our residence in Touraine Augustus and I
went with Mr. Nicholl, the tutor, to visit the old castles
of the neighbourhood, and I remember going to Loches,
Chinon, Chenonceaux, and Chambord, travelling in the
little country diligences,

' In the winter evenings at the " Capucins " my father
used to read Walter Scott's novels to us, and I recall how
we looked forward with excitement to the time of resump-
tion of the stories. " Quentin Durward" was especially
interesting to us, as the scene of a great part of his ad-
ventures was within sight of our own house, Plessis les
Tours being just across the river.

' On the whole my life at Tours was the part of my
youth to which I look back with the greatest pleasure. It
has tinged my whole existence with a great love of France
and until the experience of late years showed me the
childish petulance in political affairs of her people I had
a sincere admiration and affection for them.

' The time came at last when I had to go to school. I
was eleven years old when my father took me to Paris, to
a school for English boys kept by a M. Eosin, a Swiss. It

124 MORE POT-POURRI

was established in a fair-sized house with grounds round
it, something hke a superior villa at Putney, near the Arc
de Triomphe and to the north of the Champs Elys6es.
It was distinguished as No. 15 Avenue Chateaubriand,
Quartier Beaujon, and has long since disappeared. The
whole region has become the site of the fine lidtels of the
magnates of finance who have since the 'Forties peopled
the neighbourhood of the Champs Elysees. When I was
at school, the Bois de Boulogne was a scrubby waste.
The only road of importance through it from the Arc de
Triomphe was that to Neuilly.

' A few sorry hacks and donkeys stood saddled for hire
at the fringe of the Bois. There were no houses of any
size farther up the Champs Elysees than the Eond Point,
and near the Arc was a waste occupied by the earth
thrown out of the road in the levelling operations of its
construction. I remember it well, for it was on the heaps
resulting from the excavations that we stood one bitterly
cold day in the winter of 1840 from 8 a.m. to 1.30 to see
the funeral of the great Napoleon pass through the arch
on its way down the Champs Elysees to his burial-place
in the ciypt of the Invalides.

' Augustus followed me to the same school. I do not
think I can have been there more than eighteen months,
but it was long enough to have the recollection of the
journeyings in the diligence to and from Tours at Christ-
mas and at midsummer. Veiy happy migrations they
were on the way home, and very much the reverse on the
return to school.

' In the winter my father and mother used to come to
Paris, and take an apartment for a time in the Hotel
Mirabeau in the Rue de la Paix. And every Saturday
while they were there we passed the afternoon and the
following day with them, sleeping in the hotel. There
was not much of the present luxury of washing at schools

DECEMBER 125

in those days. At Rosin's once in three weeks we were
marched off to some bains where we could enjoy a
good wash in a warm bath and a smTeptitious cake of
chocolate, provided by the garcon de bains for a con-
sideration. So there were great washings on the Saturday
nights at the hotel, superintended by our dear mother, after
our return from the " Fi'an^ais," where we were always
taken on the Saturday evenings for a lesson in French.
Eachel was just coming into celebrity, and we sat through
the long and, to us, unexciting Racine plays in which she
appeared, rather sleepy after a dinner at a restam'ant and
an afternoon of exceptional interest, driving about the
streets. Those strictly classical plays, in which the three
unities are rigidly observed, were very tedious to us boys,
and the prospect of an ice at Tortoni's on the way home
was more engrossing, I am ashamed to own, than the
passionate scenes rendered by the great actress.

' I remember while at Rosin's going sometimes to spend
the afternoon and dine at Lord Elgin's, the hero of the
Elgin Marbles acquisition. He seemed to me then a very
old man, and always sitting at a writing-table in a corner
of a large room in their house in the Faubourg St.
Germain, while his daughters performed the up-hill duty
of trying to amuse me, a stupid, shy boy of eleven. I
was also taken out by other friends of my father's, and
can recall the intense sleepiness following an unwonted
dinner at seven o'clock, before the time came for being
packed off in a fiacre to the Avenue Chateaubriand.

' But the time came when Augustus and I, both des-
tined for the army, had to prepare, he for Woolwich and I
for Sandhurst. It was decided that we should go to a
great preparatory school of those days for the military
colleges of the Queen's and East India Company's ser-
vices, kept by Messrs. Stoton and Mayor at Wimbledon.
The school was a large one, and; would be thought a

I. '6 MORE POT-POURRI

rough one now. The only washing-place was a room on
the ground floor, with sinks and leaden basins in them, to
which we came down in the morning to wash our hands
and faces. There was very little taught but mathematics
for the army boys, and classics for those destined for
Haileybury, the East India Company's college for the
Indian Civil Service. Copley Fielding taught some boys
drawing and water-colour painting. There was also a
Pi-ench class, presided over by a poor little old French-
man, M. Dell. I never in my life met a being to whom
the term " master " was less applicable. The French
master at the schools of sixty years ago was not a happy
person. He was despised of all men and boys, and his
position was one of such inferiority that no man of any
power or spirit was likely to fill it. Stoton allowed no
prize for the French class, and it has been one of the
most touching incidents of my life that the poor old
Frenchman gave me a little prize which he paid for
himself. It W' as a small edition of Florian's fables. I had
it wnth me for years, but where it has gone to now I know
not. It is perhaps buried somewhere among the increased
belongings that inheritances and a settled life have accumu-
lated about me ; I wish I could find it again. Augustus
and I were probably the only boys that had been in
France, and certainly the only ones with any pretension
to speaking French, and I think the good little man had
a predilection for us among the crowd of sneering John
Bulls — hating him, his language, and his country — that it
was his hard fate to teach. It would be a great delight
if I could perform an anachronistic miracle and find him
as he then was, to give him a hundred times the value of
his poor little book.

' From Stoton's, at the age of fourteen, I went to the
Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and Augustus must
have gone to the Military Academy at Woolwich about a

. DECEMBER 127

year later. My father took me to the college, and we
slept the night before the entrance examination at the
" Tumble-down Dick " inn at Parnborough, which was
then the nearest station. The examination was a farce,
of course. I suppose they ascertained that one could
read and write, and the doctor satisfied himself you
were not deformed, but I don't believe it went much
farther.' (Here the fragment ends.)

December 5th. — The weather is wonderfully mild. I
have a bunch of Tea-roses flowering in the room that
were picked out of doors yesterday. Have seasons
changed, or have the roses ? I used to think Owen
Meredith's allusion to the rose of October so true :

If Sorrow have taught me anything,

She hath taught me to weep for you ;
And if Falsehood have left me a tear to shed

For Truth, these tears are true.

If the one star left by the morning

Be dear to the dying night,
If the late lone rose of October

Be sweetest to scent and sight,

If the last of the leaves in December

Be dear to the desolate tree,
Eemember, belov'd — 0 remember,

How dear is your beauty to me !

December 10th. — I have again been away. At last it is
quite winter, and everything is at rest outside. But if all
the outdoor Chrj^santhemums, or even the hardiest in-
door ones, had been moved in October or November into
sheltered places under shrubs and trees, or against walls,
there has been up to now no frost to hurt them in such
situations. Some that I moved twice this autumn are
not feeling it at all.

If Camellias are grown in pots they make far more
buds than they can possibly carry, and severe disbudding
is most useful.

128 MORE POT-POURRI

Outdoor Heaths seem to do better for cutting back
after flowering.

Just lately I have received from the South of France
a box of dried figs, not pressed at all, but just dried in the
sun, as the peasants eat them. They are delicious, I
think ; far better than the usual dried tigs we get in
England, the inside seeds of which as a rule are much
too hard.

December 11th. — The Hornbeam — one of the old in-
digenous ti-ees of England, and among the very best
for firewood — is, judging from what I notice, very little
planted now and rarely named in catalogues. And yet
for many purposes it is useful and beautiful. It stands
the knife to any extent, and makes most satisfactory
hedges.

In my last book I spoke of Pergolas — those covered
walks made with poles, or columns of bricks or stone, and
overgrown with creepers of all kinds. Now I would speak of
the ' Charmilles ' — w^alks either of turf or gravel covered over
with arches of growing trees, with no supports or wires
or wood, merely the interlacing of the boughs till they
grow thick overhead with continual pruning. There is a
little short walk of this kind at Hampton Court — I forget
how it is made (I mean, with what trees it is planted) —
and in the Boboli Gardens at Florence there are end-
less varieties, as everyone knows, of these covered walks.
They would be very beautiful on the north or east side of
many a sunny lawn ; and if a garden were too small for
such a walk, there might still be room for an occasional
self-forming arch, which adds mystery and charm to any
garden. It could be made either with Hornbeam, Beech,
or (perhaps best of all in hght soil) Mountain Ash, which
flowers— and bei'ries too — all the better for judicious
pruning, and which could make a support as well for Honey-
suckle or a climbing Eose. This kind of planting to gain

DECEMBER 129

deep shade can be done over a seat, and would not take
very long to grow into a natural arbour. A Weeping
Hornbeam — which, I suppose, must be a modern gardening
invention, as it is not mentioned in Loudon's very com-
prehensive ' Arboretum et Fruticetum ' — is also a splendid
tree for a sunny lawn ; and in the female plant the long,
loose, pendulous catkins are very attractive. The seeds
ripen in October, and the bunches or cones which
contain them should be gathered by hand when the
nuts are ready to drop out. The nuts separate easily
from the envelope, and if sown at once will come up the
following spring. All this sounds rather slow, for in these
days people buy all they want and never wait. Messrs.
Veitch sell both kinds of Hornbeams, and even tall, well-
grown plants of the Weeping kind are not expensive.

' Bosquets, or groves, are so called from bouquet, a
nosegay ; and I believe gardeners never meant any-
thing else by giving this term to this compartment,
which is a sort of green knot, formed by branches and
leaves of trees that compose it placed in rows opposite
each other.' The author of ' The Eetired Gardener ' then
adds : ' I have named a great many compartments in
which Hornbeam is made use of ; yet methinks none of
them look so beautiful and magnificent as a gallery with
arches.'

December ISth. — We have just been digging up and
preparing a good-sized oblong piece of ground in the best
and sunniest part of the kitchen garden, and moving into
it gooseberries and currants — red, white, and black.
Round this I am going to place, after considerable delibera-
tion and doubt, a high fine-wire fencing with an open-
ing on one side instead of a gate — which reduces the
expense— and the opening can be covered when necessary
with a net. The reason for not wiring over the top,
besides the expense, is that it causes a rather injurious

K

I30 MORE POT-POURRI

drip in rainy weather and breaks down under the snow. I
am also assured by good gardeners that it is unnecessary,
and that the wire netting round the sides is a most
effectual protection to the bushes, as small birds do
not fly downwards into a wire-netted enclosure. My
gardener is very sceptical on this point, and says he
thinks our birds are too clever to be kept out by such
half-measures. I think we have an undue share of birds,
as on one side of the kitchen garden there is a small
copse belonging to a neighbour which has been entirely
neglected for years, and presents the appearance of what
one would imagine a virgin forest might be. This
affords the most extraordinary protection for birds, and
bullfinches and greenfinches abound. They not only
do harm to the fruit when it is ripe, but they strip the
trees of their buds in dry weather in early spring. If this
new wire netting answers, I am told we ought to have
three times the fruit for a less quantity of bushes. I
shall grow white currants on the netting, with battens
or sticks fastened to it as a protection from the heat of
the zinc wire, which is fatal to everything. The trees
are now all whitened with a preparation of lime which is
distasteful to the birds and insects. After all this I shall
indeed be disappointed if my crop of small fruit is not
larger this year. However, a late frost may still defeat
us altogether.

Mr. Wright in his book ' Profitable Fruit-growing '
(171 Fleet Street, London) has a sentence on the pur-
chasing of fruit-trees which is so good I must copy it :
' First look to the character and position of the vendors,
and deal with those who have reputations to maintain.
They cannot afford to sell inferior trees or, what is of vital
importance, distribute varieties under wrong names. It
is a very serious matter to grow fruit-trees for some
years, then when they bear find they are not the sorts

DECEMBER 131

ordered, but inferior. Time thus lost cannot be re-
gained. Order early in October, and the sooner the
trees arrive and are planted after the leaves fall the
better they will grow.' He goes on to say, what is
equally true, that the best trees are spoilt by bad planting,
and it is deplorable to see how roughly the work is
often done through lack of knowledge. Every kind of
instruction is clearly given by Mr. Wright in this excellent,
inexpensive little book, and if read carefully and followed
things must go right. I have fallen this year into the
so common fault of ordering the little I meant to have
too late ; but as they are only a few hardy Damson-trees
I hope they will forgive me and do well all the same.
Damsons are certainly not cultivated enough, and yet,
after Morella Cherries, they make the best of jams, and
no fruit-tree gives such big crops for so little outlay.
The trees enjoy full exposure, and need hardly any atten-
tion, but it is well to remember to stake them securely to
prevent strong winds blowing them about and straining
the roots. Our only trouble is the birds, who eat out the
buds before they even blossom. Some buds we could spare,
but that is not Mr. Bully's way ; if he begins on a tree
he completely clears it, as the missel-thrushes do the
Eowan berries of summer. Last year they fixed on a
Pear-tree that was covered rather early with buds, and
in one week every trace and promise of blossom was
gone.

December 14i/i. — I have a large field in which we have
generally grown the coarser kind of vegetables — Potatoes,
Cabbages, Jerusalem Artichokes, etc., and such things
that do best in a very sunny open place. Finding that
now, as I do not go to London, I do not require such a
large supply of vegetables, I am going to sow and
grass over half the field. It is between this and the
vegetable part that I have been planting the row of

132 MORE POT-POURRI

Damson-trees — half common and half cluster, hy way of
experiment. The Bullace, a true cottager's fruit, is a
variety of the Damson, and not to be lightly regarded for
both preserving and pies. It ripens soon after other
Damsons, and so a succession is made.

December 15th. — I am told some people have tried
and approved of my suggestion of arranging greenhouse
Chrysanthemums in groups of colour instead of dotting
them about all mixed, one injuring the effect of the
other. But I have not yet had the pleasure of seeing a
large greenhouse so arranged, and I have not room for
a great number myself. One of the very best is Abraham
Lincoln, with its bushy habit, its grand bluish leaves, and
its strong yellow flowers, which remain a good yellow at
night. A charming small but most decorative Chrys-
anthemum is called ' Mrs. Carter.' It is pale yellow, white
at night, and its growth and appearance are just like those
of a Sweet Sultan.

I saw the other day a little Geranium (Pelargonium),
called ' New Life,' that was new to me ; the petals were
white and red mixed. Growing on the plant, it was
not especially pretty ; but picked and mixed with some
light green it had quite an uncommon appearance. I
thought on first seeing it that it was a double Bouvardia.
' Mrs. Leopold Rothschild ' is a most beautiful pink
Carnation.

Just now I have several pots in full flower of an
orchid that never fails year after year, Lygopetalum
mackayi. It does not require much heat, and lasts a long
time both on the plant or in water. It throws up long
flowering stems, has a most delicious perfume, is quiet in
colour — yellowish -green and brownish -purple — and very
refined in shape. I find it a most useful plant for the
time of year, and we have many more pots than we had,
so it is not very difficult to increase.

DECEMBER 133

In the corner of the greenhouse there is a good group
of Poinsettia piilcherrima. Some people say they do not
hke these rather curious plants. They are useless for
putting into water, but I think they look very bright and
cheerful on these dark days. They do best if grown every
year from cuttings.

December IQth. — We have been more successful this
year with the forcing of bulbs — Eoman Hyacinths and
Paper-white Narcissus — than ever before, and I think it
is a good deal owing to having carefully obeyed the
instructions given in a little pamphlet, ' How I came to
grow Bulbs,' which I have mentioned before. Mr. Eobert
Sydenham is as instructive about pot-culture as he is
about outdoor culture. He gives exactly the information
required ; and if this is carefully read there can be no
confusion as regards the different treatment required by
Narcissi, Tulips, and Hyacinths. A great many nursery-
men profess to sell the Chinese Lily, really a Tazetta
Narcissus with a yellow centre, which grows with extreme
rapidity in bowls of water ; but instead of the true thing
they often send out the Paper-white Narcissus.

Late though it is, I have been moving pieces of
Kerria japonica and planting them against the bare sterna
of moderate-sized trees. They do admirably, and look so
gay and bright in spring. They can be tied to the trunk
for support, and the branches of the tree above protect
them from spring frosts. They are most amiable plants,
and in no way resent being moved about. The single and
variegated Kerrias are not such strong growers as the
double. If the latter get to look untidy they can be
removed after flowering.

I saw a curious account in a newspaper lately about
the colour of glass greatly affecting the growth of plants.
The discoverer of this theory is Camille Flammarion, the
French astronomer. He has found that plants grown in

134 MORE POT-POURRI

a red hot-house become in a given time four times as
big as those exposed to ordinary sunlight. The poorest
development, practically amounting to failure, was under
blue glass ; and lettuces grown under green glass did
badly. It would be interesting to try experiments. I
wonder if it would answer to colour red the stuff sold
for painting the glass of greenhouses as a shade in
summer ?

We have done a great deal of pruning this year of our
old Apple-trees, sawing out large branches in the middle to
let in air. The trees have been shortened back so much
that they bear far too many apples, and none come to any
size.

December 18i/t. — We have never been very successful
here with the growing of Mushrooms. We have no Mush-
room house, and have to try what can be done in various
sheds and outhouses. I am told the most essential
point to remember is that the horses must have no
green food or carrots during the time that the droppings
are being collected. My own belief is that our beds
have been kept too dry, and that this is the reason of our
failure, in spite of making up the beds with the greatest care
according to the directions in the excellent little books
which are sold everywhere, and which always represent
mushroom culture as the easiest thing in the world. Also
it may be that when the beds were watered it was not
with rain-water. Our soil is so sandy that even when
mixed with anything that is put to it, it dries more easily
than any ordinary garden soil. This winter my gardener has
tried, with marked and satisfactory success, a bed under
the greenhouse stage. It is made up in the ordinary way,
and darkened and saved from the drip of the plants above
by a sheet or two of that invaluable corrugated iron which
I mentioned before, and which I find more and more
useful for protection at night, protection for pot-plants

DECEMBER 135

in spring, keeping the wet out of sunk pits, shading
summer cuttings effectually, and so on. It also makes
an excellent though ugly paling instead of a wall. Even
Peach-trees will grow well against it if the plants are tied
to pieces of batten or sticks— some stuck into the ground
and the branches tied horizontally from stick to stick, and
some put across the zinc — as then the plant, be it Peach
or Vine, enjoys the heat radiated from the zinc, which yet
cannot burn or injuriously dry the bark, in summer. In
winter it is still more important that air should be between
the plant and the zinc, which gets extremely cold in frosty
weather. This, of course, applies equally to covering zinc
houses or sheds with creepers.

This is a long digression from the Mushroom bed.
We have already had several excellent and useful dishes
off it from this the first experiment. Our outer cellar is
too cold here to grow Mushrooms in winter, though
it does well to grow the common Chicory for the Barbe-
de-Gapucin salad, and also protects from early autumn
frosts the Broad-leaved Batavian Endive, which does so
infinitely better here than the Curled Endive. We grow
this in large quantities. It makes by far the best late
autumn salad, and is also quite excellent stewed. (See
' Dainty Dishes.')

We have not yet succeeded here with the vegetable
now so much sold in London in the early spring, viz.
Witloof or Large Brussels Chicory, but I mean to try this
next year.

I went to lunch to-day with a neighbour whose house
is full of things recalling memories which belong to other
days. As we sat at luncheon I began to gaze, as I in-
variably do, at whatever hangs on the walls, and I am
always thankful when I have not to look at photographs.
I have plenty of these myself, but they are the least
decorative of furnishing pictures. On the wall opposite

136 MORE POT-POURRI

to me was rather an uncommon print of the Duke of
Wellington, looking more than usually martial and
stand-upright, and with an extra severe thundercloud
behind him. It was from a picture by Lawrence, I expect,
and a fine thing in its way. As a pendant to this was
another print of a soldier. I turned to my hostess
and, pointing to it, said : ' Who is that ? ' My friend
answered with rather a marked tone : ' Why, that is Lord
Lyndoch,' as if most certainly I ought to have known.
Now, frankly, I had never heard of Lord Lyndoch, so
I said rather humbly and inquiringly : ' Peninsula, I
suppose ? But I am very badly read ; who was he ? ' And
then she told me : ' Why, the Grahame who went to the
wars after his wife's death, as you describe in your book
in speaking of young Mrs. Grahame's picture in the
Edinburgh Gallery.' She added : ' He was on Sir John
Moore's staff and standing close by his horse when he
was wounded at Corunna, and Sir John Moore was
carried into Mr. Grahame's tent or hut, where he shortly
died, and the poor young man was so utterly exhausted
he lay on the floor by his dead friend and slept.' She
told me that Lord Lyndoch was a known feature in
society and a visitor in country houses in her youth, and
she remembered him well at her grandmother's house
in Hertfordshire.

December 19th. — The weather has been so astonishing
the last few days one cannot realise it is the week, not of
the shoi'test days, but of the shortest afternoons of the
whole year. This sentence brought about a fearful cool-
ness between me and my dear secretary, who asked for
an explanation of the statement, and, when I tried to give
it, failed to understand. We agreed to refer the matter
to an authority that we both believed in. The next
day brought the following reply : ' The explanation you
require is, I think, hardly suited to *' Pot-Pourri." I should

DECEMBER 137

put it somehow thus : " that week in which the almanack
tells us the days are growing shorter, though the sun sets
at a later hour." Of course the afternoon does not gi-ow
longer. Noon is the moment at which the sun crosses the
meridian, and it then attains its highest point for the day ;
and of course if it rises later, it also sets earlier. The
apparent anomaly occurs thus — the solar day, which is
measm-ed from the time the sun crosses the meridian on
one day to the time it does ditto on the next, is not of
uniform length. The reasons — which you need not read —
are : (1) The path of the sun does not lie in the equator,
but in the ecliptic ; (2) owing to the earth's orbit not being
circular, its motion in the ecliptic is not uniform. Now it
would manifestly be very uncomfortable to have days of
varying length, therefore an imaginary sun has been in-
vented which is supposed to behave in a decent and
orderly fashion ; the time by him is called " mean time,"
and is that shown by a watch. The time shown by the
real sun is called " apparent time," and is that sho'VNTi by
a sun-dial. The difference between these two times is as
much as sixteen minutes at certain seasons of the year.
Now on the shortest day the sun crosses the meridian nearly
two minutes before twelve o'clock. He was earlier the few
days before, therefore his time of setting was earlier too.
Suppose that on December 21st apparent noon is at
11.58 A.M. and the sun sets at 3.51 p.m., and on Decem-
ber 14th the apparent noon is at 11.55 a.m. and the sun
sets at 3.49 p.m. Now the Sbiternooii on December 14th
is one minute longer than on December 21st (3 hours
54 minutes to 3 hours 53 minutes), and yet the sun has
set two minutes earlier (by our watches).'

December 20th. — Another beautiful afternoon. Such
clear yellow skies ! To me the top twigs of Holly bushes
against a primrose sky recall, oh ! so many winter days in
the past; long walks through bare woods and rustling

138 MORE POT-POURRI

brown leaves beneath our feet ; the closing-in of curtains
in the warm fire-lit rooms where we grew up, which in
old age I see as plainly as if I had never left the house
where I was born. But to return to the weather of
this year, the following was in a newspaper a day or
two ago : ' A beautiful yellow butterfly was seen disporting
itself in the sunshine of j'esterday.' I did not see a
butterfly here, but Chrj^santhemums still linger, Violets
are out, and the yellow Jasminium imdiflorum is in
unusually full flower.

I have no Mistletoe here, but I presume I might have
it if I cultivated it. It no doubt has become so much
rarer from being always cleared out of orchards, the
pretty pale-fniited parasite being no fi'iend to the Apple-
trees. If one wishes to cultivate the Mistletoe, select a
young branch of Willow, Poplar, Thorn, or an old Apple- or
Pear-tree, and on the underside slit the bark to insert the
seed. The best time to do this is in February. One
may merely rub a few seeds on the outside of the bark,
but that is not so safe as inserting them actually under
the bark. Raising Mistletoe from seed is better than
either grafting or budding.

This is a good time for planting I^^es. There are
many difi'erent kinds, and they will grow in such a satis-
factory way in such bad places. In London gardens or
back-yards Ivy can be made into quite a feature. As
Cm'tis says in his ' Flora Londinensis ' : ' Few people are
acquainted with the beauty of Ivy when suffered to run
up a stake, and at length to form itself into a standard ;
the singular complication of its branches and the vivid
hue of its leaves give it one of the first places amongst
evergreens in a shrubbery.'

My Lancashire friend sends me a list of a few Roses
and annuals. Lists are always so useful to all gardeners,
as it is interesting to know what one has got and what

DECEMBER 139

one has not, that I give his list as he wrote it : 'To begin
with Eoses. Kaiserin Augusta Victoria ; Alhster Stella
Gray, chmber ; Gustave Regis ; Maman Cochet, have done
best with me. Adonis autumnalis ; Alonsoa Warscewiczi ;
Kmilfussia amelloides, are three annuals new to me. Acis
autumnalis is a small South of Europe bulb, rare and sup-
posed to thrive out of doors in sandy soil. Cimicifuga
racemosa — I think all borders ought to have this tall-grow-
ing, handsome herbaceous plant ; Dictamnus fraxinella
and its white variety; E^tpatorium imrpureum ; Gypsophila
prostrata; Phygelius capensis ; Polemonium Bichardsoni ;
B^idbeckia purpurea ; Spigelia Marilandica ; Styrax jap-
onica ; Tlialictrum flavum. Withenia origanifolia is a new,
very highly praised creeper which I shall try.' I cannot
find this creeper mentioned in any of my gardening books.
Pliormium tenax (the New Zealand Flax) makes a
very handsome tub plant for a bare entrance drive or
large terrace. If treated like the Agapanthus in full sun
it flowers.

Two or three years ago, when I knew nothing about
Roses, a very clever Rose grower, who had devoted his
life to them, wrote me out the following list, with the
assurance that every one of them was worth having : ' A
selection of Roses which, in gi'ound well dug and Uber-
ally fed with farmyard manure, sheltered but not over-
shadowed, like Phyllis, " never fail to please." Hybrid
Peppetuals : Duke of Edinburgh ; Etienne Levet ;
General Jacqueminot ; Her Majesty ; Jules Margottin ;
Marguerite Dickson ; Mrs. John Laing ; Merveille de
Lyons ; Paul Neron ; Ulrich Brunner. Hybrid Teas :
Captain Christy ; Grace Darling ; Gustave Regis ; Lady
Mary Fitzwilliam ; La France ; Vicomtesse Folkestone ;
Caroline Testout. Teas : Anna OlHvier ; Bouquet d'Or ;
Homere ; Madame de Watteville ; Madame Falcot ;

I40 MORE POT-POURRI

Madame Ho9t6 ; Marie Van Houtte ; Peiies des Jardins.
Polyantha : C6cile Brunner; Perle d'Or.'

I have a near neighbour who is a most successful
Rose gi'ower. Walking through his beautifully kept beds
the other day, I noted that the centre parts of the plant,
both in standards and dwarfs, had some bracken twisted
into them. This is a great protection against the coming
frosts. For anyone who cares about the choicer Ferns
it is a protection to them, too, to have their own leaves
twisted round them in the shape of a knob of hair on a
woman's head, firmly tucking in the ends so that the
winds of March may not untwist them.

December 21st. — The perennial and ever-recurrent
aspect of the London streets at this time of year always
reminds me of the old happy Christmas holidays and of
long walks with three young gentlemen lately returned
home, who then considered it my chief defect that I had
not three arms. The mental attitude which I tried to
instil into them was to enjoy looking in at the shop-
wnndows rather than to admire or, above all, wish to
possess the extraordinary amount of rubbish displayed
inside, which, though it looked well enough arranged in
redundant heaps, would, I thought, seem to them mere
money wasted in poor useless stuff if they brought it
home. I dare say I am prejudiced in these matters, having
always had a very great dislike to wholesale present-
giving at fixed anniversaries, whether birthdays, Christmas,
or New Year.

I think that while children are quite small — say, up to
the age of ten or twelve — we might leave the matter as it
stands at present, as the said redundant heap on the
nursery floor may give a peculiar pleasure of its own. But
this is quite different from an obhgatory present-giving to
all sorts of people : servants and dependents, gi'own-up
children, fathers, mothers, and old grannies. We all
know houses where this kind of thing is much practised,

DECEMBER 141

and where year after year it is an immense toil to the
givers and but very Httle appreciated by the receivers.
It is almost laughable, the way that people who are
apparently the greatest supporters of this custom of
present-giving at stated times groan over the trouble
and expense it entails, and congratulate themselves and
each other when the terrible Christmas fortnight is at
an end.

This fashion of giving presents to all sorts of
promiscuous people at special times has immensely
increased since my childhood, when it was only beginning
— imported no doubt, as far as Christmas is concerned,
from Germany. The French, who keep their rubbish-
giving for the New Year, confine themselves almost
entirely to flowers and bonbons, which, if equally useless
have at least the merit of passing away and of not
crowding up our chimneypieces and writing-tables. The
turning of every shop into a bazaar ; the display of meat,
game, and turkeys on the outside of shops ; the spending
of a disproportionate amount of money on feasting — all this
is comparatively recent. I can quite well remember as a
girl the excitement of first decorating a church. This
developed into a fashion with the High Church party,
and is not an old custom. I know one old clergyman
who to this day refuses to allow any Christmas decorations,
and says : ' Why desecrate my church with evergreens? '
If it has any antiquity it is a Pagan revival, like flowers
for the dead. It may be pretty and desirable, or the
contrary, but it is not Old EngUsh, though the Druids
may have been as fond of mistletoe as they were of
oaks.

To return to present-giving at anniversaries. I am
more than wilhng to admit, as I have already said, that
quite young children get considerable pleasure out of this
custom, but even in their case it has distinct drawbacks.

142 MORE POT-POURRI

When children receive too many presents at the same
time, it is apt to encourage criticism and ingratitude ; and
having to thank for what they do not want or already
possess is too early a training in what might seem to a
child hypocrisy. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth is
excellent and reasonable to those who understand it, but
neither in word nor idea does it convey anything to a
child's mind. I heard two delicious child anecdotes last
winter. One was of a village schoolboy helping to decor-
ate a Christmas-tree for himself and his schoolfellows.
He made a touching appeal to the kind but tired lady
who was doing the same : ' Please, teacher, if you have
anything to do with it, will you see that I get something
that is not a pocket-handkerchief? I've got seven
already ! ' Sad to say, his eighth pocket-handkerchief
had been assigned to him, and he had to put up with
it. The other story was of a rich little lady who was
taken to a neighbour's Christmas-tree. On receiving a
new doll she said to her mother : ' Eeally, I don't know,
mother, what I shall do with this doll. I have so many
already, how can I find room for her ? '

It goes against my sense of the fitness of things to put
either charity or affection into a treadmill and force
people to give presents at a particular fixed time. Do we
not all know the phraseology so often heard in the
shops : ' Will this do ? Does it look enough ? It won't
be much use, but that doesn't matter. Oh ! here's a
new book that will do for So-and-so.' I heard of a
wretched lady with rather well-known tastes in one
direction who last Christmas received seven copies of one
book. Then there are the presents for dependents, which
are chosen in imitation of the luxm-ies of the master and
mistress. The sham jewel brooch or the shoddy Glad-
stone bag which costs fifteen shillings and is supposed to
' look like thirty.' All this kind of thing seems to me

DECEMBER 143

false, and many people I know are ready enough to
acknowledge what a slavery it is and how undesirable.
Some reconcile themselves to the folly by saying : ' Well,
it can't be helped, and it's good for trade.' Even if this
kind of artificial demand is really good for trade, which
many doubt, this has nothing to do with whether it has
a good or a bad effect on ourselves, on our children, and
on those who surround us.

The giving of wedding-presents, though it is continually
referred to as a tax, is so essentially useful to the receivers
when judiciously done that I not only say nothing against
it, but think nothing against it. I remember, in the early
'Sixties, a cousin who was the victim of twenty-seven
ormolu inkstands ; but the practicalness of the present day
solves the difficulty of duplicates, as the young people
without the smallest concealment sell or exchange what
they do not care about.

Though few people may agree with my abuse of whole-
sale present-giving at anniversaries, I think no one will
deny that it tends to destroy some of the most delightful
outward expressions of feeling that can exist between
civilised human beings. To take the trouble to find out
what somebody really wants ; to be struck by something
beautiful, and to know to whom to give it ; to supply a
real want to those who cannot afford it for themselves ;
to give anything, however trifling, as a remembrance — •
all these are the gentle sweeteners of life, and need none
of those goading reminders which come with the return
of anniversaries. And to come to the more selfish aspect
of the question. Instead of the callousness and almost
fatigue in consequence of receiving a great number of
presents at once, is there not a delight that lasts through
life until we are quite old at suddenly receiving a sym-
pathetic and unexpected gift ?

A great many people use holly and evergreens at

144 MORE POT-POURRI

Christmas-time to stick about the room in empty vases,
round pictures, etc. But they hardly ever take the
trouble to peel their stalks and put them in water, though
— especially with holly — this makes all the difference as
regards the retaining of its freshness ; and if arranged in a
glass, not too thickly, it looks much more beautiful, and
does not acquire a dusty, degraded appearance before New
Year's Day. I cannot bear to see the poor evergreens
shrivelUng in the hot rooms. We used to have hardly
any Holly berries in the garden here, but by judicious
pruning in February we now get quantities of a very fine
kind.

One of my many correspondents wrote : ' If you are
interested in the lighting of country houses, I can recom-
mend the acetylene gas which our gardener makes for us.
We have used it for over a year, and find it quite charming
— a brilliant light, delightful to read by, cool, clean, and
harmless to silver, flowers, and clothes, and safe, so far as
our experience goes. Ours is the " pure acetylene " made
by Eaoul Picket's patent, and not the explosive kind.'

December QJind. — After all the fine mild weather I have
been mentioning, it suddenly began to freeze, with hard,
cold, moonlight nights. So to-day I thought of my little
birds. I now find it pi'ettier and less trouble, instead of
hanging the string with cocoanut and suet from a window
or a stiff cross-bar, to arrange it in the following way :
I cut a big branch, lopping it more or less, and push it
through the hole of a French iron garden-table that I
happen to have which holds an umbrella in summer. On
the other side of the house I stick a similar branch into
the ground. On these I hang, Christmas-tree fashion,
some pieces of suet and a tallow candle — the old ' dip ' — a
cocoanut with a hole cut, not at the bottom as I recom-
mended before, but in the side, large enough for the
Tom-tits to sit on the edge and peck inside, and yet

DECEMBER 145

roofed enough to prevent the rain-water collecting in it.
They seem to have remembered the feeding from last
year, as they began at the piece of suet at once. On the
table below I used to put a basin to hold crumbs and
scraps from meals — rice, milk, anything almost, for the
other birds who will not eat either the fat or the cocoanut.
But I found this was such a great temptation to the cats
and dogs of the establishment, who became most extra-
ordinarily acrobatic in the methods by which they got
on to the table, that I had to devise wmng the saucer of
a flower-pot and so hanging it on to the most extended
branch, out of reach of the cleverest of Miss Pussies.
If once it freezes very hard, I put out bowls of tepid
water. This the birds much appreciate.

December 23r(:Z. — I have been out for a walk long after
dark — or, rather, long after sunset, for the moon was
shining bright in the cold indigo sky. At all times of
year walking by moonlight gives me exquisite delight.
Is it because I have done it so rarely, or because of the
great beauty and mystery of it all ? I went along our high
road, the road along which Nelson travelled to Portsmouth
on his way to Trafalgar, never to retm-n. This evening it
shone white and dry in the moonhght, and the tall black
telegraph-poles — double the height and strength of those
they replaced a few years ago, and which I have always
hated for their aggressive size by dayhght — in the ^^'inter
moonhght only seemed to me straight and strong, and as
if proud to support that wonderful network of wires which
now encompasses the entire globe, annihilating time and
making the far and the near as one, ceaselessly carrying
those messages of happiness and despair, life and death,
which in the space of a moment, in the opening of an
envelope, bring sorrow or joy to many a home. Some-
thing of the mystery of it all the wires sang to me
to-night, with .^ohan sounds different from any I have

146 MORE POT-POURRI

ever heard, on this one of the last evenings of a year
that is nearly gone. By my lonely fireside this poem
came to my recollection :

The old friends, the old friends.

We loved when we were young,
With sunshine on their faces

And music on their tongue !
The bees are in the Almond flower,

The birds renew their strain ;
But the old friends once lost to us

Can never come again.

The old friends, the old friends,

Their brow is lined with care ;
They've furrows in the faded cheek

And silver in the hair ;
But to me they are the old friends still,

In youth and bloom the same
As when we drove the flying ball

Or shouted in the game.

The old men, the old men,

How slow they creep along !
How naughtily we scoffed at them

In days when we were young !
Their prosing and their dosing.

Their prate of times gone by.
Their shiver like an aspen-leaf

If but a breath went by.

But we, we are the old men now ;

Our blood is faint and chill ;
We cannot leap the mighty brook

Or climb the break-neck hill.
We maunder down the shortest cuts.

We rest on stick or stile,
And the young men, half ashamed to laugh.

Yet pass us with a smile.

But the young men, the young men,

Their strength is fair to see ;
The straight back and the springy stride,

The eye as falcon free ;

DECEMBER 147

They shout above the frolic wind

As up the hill they go ;
But though so high above us now,

They soon shall be as low.

Oh ! weary, weary, drag the years,

As life draws near the end ;
And sadly, sadly, fall the tears

For loss of love and friend.
But we'll not doubt there's good about

In all of human kind ;
So here's a health before we go

To those we leave behind !

December 24:th. — It is so curious after a full life to be
alone on Christmas Eve. But of course it was my own
choice, and not necessary. I could have gone away, but
I love these winter afternoons and the long evenings at
home. It is also, I think, essential wisdom that the old
should learn to live alone without depression, and above
all without that far more deadly thing — ennui. I have
no doubt that training for old age, to avoid being a
bore and a burden to others, is as desirable as any other
form of education. The changes brought about by
circumstances mean, in a sort of way, a new birth, and
one has to discover for oneself the best methods of re-
adjusting the details of one's life. I find this poem
written in one of my notebooks many years ago by a
man whom I had known from childhood. Though he
was not the author, the poem represented his feelings
rather than mine. It has truth in it, but it also has a
touch of bitterness, which appealed no doubt to a man
who had reaped nothing but life's failure. He had
always lived up in balloons of his own imaginings,
believing in ultimate wealth, and having the power to
draw forth money from others, merely to lose it. He
died in old age and poverty in a garret at Venice. Do
we reap as we sow? Very often; not always. I am

148 MORE POT-POURRI

sure that up to now I have never got back in mushrooms
what I have spent in spawn. Of course the fault is mine,
I know that.

Laugh, and the world laughs with you ;

Weep, and you weep alone,
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth —

It has sorrows enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer ;

Sigh, it is lost in air.
For the echoes bound to a joyous sound—

They shrink from the voice of care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you ;

Grieve, and they all will go,
For they want full measure of all your pleasure —

They do not heed your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many ;

Be sad, and you lose them all.
For none will decline your nectared wine —

Alone, you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded ;

Fast, and the world goes by ;
Succeed and give ; it will help you live —

No man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all pass on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

I hke ' Bethia Hardacre's ' song better, and to me the
spirit is truer :

Bring me the book whose pages teach
The fortitude the Stoics preach.
Bring me the tome within whose scope
There lies the quickening of dead hope ;
Bring me the comfort of a mind
That good in every ill can find,
And of a heart that is content
With its desire's relinquishment.

DECEMBER 149

Eeceipts
A kind friend sent me to-night half a pumpkin — a real
French pumpkin, (See Vilmorin's ' Vegetable Garden,'
Potiron jaune gros.) It was grown near here, and had
kept perfectly. It was moist, and a beautiful apricot
colour inside. I wonder always why the only pumpkin
grown in England is the vegetable marrow. Sutton
feebly recommends others in his book, but hardly makes
enough of them as useful winter vegetables. Here is a
true French receipt for Pumpkin Soup. Cut up the
slices of pumpkin (say, about half a large one), and boil
them in water. When well cooked, strain oif the water
and pass the pulp through a sieve. Boil half a pint of
milk, add a piece of butter, very little salt, and a good
tablespoonful of castor sugar. Pour this boiling milk on
to the pumpkin pulp. Let it boil a few minutes. The
soup must be thick, and small fried crusts should be sent
up with it. This receipt is enough for two people.
Dried vegetable marrow is not supposed to be so good,
but I had some soup to-night prepared exactly in the
same way from a large dried vegetable marrow, and it
was excellent, though it had not quite so much flavour.

All through the last month my salads have been nearly
as good as in summer, from tarragon and chive tops being
forced in the greenhouse. Parsley and chervil are still
good out of doors. When once one has become used to
the herbs in salad, it does seem so tasteless without them.
Lentil Toast. — Four to six ounces of lentils, one
ounce of butter, water, and slices of buttered toast. Look
over and thoroughly rinse the lentils, and put them into
a small saucepan with enough water to well cover them.
Cook slowly till they are tender and the water all absorbed
(ten to twenty minutes). Add butter, pepper, and salt ;
spread thickly on the hot buttered toast, and serve with
mint sauce. Suitable as a supper or breakfast dish.

I50 MORE POT-POURRI

Green and White Haricot Beans.— Soak in cold

water for twelve or even twenty-four hours, then put
them into boiling water with a little salt and two minced
shallots. Cook till tender, but not mashed. They will
take from two to two and a half hours, and must be
watched. A bunch of herbs and a bacon bone, or a
little raw bacon, greatly improve the flavour, but can
easily be omitted. Before dishing up, toss them in a little
butter and serve very hot. Thin English melted butter
with chopped parsley can be used as a change.

It is worth while to know that with all hard vegetables
— peas, beans, lentils, etc. — if they have not been soaked
the day before, the way to boil them slowly is to add
every now and then a tablespoonful of cold water. The
same thing applies to dried fruit.

To Roast a Fine Large Volaille (Chicken or Capon
or Young Turkey). — Take some very fat bacon or a good
tablespoonful of good grease (clarified fat of beef or pork
kidney, half and half). Dissolve it in a very deep
copper stewpan and let it get hot, but not very hot. Put
the chicken into it, having previously well trussed it ;
chop up the liver and gizzard with some unsmoked raw
bacon, and insert this in the bird. Put the lid on, and let
it braise gently on top of the hot-plate by a slow fire. The
chicken ought to produce enough moisture by itself to pre-
vent it from roasting too fast. Should this be deficient add
a very little stock. After from thirty to forty minutes turn
the fowl over, with the breast to the bottom of the pot, so
that it gets a little coloured in its turn. The largest fowl
takes an hour and a quarter. When done, remove it on to
a dish. Add a little stock to the brown glaze that adheres
to the stewpan, having previously removed the grease
with a spoon. Pour it round the fowl or into a sauce-
boat and serve with the fowl.

An excellent way of making a next-day dibh out of

¥

DECEMBER 151

roast turkey is one I saw many years ago in a French
restaurant.

Ailerons de Dinde aux Navets.— Take the wing-
bones and a portion of the legs of a roast turkey, and divide
them into reasonable-sized pieces. Take some cold stock
which has been already well flavoured with vegetables, and
add a little more onion cut fine. Stew by the side of the
stove till the meat is tender, not broken away. Add a good
large quantity of turnips cut into small dice and a very
small amount of burnt sugar, pepper, and salt. Stew all
together till the turnips are quite cooked (which depends
a good deal on the quality of the turnips) and the stock
reduced. Serve in a hash-dish. The whole can also be
cooked in a small fireproof casserole, and served in that
with a clean napkin round it. The excellence of this dish
depends on the goodness of the stock and very slow
cooking.

Raw Liver of Chickens chopped up with a little
bacon fat and fried, then put on to toast with pepper and
salt, is a good breakfast dish or savoury.

152 MORE POT-POURRI

JANUARY
1899

DiflQculties of growing Daphne indica- Journey l&st year to Ireland
— Cutting down and re-planting trees — Apples — Skimmed milk —
Manure heaps — Winter Honeysuckle — Botanical Gardens in Dub-
lin— Botticelli's drawings — Tissot's Bible — Rippingille's paten
stove — Blue flowers — ' Snowdrop-time ' — ' The Sun-children's
Budget ' — Floral notes from ' The Scotsman ' — Receipts.

January 5th. — After a white frost in the morning
we have had a day which, except for its shortness, we
should be satisfied with and think beautiful in early spring.
These mild, sunny winter days do great harm in prema-
turely forcing growth, but I know few things which it would
be more difficult to wish non-existent. They make up to
me for so many of our winter trials — fog and cold and
darkness. I would not change them for the ' Sunny South,*
where sunshine is a right, while here it comes as a most
gracious gift — all the more appreciated because it appears
unexpectedly and lasts such a short time.

I have a plant of Daphne indica, one of my favourite
winter flowers, in my greenhouse now. It is in flower
and smelling deliciously, but does not look at all satisfac-
tory, although it was only bought last year. It was put out
of doors last summer, as it ought to be, but was allowed
to get dry. It made no growth ; it is leggy, drawn up, and
the leaves are yellow, which with hard-wooded plants
generally means over-watering in winter. I have tried for
years to grow these Daphnes, but they are difficult to strike,

JANUARY 153

difl&cult to grow, and have a quite extraordinary love of
dying without any very obvious reason. I must devote
myself to finding out, if possible, what the reason is. I
see that Mr. Smee, in his book ' My Garden,' says they
did the same with him.

I have just gathered three beautiful, full white buds
off a Niphetos Rose in the conservatory next the drawing-
room. It is blooming extra early this year.

January 6th. — Fate caused me to go to Ireland about
this time last year. I dreaded the long night journey
and the arrival on the gray winter morning. But were
the steamers far less splendid sea-boats than they are, and
the waves every day as stormy as they sometimes are, I
think it still would be well worth while for any garden-
fancier to visit Ireland in January, if only to admire and
enjoy the luxuriant green of the evergreens and the beauty
of the winter-fiowering shrubs. I had never seen Garrya
elliptica in full beauty before. It had catkins six or seven
inches long, flowering from end to end, one little flower
growing out of the other like a baby chain made with
cowslips. The Jasminum nudiflorum was not a flowering
branch here and there, as in England, but one sheet of
brilliant yellow flowers. This beautiful plant is very easy
to propagate by laying some of the branches along the
ground and covering them with earth. In six or seven
months they will have made good root, and can be taken
up and planted where desired. One house I saw in the
neighbourhood of Dublin was covered on its southern side
with the Clematis cirrhosa or winter-flowering Clematis
from Algiers. The house was an old one, much frequented
by John Wesley and mentioned in Southey's Life. On
one of the thick strong walls, inside, was the following
inscription (translated, I believe, from the German) :

The Angels from their throne on high
Look down on us with pitying eye,

154 MORE POT-POURRI

That where we are but passing guests
We build such strong and solid nests,
And where we hope to dwell for aye
We scarce take heed a stone to lay.

There is a strong, practical common-sense in the lines
which would have appealed to Wesley's instincts.

I saw at Howth a beautiful plant of the Desfontainea
spinosa, with its foliage so like the Holly and its hand-
some flowers in the form of a tube, bright scarlet tipped
with yellow. This I had never seen flowering before, and
one is not likely to come across it except under circum-
stances as favourable as those which belong to the Irish
climate or to the west coast of Lancashire and Scotland.
It seems almost a platitude to say that it is worth while
going to Ireland to see the great beauty of the Irish Yew,
one of the forms of the Common Yew, Taxus fastigiata. In
old days in Ireland, I am told, it was called the Florence
Court Yew, from Florence Court, where it was raised from
seed about 1780. Seeds of this variety produce for the
most part only the Common Yew, though some vary in
form and tint. All the plants in cultivation are of the
female sex, according to Loudon.

Whatever may be the climatic disadvantages of Ire-
land, such as sunlcssness and damp, the air remains clear
and pure, the soil is unexhausted, and it is free from many
of the agricultural difficulties of other countries. In the
south, at any I'ate, there are no manufactures, no smoke,
no coal-mines, none of those things which injure the atmo-
sphere in parts of England, and make the cultivation of
vegetables and flowers difficult or even impossible. As
in the troubles of individuals few things help more than
sympathy with and an effort to understand the trials of
others, so it is, I think, among nations. If Ireland could
turh her attention to the trials England has gone through
at various epochs of her history, of a kind which

JANUARY 155

Ireland, through the very nature of circumstances, has
escaped, there would be less of that one-sided judgment
which inclines to think that all the woes of Ireland are
peculiarly her own, yet solely due to the rule of the English.
Troubles and difficulties come to all nations alike, and
certainly England herself is in no way exempt. Witness,
for instance, the terrible misery produced by the introduc-
tion of machinery, the cotton famines, and even the legisla-
tion of recent days which stopped the importation of rags
for fear of the cholera. Let those who care for a vivid
picture of such times read an old, forgotten novel by
Benjamin Disraeli, written in the early part of this reign
and called ' Sybil.'

During a short excursion into the country by rail I
was shocked to see how the trees, already less plentiful
than they ought to be, proclaimed that sure sign of
neglect — they were almost invariably covered with Ivy.
This beautiful semi-parasitical plant is very picturesque,
and many people have a sentimental love for it from its
greenness in winter ; but it destroys the trees, and though
it may hasten the end of very old trees to cut the
Ivy down suddenly, it should always be killed on young
trees — by cutting it through the stem at the base and
allowing it to perish and fall away. I am told that one of
the curious effects of the last Land Act is that the pro-
prietors of land imagine they have an unlimited right to
cut down their trees, without considering the evil effects
this will have on the future climate and wealth of their
country. As it is, Ireland has been far too much deprived
of her forests in the past, and I, with the tyranny of one
who imagines that she understands everybody's affairs
better than they do themselves, should make the cutting-
down of trees penal. The wise old Dutch settlers at the
Cape understood this subject well. They made a law
which enforced that every man who cut down one tree

iS6 MORE POT-POURRI

should plant two in its stead. Everybody who has a
little plot of land should never fail every autumn to plant
some acorns, beech-nuts, chestnuts, etc. Many trees will
also strike from cuttings in spring, notably all the Willow
tribe, which grow the moment they are stuck into the
ground. If I were a young Irishman I should delight
in thus renewing the woods and copses of my country.
We know how the Irish love the soil, and the feeling is
not badly expressed in this little poem, which I copied
from an English newspaper:

Often I wish that I might be,

In this divinest weather,
Among my father's fields — ah me 1

And he and I together.

Below the mountains, fair and dim,

My father's fields are spreading :
I'd rather tread the sward with him

Than dance at any wedding.

Oh, green and fresh your English sod.

With daisies sprinkled over,
But greener far were the fields I trod
That foamed with Irish clover.

Oh, well your skylark cleaves the blue

To bid the sun good-morrow !
'Tis not the bonny song I knew

Above an Irish furrow.

And often, often, I'm longing still.

In this all-golden weather.
For my father's face by an Irish hill,

And he and I together.

One of the most beautiful colour-effects I saw in
Ireland was a small lake planted with great clumps of
Dog-wood, with its crimson branches beside the bright
yellow of the Golden Willow.

JANUARY 157

A great deal might be done by a study of the most
suitable Apple-trees to grow in Ireland. There seemed to
me no reason why they should not do as well there as in
Herefordshire or Normandy, but I have been since told
that the want of sun does interfere with their ripening.
This, however, only means that extra study must be given
as to which kinds should be planted. The chief require-
ments of Apple-trees are slight pruning in the winter and
tying round the stem in October a band of sticky paper, to
prevent the female moth, who has no wings, from crawling
up and laying her eggs in the branches, to come to life the
follovnng spring and devour leaves and blossoms. Apples
are most excellent wholesome food. An Apple is quite as
nourishing as a Potato, and a roast Apple with brown
sugar is a far more palatable dinner for a sick child.
Apples very likely might be plentiful in seasons when
Potatoes did badly, and in districts near to markets they
would fetch a much more fancy price. The following
I must have copied out of some old book or newspaper :
' Chemically, the Apple is composed of vegetable fibre,
albumen, sugar, gum, chlorophyll, malic acid, gallic acid,
lime, and much water. Furthermore, the Apple contains
a larger percentage of phosphorus than any other fruit
or vegetable. This phosphorus, says the " Family
Doctor," is admirably adapted for renewing the essential
nervous matter, lethicin, of the brain and spinal cord.
It is perhaps for the same reason, rudely understood,
that old Scandinavian traditions represent the Apple as
the food of the gods, who, when they felt themselves to
be growing feeble and infirm, resorted to this fruit for
renewing their powers of mind and body. Also the acids
of the Apple are of great use for men of sedentary habits
whose livers are sluggish in action, these acids serving
to eliminate from the body noxious matters which, if
retained, would make the brain heavy and dull, or bring

158 MORE POT-POURRI

about jaundice or skin eruptions and other allied troubles.
Some such experience must have led to our custom of
taking Apple sauce with roast pork, rich goose, and like
dishes. The malic acid of ripe Apples, either raw or
cooked, will neutralise any excess of chalky matter
engendered by eating too much meat. It is also the fact
that such fresh fruit as the Apple, the Pear, the Plum,
when taken ripe and without sugar, diminish acidity in the
stomach, rather than provoke it. Their vegetable salts
and juices are converted into alkaline carbonates, which
tend to counteract acidity. A ripe, raw Apple is one of
the easiest vegetable substances for the stomach to deal
with, the whole process of its digestion being completed
in eighty-five minutes. Gerarde found that the " pulpe
of roasted Apples mixed in a wine quart of faire water,
and labored together until it comes to be as Apples and
ale — which we call lambes-wool — never faileth in certain
diseases of the raines, which myself hath often proved,
and gained thereby both crownes and credit. The paring
of an Apple cut somewhat thick, and the inside whereof
is laid to hot, burning, or running eyes at night, when the
party goes to bed, and is tied or bound to the same, doth
help the trouble very speedily, and contrary to expecta-
tion— an excellent secret."

Many people must have asked themselves how, in the
old days long ago, before the Potato came from America,
even the sparse population of Ireland fed itself. I feel
no doubt that the good monks who brought the art of
illuminating and of making the lovely old carved crosses,
also grew their vegetables, and did not find the climate
unfavourable. Probably, however, no other vegetable
will ever now take the place, as an article of food, of the
much-loved Potato ; nor is this in any way to be desired.
Curiously enough, the other day a great London physician
remarked to me, quite independently of Ireland and its

JANUARY 159

troubles, that in his estimation the ideal food for the
human race was Potatoes and skimmed or separated milk,
all the nourishing properties of milk being there, the cream
containing nothing but the fat, which stout people are
better without. It is quite curious how few even educated
people know or believe this. Skimmed or separated milk
is constantly thrown away as useless, or given to the pigs ;
whereas it is very much better for adults than new milk,
if they are eating other foods.

Modern science has made it quite easy, by using pre-
ventives in time, to keep down the Potato disease ; but in
spite of all this certain losses of crops are sure to occur,
and the all-important thing is to cultivate the vegetables
which would probably succeed best in the mild wet
autumns so dangerous to the Potato crop.

"Where land and manure are forthcoming, seeds —
which should be of the best — represent the principal
outlay in the growing of vegetables. It is much more
prudent to make many sowings in succession than to sow
a great quantity at once. It is said that a Cabbage may
grow anywhere and anyhow, that it will thrive on any
soil, and that the seed may be sown every day in the
year. All this is nearly true, and proves that we have a
wonderful plant to deal with, and that it is one of man's
best friends. Linnaeus, the great botanist, mentions
that he found it the only vegetable growing on the borders
of the Arctic Circle. The Cabbage has one persistent
plague only, and that is club or anbury, for which there
is no direct remedy or preventive known ; and the best
indirect way of fighting the enemy is our old friend elbow-
grease or hard work. The crop should constantly be
moved ; never grown twice in the same place, either as a
seed bed or planted out, without well digging or tilling
the ground, putting it to other uses and well manuring
it. All the Cabbage tribe are great consumers, hence

i6o MORE POT-POURRI

the need for abundant manuring. Wherever there are
manure heaps near houses or stables, or in farmyards,
it is very desirable to sink a tub in the ground on the
lowest side of the heap, where the manure has a tendency
to drain, cutting out a nick in the tub to guide in the
liquid, which can be constantly emptied out with a can.
This liquid makes very valuable nourishment for young
vegetables, pot-plants, and in fact all garden produce —
strength in youth being naturally a great help to the
whole crop. Besides its usefulness, this prevents the
untidy wasting of a manure heap.

I am very ignorant of Irish affairs in general, but I
listened vpith extreme interest to all that I could hear
of the co-operative movement now being carried out by so
many farmers in Ireland. I have since kept myself
informed in the matter by taking in that excellent little
weekly paper ' The Irish Homestead.' Mr. WiUiam
Lawler in a long poem in the ' London Year-Book ' for
1898 begins a paragraph on Ireland, of which the first
Unes at any rate do not inappropriately express my wishes
and my hopes for the co-operation of Irish industries :

Oh, Ireland, when your children shall abate
Their love of captious things to study great ;
When you shall let your aspirations lie
Far less in Statecraft than in Industry ;

Then shall your people prosper and advance.

A charming shrub, and new to me, is Escallonia
jHerocladon, which I saw growing on the walls of a house
in Ireland ; it was covered in this mid-winter time with
white flowers rather like a large Privet.

I saw a pretty dinner-table decoration consisting of a
quantity of Jasmimim nudiflorum picked and put in small
glasses with leaves from greenhouse plants. Also an
effective decoration was of Geranium flowers (Pelar-

JANUARY i6i

goniums, red or pink) arranged in saucers full of moss
and — in between these— narrow, pointed glasses with
branches of pink Begonias. A little winter-flowering
Begonia, called Gloire dc Lorraine, has lately come into
fashion. What a term for a flower ! But it is true, and
plants of this Begonia make a charming table decoration
at a time of year when flowers are scarce. They look best
growing in pots. Eoman hyacinths in glasses could be
placed between, and pink shades used for the candles ; or,
for a small table, one plant in the middle would be enough.
The colour, the growth, the shape of the leaves, all make
it charming. I do not yet know if it is difficult to grow
as I have only lately bought a plant.

I did not see it in Ireland, but a shrub that should
never be omitted from any garden, small or large, is
Lonicerafragrantissima. It begins to flower in January,
and continues through February and March. Like every
flower or shrub I know, a little care — such as pruning
and mulching — improves its flowering powers. I had it
here in a neglected state in a shrubbery for years. I only
knew its pretty green leaves, and never guessed what it
was or its early-flowering qualities. But my gardening
ignorance in those days was supreme.

In spite of the time of year I had pleasant days
in Dublin at the College Botanical Garden and also
at Glasnevin, the ' Kew of Dublin.' The little Irises
Stylosa alba and spcciosa were flowering well. They
must be starved ; for if their foliage is good, it means no
flowers. Many kinds of Hellebores were coming into
bloom, some of which I had never seen before. The
warm damp winters are very favourable to January-
flowering plants, and we can scarcely expect to copy
them in Surrey. The rather rare and interesting Daphne
hlagayana was growing to a great size, and covered with
flowers, at Glasnevin. Mr. Robinson describes it as a

i62 MORE POT-POURRI

' beautiful, dwarf Alpine shrub of easy growth.' I have
not found it at all easy; in fact, two out of the three plants
I had have died, and the third looks rather ill. But I
think I tried to grow it too much in the sun ; it also wants
pegging down every year after flowering.

In a country house in Ireland I saw last year for the
first time the reproductions, sanctioned by the Berlin
Government, of Botticelli's illustrations of Dante. I never
knew before that such things existed, or that outline
book-illustration of that kind was so old. The original
drawings had belonged to Lord Ashburnham's collection,
and we in England allowed them to be bought at his sale
by the German Government for 25,000Z.— an unfortunate
result of the law which never allowed the authorities
either of the Print Eoom in the British Museum or of the
National Gallery to keep any money in hand. These
drawings are curious rather than veiy beautiful, and many
of them are unfinished. In the illustrations of Hell and
Purgatory, Botticelli glories in detail ; but the ' Paradiso '
is left almost entirely to the imagination. Dante and
Beatrix sm-rounded by a circle, he himself appearing often
blinded by the rays of light, the whole surrounded by
more circles ; this is all he seems to have dared attempt.

In this same house I was able to turn from these
lineal illustrations of the fifteenth century, with their
delicate though meagre di'aughtsmanship, to the latest
and richest of modern illustrations, the finest colour-
printing that France has been able to produce — the
Tissot Bible. It was not otherwise than satisfactory to
realise that, however much art may have in some respects
deteriorated, these illustrations, artistically and mechanic-
ally, surpassed those particular drawings of the Middle
Ages, though the comparison is an unfair one. It would
be immensely interesting to know w^hat will be thought
of this Tissot Bible in a hundred years.

JANUARY 163

January 6th. — I always order all the kitchen-garden
seeds during January. My method is this — the gardener
marks Sutton's list, and then brings it to me to alter
or add to it any out-of-the-way vegetable. It is most
important to go through the catalogues and order seeds
early in this month. This enables you to get first choice,
and you are then prepared for any kind of weather, and
can sow early if desirable. Also it is easy to make up
omissions later on while still not too late. For all the
flower-seeds that are the result of careful cultivation —
such as Sweet-peas, Mignonette, Asters, Salpiglossis, and
so on — ^the great nurserymen cannot, of course, be sur-
passed in excellence. But for small people who grow a
variety of flowers they are very expensive, as they only sell
large packets of seeds, have few things out of the common,
and hardly any interesting perennials at all. I said before
and continue to say that, for all uncommon seeds, there is
one man without any rival so far as I know, and that is
Mr. Thompson of Ipswich. His catalogue alone is most
descriptive and instructive. It is the only catalogue I know
arranged simply and alphabetically, with a column telling
whether the plants are hardy or half-hardy, tender or per-
ennial, greenhouse, stove, etc. It also is the only catalogue
which gives the approximate height that the plant ought
to reach when grown to perfection. But of course this
varies immensely, as he says himself, with the character
of the soil and situation in which they are cultivated,
especially if grown in pots. With this list and a careful
reference from the things named to the more detailed
accounts in the ' English Flower Garden ' or in John-
son's ' Gardener's Dictionary,' the requirements of all
the plants that are grown in English gardens can be
arrived at. The books will tell you better than the cata-
logue which are the things best worth growing from
seed. But a certain amount of experience and natural

u 2

i64 MORE POT-POURRI

intelligence can never be left out of this kind of study.
Mr. Thompson is also exceedingly obliging about procuring
the seeds of certain wild plants which may not be in his
catalogue, but which are very desirable to grow in rather
large gardens where there is room, such as Tussilago
fragrans and Iris fcetidissima. What amateurs find most
difficult in arranging herbaceous borders — even more diffi-
cult than colour itself — is to acquire suflficient knowledge
of plants to judge of their strength and robustness, and
above all of their relative height. Putting Mr. Eobinson
aside, the only book I know that is full of instruction,
particularly in this respect, is the one I named before with
great appreciation, ' The Botanic Garden,' by B. Maund.
Gardeners and amateurs who are really interested in
the subject are beginning to discover that to grow many
plants successfully, especially in light sandy or gravelly
soils, you must grow them from seed in the same air and
soil in which they are expected ultimately to succeed.
For this you must have three or four small pieces of
ground given up to the purpose — some dry, some wet,
some sunny, some shady, and which will require nothing
but weeding and thinning. Seed-sowing, like all other
planting, requires a great deal of thought and considera-
tion. Some grow up in a few days and, every seed
having germinated, require much thinning, however much
you may imagine you have sown thinly enough. Some
seedlings will transplant perfectly, and not suffer at all in
the move ; others must be sown in place at all risks.
One seed-bed is required that can be left entirely alone
for (say) two years, except for just breaking with a hand-
fork and weeding, as some seeds germinate very slowly.
Where this is known to be the case, with large foreign
seeds it is well before sowing to soak them for twenty-
four hours in warm water and a little oil — or even to
puncture the hard skin, as with Cannas. For instance,

JANUARY 165

I shall certainly soak the seeds of the little Zucchi, a kind
of Vegetable Marrow that I brought from Florence last
year, as it is a plant that in England has to do much
growth in a short time, and it is desirable to get it well
grown on in good time to plant out at the end of May.
The exact time of putting out must depend on the
season, and must be decidedly after that late May
frost which comes every year without fail, and which
in some years does gardens so much harm, though
we all know how this may be guarded against by a
little protection.

I think the multiplicity of nurserymen, small and
great, and the gardeners' sympathy with the trade, have
had much to do with the fact that the sowing of seeds,
except in the case of annuals, has gone so out of fashion.
No matter where T go, it is not one garden in a hundred
that has these permanent small nurseries for seeds or
even for cuttings, or a reserve garden as described before.
And yet I am sure many of the best perennials cannot
be grown at all in a light sandy soil unless they are
grown from seed on the spot, and a great many more are
only to be seen in real perfection if they are treated as
annuals or biennials. The growing of seeds is a work
which an amateur gardener can see to himself — or, indeed,
herself— and I am sure gardening is the healthiest occupa-
tion in the world, as it keeps one much out of doors.
Instead of lolling indoors in comfortable chairs, one moves
about, and with the mind fully occupied all the time.

They sell at the Army and Navy Stores an admirable
little lamp-stove (Eippingille's patent) for heating small
greenhouses. This will keep the frost out of a small
house, and is far easier to manage, for an amateur with a
gardener who goes home at night, than the usual more
expensive arrangement.

There are also small forcing-boxes to put inside a

i66 MORE POT-POURRI

greenhouse or in a room for bringing on seeds in early
spring.

Greenhouse Cyclamens are always useful, and should
be sown early in the year (February or March) in heat.
They should be grown on steadily under glass all the
summer, and kept well watered, then they will flower all
through the next winter. Mr. Thompson sells Cyclamen
seed of the sweet old-fashioned kind, which is rathar diffi-
cult to get from other nurserymen, who all go in for the
giant sizes, and are now spoiling this lovely flower by
doubling it. It is best to grow them every year from seed ;
but if the old plants are sunk out of doors and kept moist
through the summer they flower very well. I have a
large old plant this winter in a hanging basket, and its
appearance is very satisfactory. Some gardeners dry the
bulbs on a greenhouse shelf ; that also answers.

I would advise everyone to try and get the old Prince
of Orange Pelargonium. There is nothing like it, but it is
not easy to get, as gardeners do not understand that it
requires to be treated hke an ordinary flowering Pelar-
gonium, rather than like the hardier sweet-leaved kind.
It wants well cutting back at the end of the summer, and
then growing on in rather more heat than the ordinary
sweet-leaved Pelargoniums. This little care and con-
stantly striking young plants in the summer will prevent
its dying out. Out of the fifteen to twenty kinds of sweet-
leaved Geraniums which I possess, I consider it the
most valuable and the best worth having.

Cuttings of the best French Laurestinus, struck in
May and grown on to a small standard, make excellent
fiUing-up plants for a greenhouse now, and if judiciously
pruned back after flowering, and stood out in half-shade
all the summer, they are covered with large white
flowers at this time of year. When they get too large for
pots or tubs they can be planted out in shrubberies ; if a

JANUARY 167

little protected by other shrubs, they flower as freely as
the common one, and the flower, even out of doors, is
larger and whiter.

After marking Sutton's list I mark Thompson's, as some
of the flower-seeds are best sown early in January. The
difliculty about sowing seeds early is that they want care
and protection for a long time after sowing and before they
can be put out. We are able to sow the hardier annuals
here by the middle of March, especially Poppies, Corn-
flowers, Love-in-the-Mist, Gypsophila, etc. I am sure that,
in this light soil, the second sowing in April never does so
well for early-flowering annuals. Autumn things, on the
contrary, are best not sown till May, or they come on too
early. I never sow Salpiglossis or Nemesia out of doors
and in place till the beginning of May. In favourable
weather Sweet-peas may be sown, like Green Peas, in a
trench out of doors very early in the year.

One of my kind correspondents said she observed I
was not so rich in blue flowers as was desirable, and
named the following. I mean to get all those I do not
already possess. Commelina coelestis, Anchusa italica, A.
capefisis, A. sempervirens, Parochetus comynunis, Phacelia
campanularia. Commelina coelestis does very well in a dry
back-garden of a London house. Broioallia elata is a
most useful annual, and there is a good picture of it in
Curtis's ' Botanical Magazine.' Catananche ccerulea is an
old border perennial, and I have it. Linaria reticulata
is a pretty, small annual ; so is L. aureo-purpurea and
L. hipartita. Omphalodes lucilicB I have tried to get, but
failed, and mean to grow it from seed.

January 8th. — I have read once or twice in the news-
papers that butterflies have been seen from time to time
this mild winter, and now this morning I have caught sight
of one of these Press butterflies, a beautiful large yellow
one, floating over the field as if it were summer,

1 68 MORE POT-POURRI

To-da,} we have been sov.ing, in shallow ridges in our
most favoured border, two or three kinds of early Green
Peas. How this kind of thing draws the seasons together !
I dare say we have much that is disagreeable before us ;
still, when these Peas are ready, it will be leafy June and
spring will be over.

January 9th. — The Iberis that ornaments French
cottage windows and that I called ' Gibraltarica ' in the
first book is not that at all, but I. sempervirens. I have
one in the greenhouse that was cut back all the summer
and potted up in October. It has been in flower three
weeks now, and will go on for a long time. In the spring
I shall cut it well back and plant it out in the reserve
garden. It grows easily from cuttings, and Mr. Thompson,
of Ipswich, keeps the seed. It is, of course, not a choice
plant, but it is an attractive and useful one for those who
have not much convenience for forcing on winter-flowering
things in December and Januai'y. Like many of the
commoner plants, I have never seen it grown as a window
plant in England, though it would do well.

January 12th. — The first little Aconites are out to-day !
This is early Going through January without cold is
rather despairing. I find that even in this dry soil the
Aconites do much better under evergreens and at the
edges of shrubs than in the borders which are manured
and mulched. The borders are too good for them, and
they increase better if not disturbed. I mention this, as
I was so stupidly long in finding it out myself. The
more the uneducated gardening mind cares about a plant,
the more it turns to manure and mulching ; but in many
cases it does more harm than good — notably with Aconites,
Dafi"odils, Scillas, etc. What they all want is moisture
and protection at the growing-time. Drying ever so
much in the summer does them good rather than harm^
and they never do well in a bed that is hosed or watered

JANUARY T69

to suit other things. With the Aconites, our first out-
door friends, come a few Snowdrops. They have never
been planted here in any quantity, and have a tendency
to diminish rather than increase : perhaps mice are
especially fond of them. I am more than ever determined
to plant a large quantity next year; enough, if possible, for
me and the mice too. This Uttle Snowdrop poem has
such an echo of ' The Baby-seed Song ' — a great favourite
in my other book- — that I copy it out of a recent ' Pall
Mall Gazette ' :

SNOWDROP-TIME

' It's rather dark in the earth to-day,'

Said one little bulb to his brother ;
' But I thought that I felt a sunbeam ray —
We must strive and grow till we find the way ! '

And they nestled close to each other.
Then they struggled and toiled by day and by night
Till two little Snowdrops, in green and white,
Rose out of the darkness and into the light.

And softly kissed one another.

In the greenhouse have now been put the first pots of
the lovely double Prunus with its delicate whiteness of
driven snow ; no plant forces better. I said this, or some-
thing like it, before. Never mind, with some plants it is
worth while to repeat myself. In the country I do not
now care to grow Indiarubber plants or Aspidistras, except
to give away. They only remind me of towns, and take a
good deal of room.

I have in the greenhouse several pots of a white
Oxalis — I do not know its distinguishing name — with a
long growth of its lovely fresh green leaves, which can be
picked and mixed with delicate greenhouse flowers, as
they last well in water. It has a white flower in spring,
and the whole plant is very like an improved version of
our Wood Sorrel, Oxalis acetosella. The more I look at
my beautiful old ' Jacquin ' Oxalis book, the more I feel

I70 MORE POT-POURRI

how much interesting greenhouse cultivation is to be had
out of growing several of the best Oxalises. Almost all are
natives of the Cape of Good Hope, which means easy
greenhouse cultivation, and winter or early spring flower-
ing. I shall certainly try to increase my stock, though
one very seldom sees any of them catalogued.

Tradescantias, that I used to grow in pots for London,
I find equally useful here. The common green one is all
but hardy, and flourishes outside by the greenhouse wall.
This, picked and put into a flat glass, grows without roots
in the water in the most graceful manner for weeks to-
gether. A few bits of flower stuck in — such as, for instance,
the Sparmatia africana, which continues to flower better
if constantly picked down to where the fresh buds are
forming — and you have a lovely winter flower arrange-
ment at once : grace of form in the growing leaves, con-
trast in the starry white flowers, colour in the brilliant
yellow shot with red stamens. ' Munstead ' flower-glasses,
as designed by Miss Jekyll (very cheap, and all kinds of
useful shapes), are still to be got at Green & Nephews,
Queen Victoria Street, London, E.G.

The variegated gold-coloured Tradescantia and T.
discolor are useful and pretty, and should never be allowed
to die out or get shabby. They grow so easily at every
joint that they are to greenhouses what certain weeds are
to gardens.

Mr. Smee in his ' My Garden ' recommends Forenia
asiatica as a good stove plant. I have not yet got it, but
mean to do so.

Jamiary IBth. — A tall greenhouse grass called
Cyperus laxus I find easy to grow. It is very pretty
picked in winter and stuck into a bottle behind some
short pieces of bright-coloured flowers. It looks refined,
and if against or near white paint or a white wall its
shadows are pretty, thrown by the lamp through the

JANUARY 171

long evenings. A greenhouse evergreen called Bhodo-
dendron jasminiflorum is worth all trouble. It is in
bloom now, sweet and graceful and not at all common.
All these half-hardy hard-wooded plants I find rather
difficult to keep in health, but I am going to pay much
more attention to their summer treatment. They want
to go out for a month or two: but, to prevent their
getting dry, they must be either sunk in cocoanut fibre, or
surrounded by moss, or covered with straw. If sunk in
the earth, worms are apt to get in. I think they are best
replaced towards the middle of August into the cool
house, where they can be watched. Sinking the small
pot into a larger with some moss between is the best help of
all. There is no fun in growing only the things everyone
can grow, and nothing vexes me like seeing a plant which
came quite healthy from a nurseryman, and in a year
not only has not grown, but looks less well than when it
first came.

The Choisya ternata cut back in May is flowering
splendidly. I wish I had room for eight pots of them
instead of only two. There are several pots with Epi-
phylluvi truncatum in full flower. The flowers are very
pretty when seen close, and look well gathered and
put into small glasses ; but the colour is a little metallic
and magentary. Most greenhouses have them, but few
people manage to flower them well.

Ficus repens is a little, graceful, easily cultivated
greenhouse climber, which hangs prettily in baskets or
creeps along stones in a greenhouse border.

Every year we grow various Eucalyptuses from seed
— some for putting out, and some for retaining in pots —
especially the very sweet Eucalyphis citriodora, which is
in the greenhouse now and is a great help, as it looks
flourishing ; while the sweet Verbenas will have their
winter rest, as they are deciduous, whatever one does — at

172 MORE POT-POURRI

least, so far as I have been able to manage up to now.
But I am not sure that autumn cuttings, gi'own on in
heat, might not remain growing at any rate for part of the
winter. Life is always rather unbearable to my luxury-
loving nature without Lemon-scented Verbena, and I miss
it so in the finger-bowls at dinner, partly because those
few leaves supply what one wants without much trouble
But a little bunch of Violets carefully arranged, and one
Sweet Geranium leaf, especially the Prince of Orange, make
a combination that pleases eveiyone, and they are always
at hand at this time of year.

Janiiary l^th. — In the January number of a charming
little periodical called ' The Sun-children's Budget,' in-
tended to teach young children botany easily and amus-
ingly, there was an account and an illustration of a rare
English wild flower, Pceonia corallina. The coloured print
of it gives the idea that the red may not be of a very pretty
hue ; but this would not matter, as the chief charm of the
plant is the seed-pod. This slightly resembles in shape
the seed-pod of that other charming wild flower the Iris
fcetidissima, also much less grown than it should be in
semi-wild damp places, with its beautiful coral-red seed
and strange-shaped, gaping capsule, so decorative in a
vase in winter. The seed-covered branching growth of
Montbretias mixes well with the twiggy flower-stems of the
Statice (or Sea Lavender). S. latifolia is the best for
winter decoration. To return to Paonia corallhm. I have
been able to get some plants from Mr. Thompson. He
says it is a greedy feeder, that the seeds germinate slowly,
and that the plant grown from seed is long in coming to its
flowering-time. It flowers in May and June, and in the
autumn the brown downy pods open along their inner
side and display the seeds. It seems to be a most rare
wild flower, growing on an island in the Severn. Sir
"William Hooker says it is to be found at Blaize Castle,

JANUARY 173

near Bristol. Gerarde mentions it, and says that he found
it in a rabbit warren at Southfleet in Kent. But in my
edition the editor, Thomas Johnson, is sceptical, and
adds severely : ' I have been told that our author himself
planted that Peionie there, and afterwards seemed to find
it there by accident ; and I do believe it was so, because
none before or since have ever seen or heard of its growing
wild in any part of this kingdom.' The origin of the
botanical word ' Paeonia ' is from one Paeon, the physician
of the Olympian gods, who used the leaves for healing,
notably in the case of Pluto when he was wounded by
Hercules.

January IQth. — Last January someone sent me a
cutting out of ' The Scotsman ' ; it was called ' Floral
Notes from the West Coast of Eoss-shire.' The writer
begins by showing himself extremely proud, as is only
natural, of flowering his Lilium giganteum, nine feet high
and with nineteen perfect blooms on it. He also praises,
what I recommend to everybody, the biennial Michauxia
campanuloides. He says everyone used to exclaim on
seeing it, ' Oh ! what a charming white Lily ! ' The
only way, as I stated before, is to grow it from seed.
Watsonia marginata, according to him, is a lovely plant
which in Scotland can be classed as a hardy perennial.
It a good deal resembles the Sparaxis indchcrrwia ; in fact,
much more so than it resembles the other Watsonias,
which, he says, are shy bloomers. He speaks of another
little favourite of mine, Linaria rcpcns alba, and describes
it — as I have always done — by saying it reminds him
strongly of a Lily of the Valley. It is very easy to grow,
and well worth having. It is seldom found in flower
lists, and he says he got his from Amos Perry, of Winch-
more Hill, Herts. He mentions a pure white Iris
h(Bmpferi in full bloom, and below it a mixed mass of
those new Tigridias {Aivrca and Lilaciiia grandijiora) and

174 MORE POT-POURRI

brilliant blue Commelina. This mixture was hard to
beat. Also the trimming round the base of the Michauxia,
already described, consisted of a variety of Platycodons
or Japanese balloon-plants, in different shades of blue,
mixed with white Swainsonia. All these last-named, with
the exception of the Swainsonia, came from Eoozen's.
Then he says : ' I think I have told you all that I can
remember as being particularly good in 1896.' I thought
he gave such a creditable list that it might interest
others who did not see 'The Scotsman* — good com-
binations being so difficult to get in herbaceous and
bulb gardens. He goes on to say : ' The most strik-
ing flowers grow^n here in 1897 were a collection of
Calochorti. I had tried them previously on a very
small scale, with very small success ; but, knowing
them to be quite a speciality of the Messrs. Wallace of
Colchester, I corresponded with them, and they sent me
a collection of Calochortus bulbs which they thought
would suit, and suit they certainly did, for they gave
us the very greatest pleasure and were the envy and
admiration of everyone else who saw them.' He put his
Calochorti into a border with all the best mixed make-up
soils he could find. Planting them in November, they
flowered the following June. The only trouble from
which they suffered in their infancy was slugs. But slices
of Potato and Turnip acted as counter-attractions, and the
plague was stayed. He says : ' There were about seven
varieties of the Calochorti, and I don't think that in their
own Californian forests they could have done much better.
Anything more perfectly fascinating than a vaseful of Calo-
chorti it would be impossible to grow in a British garden ;
and they last such a long time in water.' He names, with-
out describing them, two other favourites, the first of
which I have, Dracocephalum argumcnse and Vancouveria
licxaiidra, ' both gems in their way.' He goes on ' For

JANUARY 175

those who are fond of rare Tulips I must not forget to
recommend Tulipa kaufmanniana, which I bloomed for the
first time last spring, and which is quite equal in its way
to Tulipa greigi and several other Tulip species which I
have had from time to time from my afore-mentioned
Dutch friends. After the Calochorti, perhaps a bed of
Ixias from the same Haarlem firm was the next best
thing my garden produced in 1897. I find Ixias the very
easiest plants to grow, and this year they were all but as
good as I have ever seen them in Italian gardens. So
marvellously brilliant were they as to be quite dazzling
to the eyes on a sunny day. They have only one fault,
viz. that after flowering in June and ripening off they
begin their next year's growth in October, and so their
young leaves are rather apt to get punished by the black
frosts of spring. The fact is, they suffer from insomnia,
and so by rights they should be lifted in July and made
to sleep, in spite of themselves, on a dark shelf till
planted again in March ; but they do wonderfully well
here even if left to take care of themselves.' It is quite
a relief to hear this wonderfully successful amateur has
difficulties with Lilies. All the same the description he
gives of his own seems to me very like success. He
speaks of the White Martagon (a Lily I am now trying to
grow) and Lilium testaceum as being great favourites
with him. He was struck at Torridon by another plant
which he says does so much better there than with him,
viz. the scarlet and green Alstrmmeria psittacina. The
clumps were almost as strong as sheaves of oats. ' I have
a new variety,' he writes, ' of this parrot flower — a deep
crimson one — which was very good here at the end of
November.' But if I go on I shall end by quoting the
whole of this most interesting gardening letter. I hope
the anonymous writer, who dates from Inverewe Poolewe,
where the climate must be such as to make any gardener

176 MORE POT-POURRI

jealous, will forgive this long quotation extracted by a
sincere admirer, though unknown fellow-gardener.

Since writing the above I have been sent another
letter from a January ' Scotsman ' of this year (1899)
The opening sentence is so original and suggestive for
anyone who has a garden capable of being easily extended
that I quote it as it stands : ' My garden having become
quite filled up, I have for the last few years taken to
enclosing bits of rough ground inside the policies (or the
domain, as they would call it in Ireland), and have gone
somewhat enthusiastically into shrubs. I have now
three of these small enclosures, and each one seems more
or less to suit some particular class of plant. My
" Fantasy " is hard and gravelly, and suits the Genista
and Citisus tribes very well. My " Eiviera " is very
sunny and with good soil, and in it I grow my rarest
exotics ; and " America," my latest creation, being more
peaty, damp, and shady, like a wee bit of the back-woods,
has been given over to the so-called American plants —
Rhododendrons, Azaleas, Andromedas, Kalmias, Heaths,
and, besides these. Magnolias, Bamboos, and very many
other things ; so many, indeed, that besides the sixty
Azaleas which fill a bed in the centre, there are a hundred
and seventy kinds of rare plants in it, gathered from
most of the Temperate portions of our globe ; and, with one
or two exceptions, I must say they appear very promis-
ing, considering my little " America " was only colonised
in April last.' He then details his triumphs : ' My
greatest this summer was my flowering abundantly the
rare and beautiful Chilian shrub the Crinodendron
hookeri. I got it from Mr. Smith at Newry, and planted
it in my " Riviera " in the spring of 1897 ; it stood last
winter well, and eai'ly in June it blossomed freely. We
have but few shrubs with crimson flowers, the blooms of
so many of them being either vvhite or yellow. But the

JANUARY 177

Crinodendron is a grand exception. Its nearest neigh-
bours on each side of it consist of plants of the Ahutilon
vitifolium and Carpenteria californica, both of which stood
the winter ; and the former, from having come on so well,
will be bound to flower next season. It has a great
name now, especially in Ireland, for hardiness and for its
beautiful blossoms. I possess in my " Eiviera " a number
of things, of which I know little or nothing, with queer
names, such as Coprosmas, Collestemons, Aristotelias>
Pittosporums, Eaphiolepis, Agalmas, Styrax, Indigoferas,
etc. ; and, in spite of their names, I must say they look
happy.'

As from the other letter, I only extract what seems to
me most interesting. ' I must now tell the contents of
my Azalea bed, already referred to, all of which I got
from M. Louis van Houtte of Ghent. There are sixty
plants in sixty different varieties or species. There are
single and double hardy Ghent Azaleas, and single Azalea
mollis, and double hybrids of Mollis. They occupy
the bed, with the exception of a clump of Phyllostachis
viridi glaucescens and Phyllostachis mitis (Bamboos)
in the centre, and I can truly say there was not a bad
plant or a bad variety among the lot, and every one of
them was full on arriving. If anyone wants a brilliant
edging to a Ehododendron bed, let me commend to them
Azaleas, Fritz Quihou and Gloria Mundi ; the former is
of an extraordinarily dazzling crimson. Many people are
of the opinion that the flowering season of Azaleas is
short and soon over, but this would not happen if they
got a good selection from M. van Houtte. I see from my
diary that the first Azaleas expanded with me on May 18th,
and they did not finish till July 24th, so that they lasted
more than nine weeks. About the last to open were the
pink and the crimson doubles. Bijou de Gendbruggen and
Louis Aim& van Houtte, and the lovely species Sinensis

N

178 MORE POT-POURRI

florc alba only began to expand on July IGth. For those
who like species, Azaleas Occidcntalis and Arborescens are
both very interesting

' I have a great love of Heaths, but have not got
many of them. After considerable trouble I got some
good plants of Erica arborea from Newiy, which we had
so much admired on the hillsides of Corsica. They seem
to do very well here, and two of them bloomed this
summer ; but whether they will grow into trees in my
" Eiviera," as they do on the shores of the Mediterranean,
I cannot yet tell. Erica australis, Erica mediterranea,
and the Cornish Heath {E. vagans) are, like the Hydran-
geas, delightful in late autumn, and so is the white
Irish Dahoecia polifolia, of which we can hardly have
too much

' I have, I think, merely alluded to the Genistas, and
most people know, besides the common yellow, the White
Portugal and the Yellow Spanish so-called Broom, which
is, however, not really a Genista, but a Spartium, though
it looks so like a Broom, and is very showy late in the
season, when the Common Broom is over. The low-
gi'owing real Genista his'panica is a very useful little plant.
Those who have not got the Broom with the crimson lip
(G. andreana), nor the cream-coloured hybrid {G. prcecox),
should not fail to get them both, as they are an immense
acquisition to our hardy flowering shrubs.

' To-day I have been reminded of a nice plant of
Eugenia ugni, a kind of Myrtle which has stood out
some years against the terrace wall of my garden, and
which bloomed and ripened its fruit so well that I have
lately sent a sample of its fragrant berries to a friend in
Switzerland. The scent and flavour remind one of both
Strawberries and Pineapple with a slight mixture of Bog
Myrtle.' I hope no one will confound this description of
a Scotch garden with what I am able to do in dry Surrey.

JANUARY 179

January 20th. — It is a constant disappointment to me
that I cannot get the Tussilago fragrans called Winter
Heliotrope, with its delicious fragrant spikes of flowers, to
bloom here. It is quite hardy, and a weed supposed to
grow anywhere, but I never get anything except a few
leaves. This of course is in consequence of the dryness,
the poorness of the soil, and the want of shade, as it has
such a weedy growth I cannot put it into any good
border. It is a distinct loss, not getting these flowers in
mid-winter. I should recommend everyone who has a
damp corner to try and grow them. They are not showy,
but when picked their delicious scent will pervade a
whole room.

Eue, which is sometimes grown in kitchen gardens,
though I think seldom used now in cookery, is hardly ever
grown in shrubberies, where it makes in winter a charming
feature. I find few people know that the French name for
the plant is exactly the same as in English. Some people
think the strong odour disagreeable, but I myself think it
delicious. It is very useful to pick for winter bouquets,
and the beautiful gray-blue of its foliage contrasts well
with ordinary evergreens. If picked hard, that is as good
as cutting it back, and only promotes its growth. It is
very easy to grow — either from cuttings, divisions of the
tufts, or seeds. Dryness, though making it look rather
poor in summer, does it no harm for the next winter.
Another plant that does admirably here in the light soil is
Santolina (Lavender Cotton), and should always be grown
for its pretty hoary foliage. It mixes well with some
flowers, and is one of those plants that surprises one by
its absence from any garden.

The lower part of the stage iu my larger greenhouse —
I do not mean my little show one near the drawing-room
— has been a veritable widow's cruse for me this winter.
We have constantly had Mushrooms from our bed covered

n2

i8o MORE POT-POURRI

with its sheet of corrugated iron that I mentioned
before.

Lately we have had lots of Sutton's winter salad,
Tarragon, Chives, etc.. Cress — I do not like Mustard —
Ehubarb, and Sea-kale. The Watercress in boxes, de-
scribed before, has done admirably in the frame. My
gardener is getting extremely clever at forcing things
in this way through the winter. Early in this month,
lunching with a neighbour, we had an excellent dish —
the best I have ever seen — of forced green Asparagus. I
think next year I must try and grow this too.

In my opinion, Leeks are far too little used in general
by English people. Most English cooks only use them
as a flavouring for soup or boiled beef. They are really
excellent stewed, and very good raw, cut up with Beetroot,
especially if not the large coarse kind recommended in
most of the English catalogues. The Long Winter Leek
{Poireau long d'Hiver de Paris) is quite distinct from all
other kinds. It is very delicate, quite small, withstands
the winter well, and is the only kind that produces those
fine, very long, slender Leeks which are seen m bundles
early in the year in the Central Market at Paris. In
Prance, gardeners help Nature a little by earthing up
the plants while they are growing. It can be chopped
up fine with other salad herbs when Chive tops are not
to be got unless they are forced. The Wild Leek
(the Allium anipeloprasum) still grows, I believe, in
parts of Wales, and is, as to form and tint, beautiful and
decorative. It is, of course, well known as the Welsh
emblem.

Janiuary 27th. — I have on my flower table a shrubby
Begonia in a pot with small, pointed, spotty leaves and
hanging white flowers. They are easily reared from seed,
and I do think they grow so beautifully and can be pruned
into such lovely shapes ! They are far more beautiful

JANUARY i8i

than those great, flat, floppy, opulent, tuberous-rooted
ones that flower in the summer. The parent of my plant
(mossy green leaves, spotted silvery-white) must have
been called B. alba picta.

The white Arums which were laid on their side all the
summer in the pots and well dried are handsomer plants,
and throwing up more flowers, than I have ever had before
when they were planted out in summer.

In this dry frosty weather we thin and prune out the
shrubberies. Every plant is given a fair chance or else
cut down. Taking all suckers from the Lilacs improves
them immensely. How seldom it is done !

January ^Qth.- — There is nothing like a date and a
detailed account of the weather for accentuating a garden
fact. We have had lately several days of frost, and
we had to-day for luncheon so excellent a green vege-
table that both gardener and cook had immediately
to be interrogated as to details. The gardener said it
was grown from Sutton's hardy-sprouting Kale called
' Thousand-headed,' and I see in a note to the catalogue
that ' the Borecoles thrive better in poor soil than most
vegetables.' This naturally accounts for their being
good-tasting here. In Vilmorin's list they are described
as a cattle-feeding plant of large size, and bearing frost
extremely well. The cook informed me that she had cut
the green of the leaf carefully off the stalk, and then
cooked it exactly like Spinach. I give my cook the credit
for cutting it off the stalk, as I had never suggested it.
The result was most satisfactory.

Keceipts

An excellent way to improve northern or frozen game,
of which a great deal is now sold, is to lay the birds in a
bath of milk for twenty-four hours, changing the milk

i82 MORE POT-POURRI

twice. They are then roasted in the ordinary way and
are excellent.

A good way of cooking potatoes in winter is to steam
them ^vithout their skins. Then melt some very good
fresh butter in a small iron saucepan, and to this add
a good lot of onions shredded verj^ fine, and fry till a
good mahogany-brown, not black. Put the potatoes in a
very hot fireproof dish, and pour the hot butter and
onions over them just before serving.

Parsnips. — Everj'body grows parsnips so far as I
can make out, and hardly anyone ever eats them, except
now and then with boiled pork and with salt cod on Good
Friday. They are very good in England, as our mild
winters enable us to leave them in the ground, which
makes them much better than if they had been stored in
sand or ashes. Here is a receipt for anyone who does
not dislike parsnips and does hke curry : Boil some fine
parsnips whole, without cutting them, wash and brush
them, and put into just enough boiling water to cover
them. Simmer till tender and till the water is nearly
evaporated — about one hour and a half. Tear the
parsnips into fine shreds with two forks. Sprinkle with
cloves and a little dusted sugar. Have prepared apart a
currj- sauce. (See p. 252, ' Pot-Pourri.') Pour this over
the parsnips, wann up together and serve vdth boiled Patna
rice in a dish apart.

Mutton Cutlets a la Russe.— Braise the cutlets.
The sauce is made as follows : One stick of horse-
radish scraped, four shallots, one bay-leaf, a little thyme,
a little raw ham chopped, a little nutmeg, pepper and
salt, one dessertspoonful of sugar, a tablespoonful of
vinegar, the same quantity of sherry, and one ounce of
butter. Simmer it over a slow fire for twenty minutes,
then add a little white sauce, the yolks of two eggs, and
a little cream. Stir over the fire until it begins to simmer ;

JANUARY 183

then pass it through a hair-sieve and spread on one side
of the cutlets. Strew on a little Parmesan cheese, and
brown the cutlets in the oven. Dish them up with a little
good gravy.

Open Apple Tart. — For this it is necessary to have
a small round iron plate, flat with a very narrow rim, as
used abroad. In the country you can have them made,
and in London you can buy them at the good shops.
They must not be made of tin. Line this with a puff-paste,
and have a deep rim of paste all round. Prepare a compote
of good rich apple, reduced till dry enough to mix in a
small quantity of fresh butter. If at all lumpy the apple
must first be passed through a sieve. Pour this on to
the pastry, then peel and cut a quince into very thin, neat
slices. Lay these on the apple in circles till you nearly
reach the middle. Bake the puree in the oven till the
pastry is cooked without burning. Serve very hot, or
quite cold.

i84 MORE POT-POURRI

FEBBUABY

Mistresses and servants —Difficulty of getting servants — Girls
instead of boys — Registry Offices — The employments that do not
take up characters — Early rising — Baron Humboldt— Covering
for larders — Blackbeetles— Children's nurses — Ignorance of
young married women — Some natural history books — Forcing
blossoming branches — Horticultural Show — Letter from San
Moritz — Receipts.

Last year in February'' I wrote a little article on
mistresses and servants in the ' Cornhill Magazine.' It
was called forth by the report of a case in the Divisional
Court which seemed interesting at the time. The point at
issue was whether a servant was entitled to give notice at
any time within the first fortnight of her service, so as to
enable her to leave at the end of the first month. The
judgment did not settle the law of the case. My friends
complained that I more or less put forth the difficulties
of the present day with regard to mistresses and servants
— especially the difficulty of the insufficient supply of
servants — but that I suggested nothing new by way of a
solution. As the question is one of very general interest,
I think I will quote some part of the article, adding a
few practical suggestions which have occurred to me
since.

Servants may, and often do, get into situations which
turn out to be entirely different from what they have
been led to expect. It may be even that they find
themselves in a ' bad ' house ; or with a drunken mistress ;

FEBRUARY 185

or, what is still more common with a young girl, under
a drunken cook, whom the mistress still believes in ; or
under a foreign man-cook whose manners are disagree-
able to her, but who gets very angry at her insisting on
leaving when he wants to keep her. He then abuses her
to the mistress, who is angry and put out at her wishing
to go, and refuses to give her a character or pass on the
one she received with her. All these and many similar
cases are very hard on servants, who as a rule cannot
afford to bring the case before the County Court Judge,
and who would probably have little to adduce as proof, even
if they could ask for help and protection. We all suffer
from the well-known faults of servants, but we are apt
often to forget how much there is to be said on the other
side. With us it is a case more or less of expense and
inconvenience ; with them it is their actual livelihood.

I shall, I believe, be accused of seeing the question
too much from the servants' point of view. But have we
not all from our youth up heard of the selfishness, the
ingratitude, the wastefulness, the idleness of servants?
And each generation pronounces them to be worse than
they ever were before. I can remember the time when
servants were first expected to be clean, but baths were
not provided ; and to use the bath-room, which was done
on the sly, was thought as great an impertinence as if
they had asked for dessert every day after dinner.

Customs change, but the big fact always remains the
same — that the relation between master and servant is,
and must always be, one of self-interest. Within limits,
each tries to get the best of the bargain. One pays to
command; the other receives to obey. The most self-
denying Christian principles are of no avail. Carried to
a logical conclusion, these principles would lead to the
Christian mistress doing the work and the idle maid
going to bed ; or the humble Christian servant declaring

i86 MORE POT-POURRI

that her work was a pleasure, and that she could not
possibly take her wages. No, we are — on both sides — just
as selfish as we dare be. And this self-interested bargain
between masters and servants can only be settled on
each individual case. The merits on each side must,
according to one of the oldest of symbols, be placed in the
scales ; and the noble, majestic, upright figure of Justice
must hold out her arm and adjust the balance.

We never get beyond this, and it is the only escape
from the greatest of tyrannies — the power, either by
gold or by force, of one human being over another. This
power it ynll ever be the business of civilisation to rule
and to diminish. This in our day is the business, first
of the master of a house ; or, when he has the chance, of
the County Court Judge.

The temptation to give false or partially false charac-
ters is a very great one to young and kind-hearted people.
As in so many other cases, the public themselves are
responsible for this — so many people like being deceived,
and look upon truth as naked and barbaric. If a mistress
gives an honest character, not all praise, in nine cases
out of ten the servant fails to get the place. This state
of things is unreasonable and ridiculous ; and if those
about to engage a servant would ask for the chief failing
of the person they are going to admit into their families,
they would be better able to judge if the servant were
likely to suit them or not. I remember many years ago
being asked if I knew of a young nurse who was to have
every good quality under the sun. She was to be strong,
she was to ask for no holidays, she was never to leave
the children to associate with the other servants, her
temper was to be perfect, and so on. I wrote back that
such a combination of good qualities as was expected for
twenty pounds a year I had never yet met with in any
young mother. A con'esponding story is of a lady who

FEBRUARY 187

wrote to a French friend for a holiday tutor. He also
was to be a lump of perfection. The Frenchwoman
wrote back : ' Je ferai tout mon possible, mais si je
trouve ton homme je I'epouse.'

A wit of fifty years ago used to say : ' I marry my wife
for her money, I engage my footmen for their looks, as
those are the only two things that can possibly be known
beforehand.' As is common enough with a cynical
remark, there is a good deal of truth in this.

Now we come to what I consider to be one of the
greatest changes that has occurred of late years, viz.
the extreme facility for women getting employment with-
out any character at all; that is to say, without any
prying into the private conduct or personal characteristics
of any individual. For example, all shops and Stores,
laundries and many other houses of business, engage
their employes from their general appearance and the
account they give of themselves. If they do not do their
work, if they are insubordinate or unpunctual, they are
dismissed on Saturday night — sometimes even without the
usual week's notice and without any reason being assigned.
This often appears a great hardship, but my point is that
one of the chief objections to domestic service is that
from the very start some sort of recommendation is
required from someone who is supposed to be in a
responsible position. I do not say this is not necessary,
but I do think the custom might be considerably relaxed,
with advantage to everybody. The usual characters
given are often clever skating on very thin ice, and
convey little real knowledge of the servant's faults or
merits. Servants, like other people, have undoubtedly
the defects of their virtues, and the wise way is to make
up our minds what we are prepared to give up. If we go
in for youth and good looks, we can scarcely hope for the
qualities we may expect to find in age and ugliness. In

i88 MORE POT-POURRI

considering the merits of a situation, the more educated
mind should not fail to look at it from the point of view
of the servant.

After leaving school, village as well as town, girls in a
great number of cases are kept at home for a few years
by their mothers. This gives them a love of freedom and
amusement which singularly unfits them for the discipline
of domestic service. It might be a possible bridging of
the difficulty if it became usual for each family, according
to its position, to keep fewer permanent servants and
give, as a matter of course, more outside help, each of a
specialised kind, to be got from girls who have lately left
school and whose mothers would probably not at all
object to their earning a little money and doing outside
work — let us say, up to two o'clock. A girl who was a
good needlewoman at school might be used once a week
to repair linen or to do any other casual mending. I
heard lately of a young housekeeper, tired of boys who
did their work badly, having obtained excellent assistance
from a schoolgirl of sixteen whom she trained to clean
boots, knives, and lamps every morning. A beginning of
this kind might, I think, greatly increase the much-
needed supply, and above all create a means of direct
communication between the poor and rich, which is still
one of the great wants of the day in spite of all the
charitable ladies. Some people would suggest that it
might bring infection into the house ; but I really think
that the risk is no greater than with everything else in
London. There is always a proportion of risk — in the
street, the ' Underground,' the omnibus, the Zoological
Gardens, the bread, the meat, and above all the milk.

A proof of the exceeding difficulty that many have in
getting employment is to be seen in the large numbers
that, exist of those terrible harpies called Eegistry Offices,
the very maintenance of which depends on robbing the

FEBRUARY 189

poor girls who seek employment just at the moment they
can least afford it. I could quote story on story of how
six, seven, or eight shillings are taken from a country girl
without the smallest return to herself ; indeed, in some
cases they simply retain any written references which she
may have given into their charge at their request. I
believe an effort is being made to meet this difficulty by
an association called ' The Guild of Eegistries,' and it
certainly appears to be sadly wanted.

A new agency has been lately stai'ted on rather
different lines in Derby Street, Mayfair, and conducted
by three house-stewards who have lived many years at
the head of large households. Their idea is that they are
perhaps better judges of the kind of servants applying for
situations than those with less experience can be. Also
they mean to get introductions to clergymen and the
heads of schools all over the country, so as to help girls
from villages who wish to go into service. The experi-
ment seems to me an interesting one.

Things must still be very wrong when the proportion
of people who keep servants is so very small, and that of
the poor population so very large, and yet we continually
meet with the complaint that servants, especially under-
servants, are so difficult to find.

As we get older, we most of us step into shoes we
should have vowed in our youth we never would put on,
and each one in his generation sees some progress in
civilisation which has ruined servants, and feels that good
servants are far more rare and difficult to find than they
were twenty, thirty, or (say) fifty years ago. Good
servants — by which I mean unselfish, devoted human
beings — are never likely to be a great glut in the market.
But then are extra good, judicious, sensible masters and
mistresses so very common ?

Of all the deadly-dull subjects of conversation among

I90 MORE POT-POURRI

women, the deadliest is the abuse of servants ; and few
seem to realise that it is practically self-condemnation,
as in the long run bad servants mean bad mistresses, or
at any rate mistresses with unsympathetic natures and
without the talent to rule firmly but not tyrannically.

"When we think of servants' homes and training, and
how their youth has been passed, especially in large
towns, and how they are suddenly brought to face
unaccustomed luxury and high feeding, and to live an
exciting life of society among themselves, the ceaseless
wonder to me always is that servants are as good as they
are, and keep as ' straight ' as they do, more especially as
they are very often set a bad example by the people
they serve. In large households where there are many
— and consequently idle — menservants, keeping up a high
standard of morality is hopeless, or at least very difficult.
The constant absence from home so common to-day is one
of the great causes of unsatisfactory establishments.

Under-servants in moderate-sized houses are the ones
that excite my pity. It is always ' the girl ' who is to do
this and that, the half-up and half-down drudge who has
two or three people who think they have an absolute
right over her ; or ' the boy ' who is to have all work and
no play. It is on the same principle, I suppose, as the
' fag ' at school. ' I had to do it once, so now I will
make someone else do the same.' Petty love of power
and cruelty is so inherent in human nature ! As was re-
counted some time ago in the ' Spectator,' ' I'll learn you
to be a toad ! ' — the remark of a small urchin as, stone in
hand, he eyed the offending reptile.

One of the many causes of disappointment about
servants is, that those people who treat them with kind-
ness and consideration expect in return more gratitude
than the circumstances admit.

I remember a friend who had been good to a little

FEBRUARY 191

Swiss nurserymaid, and reproached her for leaving her
to go to another situation with sUghtly higher wages.
The girl put out her hands, shrugged her little shoulders,
and said : ' Mon Dieu ! madame, que voulez-vous ? J'ai
quitt6 ma mfere pour cela ! ' How true it was ! And not
only her mother, but her green Swiss valley, vnth the
beautiful sunlit mountains all round— to live in London
with its smoke and its darkness ! My friend was con-
vinced, and said no more.

Servants stick very closely to what they consider their
own duty, but I have never found servants object to any-
thing if told of it beforehand. They do not like unexpected
duties sprung upon them, and this is merely a safe rule
for their own protection. But the mistress of a house must
reserve to herself the right to ask a servant to do any-
thing, and if the refusal is at all impertinent there is
nothing for it but to part. There is reason, too, for this
irritating attitude of servants declaring they will not do
work they have not been engaged to do. The common-
sense of the matter protects them from each other, as
one masterful, selfish servant would get all her work
done for her by another (as boys get their lessons done at
school), if public opinion amongst themselves were not
strongly against such a shuffling of duties.

Servants almost always behave admirably when their
common humanity is affected. At times of sorrow or joy,
births and deaths, or any sudden change and loss of
fortune, they are shaken out of their attitude of habitual
selfishness. But as time goes on they resent the position
being different from what they undertook when engaged,
and think it better to make a change.

One of the things that seems a remnant of other days,
and strikes servants themselves as being particularly^
tyrannical, is being expected to attend family prayers,
whether they like it or not, and that, too, in the midst of

192 MORE POT-POURRI

their morning work. But the attitude of mind and the
ways and customs of servants are as incomprehensible to
us as are those of the gipsies ; and to worry and hurry
people who have not our views, whose laws are not ours,
whose morality is not ours, whose customs are not ours,
is a most useless tyranny, be it directed against gipsies
or against servants. These manners and customs have
grown up and are repeated by servants over and over
again, in a way that they themselves often do not under-
stand. One of their invariable rules, which is often
commented on, is that servants — almost without excep-
tion— refuse to eat game. It is generally supposed that
this is because game does not cost their masters and
mistresses actual money. This is so foolish a reason I
cannot believe it to have been the origin of the objection.
I feel it is far more likely that in the days before rail-
ways, when game travelled slowly, it was the fashion
for everybody to eat high game ; but when it got past
sending to table — unbought luxury though it was — the
thrifty housekeeper suggested to the cook that the servants
might have it. They had far better opportunity than the
master upstairs of judging what state it was in, and I
confess I am not surprised that as a body they declined
to make their dinner off it. And so that mysterious thing
— a custom — grew up for servants not to eat game.

Servants, even the best and most devoted, vdll not
' tell of each other.' It is useless to expect it ; just as
useless as a master expecting boys to tell tales at a
public school. And on the whole this is a good rule even
for ourselves. If a system of tale-bearing could be estab-
lished, it would make life unbearable for all of us.

An eternal complaint against servants is about early
rising. I believe a number of people have no doubt
that fifty or sixty years ago (which is, I fancy, the time
when rather young people think old-fashioned servants

FEBRUARY 193

lived) they all got up early. We are certainly not the
worst among the nations, but I do think that late rising
amounts almost to a national fault. These things are
greatly the result of climate ; but to insist on maids getting
up in the dark, when there is very little to do, and to give
the order that the kitchen fire is to be lit at 6.30, when
the family do not breakfast till nine or half-past, seems
to me almost tyrannical, though we have a perfect right
to expect that the water should be hot and the breakfast
ready at whatever time we choose to order it. For two
months in the winter I always postpone the breakfast
hour from eight to half-past, and I always use — for health
reasons — cold water all the year round ; but I never have
the slightest difficulty in getting breakfast punctually at
eight, though I feel quite sure of one thing, that if I did
not get up early no one else would. It seems a relief to
some people's consciences to insist ou the early rising of
others when they lie in bed late themselves. Servants
are the first to remember that they can go to bed early
when very often their masters and mistresses cannot. I
think all of us shorten our living hours by taking more
sleep than is at all necessary. As an example of the
strength of some men, Mr. Max Miiller mentions that the
great Baron Humboldt complained that as he got old he
wanted more sleep — ' four hours at least. When I was
young,' he continued, * two hours of sleep was enough for
me.' Mr. Max Miiller ventured to express his doubts,
apologising for differing from him on any physiological
fact. ' It is quite a mistake,' said Humboldt, ' though it
is a very widely spread one, to think that we want seven
or eight hours' sleep. When I was your age I simply lay
down on the sofa, turned down my lamp, and after two
hours' sleep was as fresh as ever.'

Of all servants chat I have known in my life, the ones
I have admired and respected most are the children's

o

194 MORE POT-POURRI

nurses. The love and devotion they give to children not
their ovsm is extraordinary. The highest life v^hich
George Eliot could imagine for ' Romola,' after the dis-
appointment and failure of her own life, was to attend and
minister to the children of others. Nurses will often
refuse to leave children, even when it is for their interest
to do so, knowing all the same, quite well, the time will
come when the children will leave them, as an animal
leaves its mother when it no longer wants her. I asked
a nurse of this type once, when she was getting old, why
she had never married. ' Oh, m'um,' she said, ' can't you
guess ? I had passed my life in the nursery amongst
ladies and gentlemen ; my own class who wished to
marry me were distasteful to me, and I was too proud for
anything else.' This last half-sentence, with its faint
allusion to having once loved someone above her, touched
me supremely. Servants must so often pass through a
temptation of the kind — pride in those they love being such
a great stimulus to the affection and constancy of women.
I think it is very desirable that children should early come
downstairs for their meals, and the nurse go to hers
with the other servants. She does not very often like
this ; but it is for her good, and much more for her own
happiness, that she should not lose touch with her class
and isolate herself on a slightly raised position, which,
from the very nature of the circumstances, can only lead
to unhappiness.

Nothing is of more importance than to help servants
with their money affairs. They are very ignorant and
very improvident, though often very generous. The
extravagant servant will listen to no reason about putting
by for the 'rainy day,' and the best among themselves con-
stantly help to support some of their ovm relations. If they
are willing and the mistress is tactful, talking over their
aii'airs is often of great use, especially in giving them an

FEBRUARY 195

idea what to do with their savings, if they have any ; as, like
other classes, they constantly lose their money in unfor-
tunate investments offering high interest, and sometimes
are even attracted to do this by ' big ' names on the pro-
spectus, often those of connections of their employers,
which they look upon as a guarantee for security.

Whenever depression comes upon me from associat-
ing with those who are complaining about the ways and
fashions of the time they live in and the ruin of their own
generation, whether in the classes above or those below
them, I fly to some of the books of the eighteenth century,
and never fail to get the consolation I require. What
has received the greatest abuse in my time is the Board
School education and the destruction it has wrought
amongst those who become domestic servants. I myself
totally disbelieve this. First of all, those who go into the
higher schools are very few in number, and nothing is so
important in a free country as that all should have the
power to rise, if their talents fit them for it. Here is
a sentence of Oliver Goldsmith's, in one of his essays.
In his time it was a higher class that met with his
disapproval, but it reminds me of remarks that I am
constantly hearing now about those who used to be
called ' the uneducated ' :

' Amidst the frivolous pursuits and pernicious dissipa-
tions of the present age a respect for the qualities of the
understanding still prevails, to such a degree that almost
every individual pretends to have a taste for the Belles-
Lettres. The spruce 'prentice sets up for a critic, and
the puny beau piques himself on being a connoisseur.
Without assigning causes for this universal presumption,
we shall proceed to observe that if it was attended with
no other inconvenience than that of exposing the pretender
to the ridicule of those few who can sift his pretensions,

o2

196 MORE POT-POURRI

it might be unnecessary to undeceive the pubhc, or to
endeavour at the reformation of innocent folly productive
of no evil to the commonwealth.'

Spending youth in school may prevent a young servant
from knowing her duties as a servant so well as if she
had been brought up at home ; but, on the other hand,
being moderately well educated makes it far easier to
learn, and I maintain that with a very little practical
teaching the modern schoolgirl makes an excellent
servant. But no one can have a well-ordered house on a
small scale who is constantly leaving home or constantly
changing servants. An indijfferent servant who knows
your ways is better than the good servant who is quite
fresh to the work in your house. Leaving home often
means a badly kept house, of that I am sure, unless many
members of the family remain at home and give plenty of
employment to everybody. Then perhaps the real mistress
of the house may be very little missed.

The fulness of life, the selfishness of life, often prompt
the modern housewife to throw up the sponge, to rush
away to the idleness of the hotel or the lodging ; but it is
a cowardly vdsh — a wish, except in real bad health, to be
ashamed of. Our troubles and sorrows, be they real or
imaginary, go with us, and our only usefulness is at home.
Here is a poem written by one of that brave trio, the
Bronte sisters — Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte) — which, if not
so subtle as Lionel Tennyson's ' Sympathy,' has a strong
ring about it — that hand-shake in life's way which helps
so many :

SYMPATHY

There should be no despair for you

While nightly stars are burning,
While evening pours its silent dew,

And sunshine gilds the morning.

FEBRUARY 197

There should be no despair, though tears

May flow down like a river.
Are not the best beloved of years

Around your heart for ever ?

They weep, you weep ; it must be so :

Winds sigh as you are sighing,
And winter sheds its grief in snow

Where autumn leaves are lying.

Yet these revive, and from their fate

Your fate cannot be parted.
Then journey on, if not elate,

Still never broken-hearted !

I am told by young married women that so very
much attention has been given to cooking of late that
most girls of the leisured classes now know something
about it, or at any rate turn to books or go to some school
of cookery to learn ; but that they are quite ignorant about
training servants in other work, especially inexperienced
girls who have done more schooling than cleaning in their
childhood, and who think anyone can be a housemaid.
There is excellent instruction on many points in that
book I named before, ' How to be Happy though Married.'
It dwells, however, rather on management of husband and
house than actually on teaching the servants their duties.
A really well-housemaided room requires but very rarely
that terrible turning-out — when everything is upside down
for a day, and things are mislaid, and some things are
never found again — which is the terror of all masters
and mistresses. Two things are essential in a well-kept
house, and unfortunately they war against each other ;
one is continually having plenty of open windows, and
the other is a prevention of any accumulation of dust.
This can only be fought by continual wiping and dusting.
When the mistress of a house is looking through cup-
boards and larders, and insisting that they should be well

198 MORE POT-POURRI

aired, the servant's view is that then ' so much dust gets
in.' And yet by a 'cussedness ' peculiar to themselves they
constantly leave ice-safes open, which of course — to act
properly — should be kept tightly closed, and never opened
at all except for the minute when things are taken out or
put in. Vv^hen the ice is melted they should always be
carefully cleaned out. The following is, I consider, a
good way of keeping things from dust in a larder without
shutting the windows : Instead of the usual perforated
tin covers, which get rusty and shabby and cannot be
cleaned, I have neat covers of all sizes (made at home)
of rather thick zinc wire, and then I cover these with
clean butter-muslin, which can be renewed or washed
directly it gets dirty. They should have a twisted zinc
wire handle at the top, to lift the cover on and off quite
easily. The principle is the same as the outdoor covers
for keeping off spring frost on young plants, recommended
in my former book.

The real fault of all the houses I go into to-day, my own
included, though less so than some, is that they are far
too full. Things are sure to accumulate. Avoid rubbish,
frills and valances, draperies and bows, and all the
terrible devices of the modern upholsterer. They all mean
dust and dirt in a very short time, especially in London^
and a labour to keep clean — which in fact no one carries
out, and which is only very temporarily rectified by the
spring cleaning once a year. I have a French domestic
book which I think fascinating and instructive, just
because it is French, and much less showy and more
primitive than English books of the same kind. It is in
two volumes, is called ' Maison Rustique des Dames,'
and is by Madame Millet Robinet. It has had an immense
sale in France, and all the little details of household life
seem more dignified and less tiresome when read in
excellent French.

FEBRUARY 199

I will translate one receipt for the destruction of flies
that seems to me good, and I wish I had known of it
when travelling abroad in hot weather and staying in small
hotels : ' Half fill a tumbler with soapy water. Cut a slice
of bread half an inch thick ; cover the under side with
honey, sugar, jam — anything that attracts flies. Cut a
small hole in the middle, larger at the top than the bottom ;
fix the piece of bread in the top of the tumbler. The flies
crawl in after the sweet jam, and are quietly suffocated.'
The book abounds in useful hints of all kinds.

In my youth tea-leaves were always used for sweeping
carpets. Then came the idea that they stained and in-
jured the colour of light carpets. This is to be rectified
by rinsing the tea-leaves well in cold water and wringing
them out before they are used. There is no magic in the
tea — it is the damp substance of the leaves that gathers
the dust. There is an excellent thing now sold, called
' Carpet Soap,' which really revives the colour of dirty rugs
and carpets. To sweep without using something moist
merely diffuses dirt. Covering a broom with a wet cloth
is the best way of cleaning under beds, wardrobes, etc. —
anything to prevent the dust flying.

If every room is taken in turn and extra cleaned once
a week, the necessity for the complete ' turning-out ' is
obviated. Most people will say, ' Everyone knows that ' ;
and yet it is astonishing how one has to remember to tell
the same things, over and over again, to each fresh young
servant that comes. And one often lives a long life
without knowing most commonplace things oneself. I
never knew till the other day that black-leading firebrick
destroyed all its qualities for radiating heat and made it
like iron. It ought never to be black-leaded at all.

Tin jugs are excellent for hot water, but they must

be cleaned inside with sand-paper, or they rust and spoil

It is almost despairing how even excellent and

200 MORE POT-POURRI

experienced sei'vants forget that no crockery can or will
stand boiling water being poured into it suddenly, espe-
cially in cold weather; the quick expansion makes all
glass and china fly. But the same thing goes on over
and over again in every household, from expensive dishes
or dairy-pans to servants' jugs and tumblers, and partly
one is oneself to blame for not having explained the
simple fact to each new girl who comes.

In the chapter on Furnishing in my first book I re-
commended that young people should go to sales instead
of buying rubbish at wholesale furniture warehouses.
Commenting on this, the excellent and amusing writer
of ' Pages from a Private Diary ' reproves me and says :
' "Why drive good taste into a mere fashion, and so quad-
ruple the price of pretty things for those who can appre-
ciate them ? ' This was not my intention, though I admit
it may be a result of my advice. But I only wish some-
one had given me the hint when I was young. However,
if it does improve taste, and if it does raise the price of
pretty things, surely one's sympathies in such matters are
rather with those who have to sell the things they value
than with those who can afford to buy them. My one
object, both in this book and the last, is to give everyone
— so far as I can — anything I know or have learnt in
a long life. And in writing the first book, under the
impression that it would be an absolute failure, I used to
console myself by saying : * Well, if it helps ten people
just a little, that makes it worth while.'

Old Sir Thomas Browne, in his quaint and self-
opinionative way, puts pretty strongly what I feel : ' It
is an honorable object to see the reasons of other men
wear our Liveries, and their borrowed understandings do
homage to the bounty of ours ; it is the cheapest way of
beneficence, and, like the natural charity of the Sun,
illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be

FEBRUARY 201

reserved and caitiff in this part of goodness is the sordid-
est piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than
pecuniary Avarice.'

February 2nd. — I have been reading lately two fasci-
nating books on natural history by George D. Leshe the
painter — one is called ' Letters to Marco ' and the other
' Riverside Letters ' — descriptions of his ov\^n home on the
river. The little illustrations have a great deal of artistic
individuality, and are to me, though slight, very superior
to the ordinary photographic reproductions. His descrip-
tion of cultivating the difficult ' Iris Susiana ' is so good
that I think I will copy it :

' As ill-luck would have it, I missed the first burst into
bloom of an Iris Susiana to which I had been looking
forward with great eagerness. This Iris is very difficult
to manage in our fickle climate. It is six years since it
bloomed with me, then it did so in the open garden ; but I
have never succeeded in repeating this triumph in the
open air, and this is the first success after many failures
under glass. This Iris is in its native land (Levant)
generally covered with snow during the short sharp
winter, and makes its extremely rapid growth during the
short spring which follows ; after blooming, it endures
the long, baking drought of summer, which ripens the
tuberous roots thoroughly. Of course in our country
such an arrangement in the open ground can hardly be
expected, and though when planted in the open the tubers
thrive and grow amazingly they make in our damp
autumns far too early a start, throwing up a number of
strong graen blades, which are almost always doomed to
destruction by the last frosts of winter without showing
the least sign of bloom. The books say that they require
some protection such as a hand-light in the winter, but I
have tried it over and over again without the slightest
success. In my little greenhouse, however, I think I have

202 MORE POT-POURRI

mastered the difficulties of its cultui's at last. My method
is to defer planting until very late in the autumn. I put
the tubers into rather a small pot of nearly pure river
sand. This pot I place inside another larger one, and
plug the space between the pots with dry moss. I place
the pots on a shelf in the sunniest part of the greenhouse,
and give no water at all until some time after Christmas.
Strange to say, the green shoots begin to show before the
plants have received a drop of water. I give the water
very liberally at first, but in great moderation as the plant
shoots into growth. I let it have all the sun that shines,
and if the frosts are very severe at any time I take the
pots into my studio whilst the extreme cold lasts. This
year my treatment has been quite successful, and the plant
burst into bloom on the 4th of April.'

This receipt will be extremely interesting to many
gardeners, and especially those — and they are not few —
who are striving to produce flowering Irises from January
to August.

I believe I mentioned before Mrs. Brightwen's * Guide
to the Study of Botany.' I should recommend every
amateur gardener to get it. It is a clear, cheap, popular
book, and any grown-up person or child who wishes to
understand the rudiments of the mysteries of botany
could not do better than have this book as a companion.

Through the year, books on natural history and
gardening must be our constant companions to be any
real good. We must verify for ourselves what the book
tells us. This greatly increases the interest of life in the
country and no one is ever dull or bored who can learn
about plants and insects. I know, alas ! that to those who
really love to dwell in towns it is no use speaking of such
things. The poetry of life is never to be seen by them
out of the streets ; and children brought up in large towns
rarely acquire a love of the country, I think. I remember

FEBRUARY 203

when we were children, a friend who came from London
to see us used to tell us she could not say her prayers in
the country — it was so dreadfully still ! Fancy missing to
that extent the city's noise, the rattle of the cabs down the
street, or the measured tread of feet along the pavement !
It is lucky perhaps that what we are used to is what we
like best.

A collector of old books objected to my great praise
of ' Les Eoses ' by Eedout6. He says : ' I do not attach
the same value to it that you do, and have never found
it of much use, as nearly all the Eoses are hybrids and
varieties many of which have passed away.' I was
no doubt mistaken, but my impression was that the
lovely illustrations represent in many instances the wild
Eoses of the world, which have ceased to be cultivated, but
which could easily be produced again from seed by those
who took the trouble. This, I believe, Mr. Paul is doing.
I think, as I said before, that in a soil where Eoses grow
easily a collection as large as possible of these same wild
Eoses would be exceedingly interesting. My correspond-
ent goes on to describe a book — which I had never seen —
that treats of all the wild Eoses of the world. He says :
' You should get a coloured copy of Lindley's " Mono-
graph of Eoses," 1819. It is an excellent book, both as to
plates and descriptions, and, though not common, is cheap.
You can see them all at Kew. As you do not mention it,
I fancy you cannot have the true York and Lancaster —
Shakespeare's — a very different plant from the one with
the splash petals. This difference is so well described in a
page of Canon Ellacombe's endlessly interesting " Glou-
cestershire Garden " that I give it to you :

' " A second favourite double or semi-double Eose is the
York and Lancaster, of which there are two kinds ; one a
very old Eose in which the petals ai-e sometimes white and
sometimes pink, and sometimes white and pink in the same

204 MORE POT-POURRI

flower. This is without a doubt the ' roses damasked, red
and white ' — the rose ' nor red nor white, had stolen of
both ' — of Shakespeare, and it is the B. versicolor of the
old botanical writers. In the other sort the petals are a
rich crimson flaked with white ; it is a very handsome
Rose, comparatively modern, and is the Bosa mundi of
the ' Botanical Magazine ' 1794." ' I have lately seen a
double Bosa lucida, a great improvement on the single
one ; also a double white Bosa rugosa.

Since w^riting the above I have succeeded in pro-
curing through my Frankfort friend a coloured copy of
' Rosarum Monographia ' by John Lindley (London,
1820). On the title-page is this nice little motto :

E guadagnar, se si potr^, quel dono,
Che Btato detto n' h, che Eose sono.

The letterpress is far more interesting and instructive,
but the actual artistic treatment of the plates is less
beautiful and delicate than Redout6's.

February 9th. — Where people suffer much from the
birds eating out buds, as I do, I strongly recommend pick-
ing some of the branches of Primus pissardi when in bud,
and sticking them into Japanese wedges or into ordinary
glass vases. This, in so far as house decoration is con-
cerned, defeats the bullfinches, and the buds come out very
well in the room. This is the same with all the early-
flowering blossoms. The pink Almond and Pyrus
japonica are far more lovely flowered in water in a warm
room than left on the trees exposed to the cold nights and
the nipping east wind.

February 10th. — On this day last year I went to one
of the Drill Hall Horticultural Shows, and was especially
delighted with Amyydalus davidiana ; it is one of the
earliest of the flowering shrubs. I immediately bought a
plant, and on my return this year I found it in full flower,

FEBRUARY 205

every branch wreathed with the lovely delicate white
flowers. I only wish I had bought three or four plants
instead of one. I shall certainly do so next autumn. The
branches I ventured to cut have lasted over ten days in
the room in water, and those left on the plant have
turned brown from the frosty nights.

I went to a neighbour to-day and found the house
filled with pots of Genista inczcox. They came from
Waterer's, and a more charming effect in a large room I
never saw. The plant was beautifully grown and one
mass of pale lemon-coloured bloom — sweet-smelling, too.
I have long had it outside, and it does very well ; but
it seems difficult to strike, though I think it could be
managed just before it is in full bloom. I expect what I
saw was grown from seed, but it is not in Thompson's list.

February 20th. — I returned home to-day after staying
some little time in London. Apart from other reasons, it
is worth going away for the joy of returning. While in
London I again went to the Drill Hall Show, on the 14:th,
some few days later than last year. Nothing struck me
so much this year as the Amygdalus davidiand did the
year before ; but it was an especially good show of flowers
for so early in the season. Year by year the Cyclamens
grow larger and finer in colour, but I do not think they
are plants that have been greatly improved by increased
cultivation and Brobdingnagian size. I prefer the pretty,
little, old, sweet-smelling types. Pans full of miniature
Daffodils were very attractive, and Messrs. Hill & Co. of
Lower Edmonton had a lovely and most uncommon collec-
tion of greenhouse Ferns. Nephrodium membranifolium
and an Aspidium struck me particularly, from the charm
of their growth. The fashionable, little, bright pink Begonia
Gloire de Lorraine was in large quantities and most
effective. The lovely L'is reticidata was also exhibited.

The London streets were more than ever full of

2o6 MORE POT-POURRI

beautiful flowers, none beating the showy branches of the
Mimosa, Acacia dealbata, from the South of France.

I found at home that the Crocuses had made much
progress, and the Daffodils, instead of only showing
green spears, are all now in bud. The complete stillness
is so delicious to me !

How sweet, how passing sweet, is solitude I
But grant me still a friend in my retreat.
Whom I may whisper, ' Solitude is sweet.'

That is what the young feel. The old can do without
companionship.

My little conservatory looked bright and full of bloom.
Last year I had a lot of Daffodils in pans, and they did
very well and forced easily. This year I have Hyacinths ;
but though they were not very good bulbs — some being
successful, and some failures — still they look well and
picturesque in the open pans : far prettier than in pots.
I have one little Oriental slop-basin filled with the bright
blue Scillas, which is very effective ; and the Preesias are
always most satisfactory. Mr. Sydenham recommends
buying them each year ; but I think, cheap as they are,
that must be advice rather for the seller than for the buyer,
as with us, treated as recommended before, they improve
and increase, and, when there is so much to buy, that is
what I call satisfactory. The common Lachenalias do
the same. The Lachenalia aurea is more difficult to
increase. Lachenalias do not require so much baking
and drying as the Freesias do, and should be kept in half-
shade in a frame after the leaves die down, and not quite
dry. Early x-e-potting in July is desirable for both.

To make variety in colour, and because they are such
useful flowers for picking — their duration in water being
almost endless — I have several pots of the Orchid
Dendrobiwni niobilc, and one fine spike of Odontoglossum

FEBRUARY 207

alexandrcB in full bloom. My large, old-fashioned, sweet-
smelling white Azalea, which has been so faithful a
friend for many years, has failed this year — either from
mere fatigue of being forced, or from being over-dried and
pot-bound last summer, which I think more likely. I
have a young plant of the same which is now in full
flower — Azalea mdica alba it is called in the catalogues.
But often other varieties are sent out under the same
name which have no scent at all, and are consequently
much less worth growing in a small greenhouse. My
old plant had the most delicious, delicate, and yet
powerful perfume. We have now broken it up and
re-potted small pieces, with the hope that they may grow
again. The large pots of Imantophyllums are looking
glorious. They are rather handsomer varieties, both in
size and colour, than the usual ones. I got them two or
three years ago from Veitch, who has specially improved
these most useful and showy of winter-flowering plants.
A small shruliby plant of the bright yellow Coronilla
gives another spot of bright colour by the blue-green
of the sweet-leaved Eucalyptus. We have brought the
forcing of the Polygonatum multiflorum (Solomon's Seal)
to most useful perfection ; and, put back in a reserve bed
after flowering, it is ready to force again after a year or
two. It is the easiest and most effective of the hardy
plants to bring on in a greenhouse.

February ^^nd. — I brought back with me from
Ireland last year several plants of the Iris stylosa. The
white one has flowered, but not the blue ones, though
these were put in two situations — some in good rich soil,
and some in poor ground. These latter perhaps may
flower later. One of the reasons why Irises should be so
much cultivated is that they have the merit, which can
never be too much appreciated, of flowering admirably in
water if picked in bud. A flower can hardly claim a

2o8 MORE POT-POURRI

greater merit for domestic pm'poses, and for the same
reason they are well adapted for travelling.

February 23r(Z. — A treat has come for all of us
amateur gardeners this month in the publication of a
long looked-for gardening book by Miss Jekyll, charmingly
illustrated from photographs of her own. But, good as are
these reproductions, in my opinion they can never compare
with woodcuts or steel engravings, and they give but a faint
idea of the unusual charm and beauty of her self-created
garden. Her book is most truly called ' Wood and
Garden,' and is a never-ending lesson of how to lay out
a piece of ground by using its natural advantages instead
of hopelessly destroying them by clearing the ground to
make a garden. In this case there can be no imitation,
as, without the copse-covered piece of ground which she
selected, no one could produce the same sort of garden.
Nature must have had her way first. But the charm of
the combination of Nature and Art as carried out by Miss
Jekyll is very great. We always open these books at the
month we are in, and she says : ' There is always in
February some one day at least when one smells the yet
distant, coming summer.' Such a day has been ours
to-day, and I enjoyed it doubly in consequence of having
so lately returned from London. And the forwardness of
the spring — it really is more forward even than last year —
makes one enjoy it more. Though everything is growing
so fast, it is quite agitating for the gardener, giving the
feeling that all the work is behindhand. I am told that
in my first book many thought I recommended that
things should be done too soon ; but in my experience
human nature rather tends to reversing the proverb, and
acts on the principle of ' Never do to-day what can be
done to-morrow.' And in all things about a garden,
except when Jack Frost is to be feared, it is best to be
early rather than late.

FEBRUARY 209

My January-sown Green Peas are coming up very well,
but they would not survive except for the pea- wire cover-
ings, as the sparrows would nip out the hearts. The black
cotton strung about the Prunus pissardi has answered.
I have far more bloom than I have ever had before.

As I rush about the garden, and see how the Daf&es
grow an inch each day in such weather, in spite of very
cold nights, and though I have the usual endless.
• Martharish ' bothers of life inside the house, I can
indeed say with Thomson :

I care not, Fortune, what you me deny ;

You cannot rob me of free nature's grace ;
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,

Through which Aurora shows her bright'ning face ;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns by living stream at eve.
Let health my nerves and finer fibres brace.

And I their toys to the great children leave.

Of fancy, reason, virtue, nought can me bereave.

To appreciate Miss Jekyll's book in a way to profit by
it, one must read and re-read it. One more quotation I
must make. In ' May ' she says : ' The blooming of the
CowsUp is the signal for a search for the Morel, one of the
best of the edible fungi. It grows in open woods, or where
the undergrowth has not yet grown high, and frequently in
old parks and pastures, near or under Elms. It is quite
unlike any other fungus, shaped like a tall egg, with the
pointed end upwards, on a short, hollow stalk, and
looking something like a sponge. It has a delicate and
excellent flavour, and is perfectly wholesome.' I have,
alas ! spent nearly all my life, and I have never searched
for the Morel ! Have you, dear reader ?

February 26th. — I have been to-day planting large
quantities of the roots of the Tropceolum speciosum in
various parts of the garden. These were given to me by
a kind neighbour. He says the great secret (and he is

p

2IO MORE POT-POURRI

very successful himself) is digging the holes quite four
feet deep, filling them in with leaf-mould and the light
earth, and planting the roots a foot below the surface,
and then they have two feet of loose soil to work down
into. I hope they may be successful ; I do hate being
beaten. At least some must succeed, one would think,
planted in five different situations. They have to be
labelled with large white labels, as the great danger, if
one's back is turned, is of tlieir being dug up.

Driving last year on this day, I find I noticed the
Nettles were well up in the hedges and just ready for
picking, and the catkins were hanging from the Hazel
boughs. A little Celandine on a moist bank opened its
yellow star in the sun. I have never seen it cultivated
in gardens, which — weed though it is — seems a pity, and
I think I shall try it in patches under some shrubs. No
doubt it is rather its early appearance than its shining
beauty that has made it so loved of the poets. Words-
worth describes it and its surroundings with grace and
truth in the following well-known poem :

Pansies, Lilies, King-cups, Daisies,

Let them live upon their praises ;

There's a flower that shall be mine,

'Tis the little Celandine !

Ere a leaf is on a bush,

In the time before the thrush

Has a thought about its nest.

Thou wilt come with half a call,
Spreading out thy glossy breast,

Like a careless prodigal ;
Telling tales about the sun.
When we've little warmth or none.

Careless of thy neighbourhood,

Thou dost show thy pleasant face ;

On the moor and in the wood,
In the lane - there's not a place.

Howsoever mean it be,

But 'tis good enough for thee.

FEBRUARY 211

I picked to-day and ate with great relish my first
Dandelion salad. I can recommend it again and again
to salad lovers ; but it must be very carefully washed, as
any grit entirely spoils it. Later on the leaves get tough
and bitter.

February 21th. — The last few days have been very
cold, but I have some most beautiful branches of Almond
in full flower in the house. They were picked, as I have
explained, whilst in bud, and put to expand in the green-
house. This method defies the frosts and wind, and
greatly prolongs the time of enjoying the blossoms.

About this time last year I cut away another bed of
Laurels, which we had not time to do in the autumn, and
it has made a nice snug corner for some newly-bought
flowering shrubs — Lilacs which I had not got, such as
Dr. Lindley and Charles X., and some white ones ; a
double-flowering Cherry, which is such a beautiful thing
(though I fear it will never do well here, as it likes a
strong damp soil) ; a Cerasus, pseudo Cerasus, double
crimson Peach, Hamamelis japonica (which has died),
Eticryphia pinnatifolia, and the before-mentioned Amyg-
dalus davidiana alba. I have a great many Spiraeas in the
garden, but never till now the Spircea confusa, which forces
very well, and is a lovely thing. I have put it for the
present with these new shrubs. I find it a distinct ad-
vantage putting new things in one place, as then one sees
how they do, and what spreads and flourishes, and what
is only a dry stick and a label the following year. It is
mysterious why some plants die. I bought two beautiful
Tea-roses in pots which were planted outside and drawn
through into the greenhouse — one, a Mar^chal Niel ; the
other, Niphetos. Both flourished equally well through the
summer. The next spring, without any apparent reason,
the Mar6chal Niel, having made its leaves, turned brown
and died — very provoking, as in this way one loses a

212 MORE POT-POURRI

whole year's growth. I think anyone who grows forced
Tea-roses for picking will find they do far better and look
more satisfactory in water if floated in large glass bowls
than if only their stalks are in water.

I received a letter to-day from the Engadine, describ-
ing a phase of modern luxury which reads strangely to
those who live quietly in country corners. My friend
writes from San Moritz, and thus describes an episode
in a fancy-dress ball : ' In the cotillon they had an
enormous silver sledge smothered in the most gorgeously
lovely flowers — Imantophyllums, Lilium speciosum, Lilies
of the Valley with stalks eight inches long, White
Lilac, and Prunus. And all these looked as if they had
just been freshly gathered ; yet the whole thing came
from a flower-shop at Prankfurt-on-the-Main. I must say
I never saw anything prettier, and in the sledge sat a
lovely downy young English beauty, scattering bunches
of flowers about, as they dragged her round the room.
The whole thing seemed beautiful Fairyland up here in
this world of ice and snow.' I suppose it is no more
luxury for those who can afford it than my humble little
greenhouse, which also costs money ; yet one cannot help
feeling sorry that these beautiful hot-house flowers
should have been dragged up there for the wasteful
enjoyment of one evening.

Receipts

Poulet a la Valencienne.— Cut a good fowl into
pieces. Wipe it dry, but do not put it into water. Take a
saucepan, put in a wineglassful of olive oil, and add two
cloves of garlic. Be careful that it does not burn ; for if
it does, it will turn bitter. Stir the garlic until it is fried.
Put in the chicken. Keep stirring it about while it fries,
then add a httle salt, and continue to stir. Whenever a

FEBRUARY 213

sound of cracking is heard, stir it again. When the chicken
is well browned, which will take from five to ten minutes,
stirring constantly, put in chopped onions, three or four
chopped red or green chillies, and stir about. If once
the contents catch the pan, the dish is spoilt. Then add
tomatoes divided into quarters, and parsley. Take
three teacupfuls of well-washed rice and mix up well
together. Then add hot stock, enough to cover over the
whole. Let it boil once, then set aside to simmer till the
rice becomes tender and done. The great art consists in
having the rice turned out granular and separate, and not
in a pudding state, which is sure to be the case if a cover
is put over the dish, so that the steam is condensed. It
should be served up in the casserole in which it is cooked.
Bits of fish, sausage, and chicken livers may be added ;
also a little saffron.

Chasse. — Ingredients : one onion, six tomatoes,
three potatoes, a slice of ham, some grated cheese, red
pepper, very little allspice. Fry the sliced onion lightly
in some lard and butter mixed. Add the tomatoes and
ham, both cut into small pieces. When they are well
browned, add some water and then the potatoes, having
first cut them in dice shapes. Let all cook until the
potatoes are done ; then, just before serving, mix in grated
cheese well flavoured with red pepper until the sauce is
' ropy.' Have a very hot dish, pour the sauce on to it, and
serve carefully poached eggs on the top. This makes a
delightful breakfast disli.

Water Souchet.— Take six flounders, fillet four, put
the fillets into a saucepan. The carcasses and the others
put into a stewpan with some stock, a bit of parsley
and a little carrot, which boil for an hour. Strain, and
shred some carrot, also parsley root and a few sprigs
of parsley. Boil for ten minutes more. Put the fillets
into the oven to cook. When the souchet is dished.

214 MORE POT-POURRI

put in the fillets, and serve with brown bread and butter,
and lemons.

Everything of the kind is now to be bought, but I
think the following few receipts may turn out useful. In
washing paint so many do not know how injurious is soda,
or yellow soap or soft soap.

For Washing" White Paint.— Shred common yellow
household soap, and boil it down in a saucepan with
sufficient whitening to make it into a thick paste. Put it
in a jar, and use a little on a rag when required. It will
clean the paint perfectly, and will not turn it yellow.
Never use soda for paint ; it spoils it and marks it at
once.

Furniture Polish. — To clean, polish, and take marks
out of furniture, ' Sanitas Furniture Polish ' is excellent and
not expensive ; but the following is an old receipt and very
good : Equal quantities of methylated spirit, vinegar, and
linseed oil. The bottle should be well shaken before using,
or the spirit remains on the top and will burn the polished
surface of whatever it touches.

For Polishing^ New Brown Boots and Shoes.— I am

sure many people will agree with me as to the extreme
ugliness of new brown shoes ; yet we all must have them
new sometimes. An excellent way of correcting this ugly
newness is to rub the leather three times in succession
with vaseline. After that, clean them in the ordinary
way with brown cream, and they will take the polish as if
they were months old.

To Remove Fruit Stains.— Soak the stain in a glass
of water in which you have put ten to twelve drops of
sulphuric acid. Then wash with clear water.

To Prevent Lamp-wicks from Smoking.— Steep

the wicks in very strong vinegar ; then let them dry
completely before they are used.

A series of penny books published as? the ' Domestic

FEBRUARY 215

Science Series ' is full of useful information. The only
one I actually know, called ' Manual of Housewifery for
Elementary Schools,' by Helena Head, to be bought at
4 Princes Koad, Liverpool, seems to me thoroughly
practical.

One thing I must copy out of Mrs. Eoundell's most
excellent ' Practical Cookery Book,' more especially as it
is not a cooking receipt, but a cure for one of the most
distinct worries that affect nearly every house in England,
more especially if keeping down in the spring is neglected
— and yet how few servants do not neglect it till it has
become a plague ! — I mean, blackbeetles. Mrs. Eoundell
gives the following receipt, and we found it excellent in a
new flat in London which swarmed with them :

'To Destroy Blackbeetles.— Not long ago the

kitchens and bakeries of the Fir Vale Union Work-
house at Sheffield swarmed with blackbeetles, to such
an extent that the Government Inspector feared the
buildings would have to be pulled down. The insects
even got into the soup and bread provided for the in-
mates, in spite of all vigilance and every remedy. The
Board of Guardians, in despair, consulted the curator of
the Sheffield Museum— Mr. Howarth, F.Z.S.— and he
invented a paste which in a short time completely freed
the workhouse from blackbeetles. This " Union " cock-
roach paste can be had in tins from Mr. Hewitt, chemist,
66 Division Street, Sheffield. It never fails in its effect.'
' Keating's Powder ' is also effectual if the beetles are
swept up in the morning and destroyed.

2i6 MORE POT-POURRI

MABCH

Confessions about diet — Cures for rheumatism — Effects of tea drink-
ing— Sparing animal life a bad reason for vegetarianism— The
Berlin foot-race — Mrs. Crow in Edinburgh — Bagehot on luxury —
A word about babies — German and English nurseries — Sir
Kichard Thome Thorne on raw milk — The New Education —
DifiBculty of understanding young children — Gardening —
Cooking.

I FEEL at last the moment has come when I must make
a confession. I a.m a non-meat-eater ! I know that this
will probably entail the loss of the good opinion of my
readers, and I should never have dreamt of bringing
forward so personal a matter, had I not felt compelled
to do so in consequence of the numbers of letters I
have received in which the writers deplore their loss
of health, their gout and rheumatism, and the general
ailments that prevent their going into the garden, etc.
This strikes me as unnatural and wrong. There is no
reason at all, unless there be actual disease, that sickness
should as a matter of course accompany old age any
more than any other period of life.

This chapter is not intended for the young or the
healthy or the really sick, but for those chronic sufferers
who are constantly appealing to the medical profession
for ' something ' that will cure their aches and pains,
their sleepless nights, their stiff joints, and their
neuralgias, and who put all their faith in drugs which,
even when they seem to do good, turn out to be
palliatives, not cures — that is, in the case of constitu-

MARCH 217

tions where the ailments are the result of gout and
rheumatism.

Some years ago all these symptoms in various degrees
were mine, and I fully expected that they would increase
with age ; but I was wrong — by gradual steps they all
disappeared. Nothing of course makes the old young ;
but bad health, the chief dread of old age, I no longer
have. I can work out in the garden with even greater
impunity than I could have done twenty years ago. I
take long journeys — say, of twenty-seven hours — without
fatigue, and I sleep excellently. This all reads like an
advertisement for a patent medicine, but it is nothing of
the kind ; in fact, for years I have taken no medicine at all.
But if I am asked to account for this improvement, in one
word it is- — Diet. I have become an ardent advocate of
non-meat-eating, but without any of those sentimental
feelings about the killing of animals which many people
have who yet continue to partake of ordinary food ; nor
did it begin from the belief that meat is a frequent con-
veyor of poisons. I left it off at first simply as an experi-
ment. I beUeve that meat, especially if eaten daily —
the small quantities ferment the other foods — is on the
whole deleterious to the health of the human race, and
simply poisonous to the gouty, the rheumatic, or the
neuralgic.

All through my lifetime there seems to have been
the strongest belief everywhere in Europe, amongst all
classes (especially those who are habitually over-fed), that
if they feel weak or anaemic, or what is called ' below par,'
therefore they must try and eat more, and cram them-
selves with stimulating food, such as meat-juices, beef-
tea, or even raw beef, and — as with drugs or alcohol — for
a time it often answers. The origin of this behef, no
doubt, has come from the teaching of the medical profes-
sion, only disputed now and then by a solitary member.

2i8 MORE POT-POURRI

Surely this system is nearly on the level, and only one
degree less harmful, than yielding to the request of the
poor drunkard, who wildly cries for more of the very
poison that is kilHng him. The immediate relief is actual
and visible ; the after-reaction in both cases being the
cause of fresh suffering.

My object as a propagandist in the cause of non-meat-
eating is merely to give others my experience, with the
ordinary human desire that they may try a cure which has
been so beneficial to myself. When some years ago chronic
rheumatism was gaining upon me, I resorted to the usual
solaces of the well-to-do. I consulted doctors, I took
drugs, I left off wine — which before the age of forty I had
rarely taken, and after forty only in small quantities. I
went to Aix-les-Bains. I got momentary relief from all
these cures, but on the whole the malady gained upon me,
and I looked forward to a cripply old age with great dread,
knowing full well that it would prevent my enjoying my
favourite occupation of gardening. My family physician
summed up the case with : ' Well, Mrs. Earle, at your
age this rheumatism which has settled in the hips is
extremely difficult of cure.' I repeated this to a veget-
arian friend, who lent me a book called ' The Science of
Healing,' by L. Kuehne, a German non-medical man who
practises a strict vegetarian water-cure at Leipzig. In
consequence of reading this book I undertook to try and
cure myself. The results have been simply wonderful,
and I find the kind of food I eat, now that I am used to
it, entails no self-denial at all. I carried out the cure
strictly for many months — almost as strictly as Kuehne
recommends, only breaking his rule by a small amount of
milk and butter, and I was greatly the better for it. I
took absolutely no animal food, and neither cheese nor
eggs. If ever I relapsed into ordinary diet, after a very
little time the old pains re-asserted themselves. My

MARCH 219

friends declared I looked old and ugly, and most of my
family thought the first illness would play the part of the
legs in the epitaph :

Two bad legs and a troublesome cough,
But the legs it was that carried her off.

My own faith in the matter only grew and grew, but
it has taken four or five years for me to be absolutely free
of pain, and even to this day I occasionally feel twinges,
which I immediately treat by diminishing in quantity
what I generally eat. The result is invariably satisfactory
and unaccompanied by any feelings of weakness or fatigue.
Last year I became the object of considerable jealousy to
one of my friends, who could not understand why I had
grown so much better. I, loth to encounter the anger
of her numerous family by recommending my method,
remarked — what I did not believe — that very likely my
diet would not suit her. I am so tired of hearing that
' One man's meat is another man's poison ' ! Seeing the
marked improvement in me, and thinking the matter over
after I had left, she telegraphed to her London doctor,
saying : ' Who is the great authority in London at this
moment on gout and rheumatism ? ' He wired back :
' Dr. Haig of Brook Street.' She accordingly went to
him. When next we met, one of her first remarks was :
' A most extraordinary thing has happened to me. I have
been to a new doctor for my rheumatism, and his printed
paper on diet is in all essentials what you practise, except
that he orders more milk and cheese.' She handed me
the leaflet, and from this I got to know Dr. Haig and his
most interesting book, ' Uric Acid as a Factor in the
Causation of Disease.' This book is rather medical for
the ordinary pubhc, who had better begin with his two-
shilling book called ' Diet and Pood considered in Eelation
to Strength and Power of Endurance, Training and

220 MORE POT-POURRI

Athletics.' On Dr. Haig's recommendation I deserted
the extreme strictness of the German cure, and I have
undoubtedly felt stronger for taking more skimmed milk
(separated would be better) and a little cheese, though
whenever I am less well I go back to the Kuehne diet.
It was the greatest satisfaction to me to find a man whose
years of study and scientific investigations entirely
corresponded with my own groping experiences. If any-
body now ever asks me about the matter, I say : ' Eead
Dr. Haig's books, and then consult him or not as you like.'
His tables of diet are so severe that I am afraid they may
tempt a great number of people to agree with the late

Lord D , who, when sent a sample of sherry which

was recommended to him as being essentially wholesome,
wrote back that he found it so bitter and dry he much
preferred the gout.

Although it is rare to find a doctor who will recommend
strict dieting in chronic cases, I think it is becoming
equally rare for a doctor to make any objection if the
patient himself proposes it. He wall not risk offending
a patient by not giving him medicines and by greatly
reducing his food. One can hardly blame a doctor for
this, and it brings us to the conclusion that the initiative
in matters of diet and abstinence must come from the
patients themselves.

Not many people seemed to take any interest in the
health allusions in my last book. Still I received the fol-
lowing letter, which, in a chapter bound to be unpopular,
the few who read it may find as interesting as I did :

' I have been specially interested in your health
chapter, for if there is one subject more than another
which ought to be thrashed out by the lay mind it is
health. On it depends to a great extent the future
progi'ess of mankind. As a rule, individuals lean to the
idea that it is not a question for themselves to think on.

MARCH 221

They seem to imply that it is a question solely for the
medical hierarchy. But these authorities are so hampered
by the limitations engrained in them in their medical
education that it is with difficulty any of them exercise
a free mind on the subject. You have given examples,
it is true, of some few ; and I know a few more, both
here and in America, who have broken away and have
given full vent to their reasoning powers. All hail
to them, but they want supporting. There is no doubt
that if doctors were to take up the reforms honestly they
would do good, inasmuch as there is a blind faith in them
on the part of the majority of people. But when has a
profession reformed itself ? All reforms come from out-
side.

' There are two great assumptions on which medicos act,
and on which they impel their patients to act. The first
is : that it is positively necessary under all circumstances
to eat every day in order to live. Dr. Keith, whose book
I have just seen before I got yours, is an exception to this ;
and Dr. Dewey, in America, in his " New Gospel of
Health " is another. They show clearly that not only is
it not necessary, but under certain conditions of illness it
is positively injurious to eat. I have seen, I am soi'ry
to say, food violently forced down the throat of a patient
by a medical man when Nature was evidently telling the
patient that food was no good, but, on the contrary, was
adding to the troubles. This is quite irrespective of what
is suitable food and what is not. All I maintain is, that
at times no food at all is required, for it is then only by
the absence of food that Nature finds time to recuperate
herself. The second assumption that the Faculty as a
body insist on is : that meat is absolutely necessary for
strength. Meat is no doubt a concentrated food, but
concentrated foods are not necessarily nourishing. On
the contrary, the waste that comes from them is most

222 MORE POT-POURRI

trying to all the organs of the body, which after a time
break down entirely. There are heaps of foods which are
natural foods, which easily assimilate, and which in their
waste are not unduly trying. Then, no doubt, in meat
there is decomposition always going on, which, when it is
eaten by human beings, may produce fermentation lead-
ing to serious diseases. Of course there are many other
arguments against meat ; but as long as it is considered a
positively necessary food, there is no good using them.
I find that with young people it is useless to preach
against meat. They like it, they see everybody eating it,
they are told that the Faculty consider it positively
necessary, and, owing to their youth, they feel no ill-effects,
except now and then a temporary derangement, which
they attribute to something they don't like so much. The
great thing with them is to urge abstemiousness and even
at times total abstinence, and, when they feel ill, simple
starvation. The day may come when they will find it
best for themselves to give up meat. I only wish that
I had been brought up to rely upon my own reason in
dealing with illness. Half the ailments that mankind
suffers from could be cured by Nature herself, if she were
given time and were not forced. She is interfered with
in every way by both doctor and patient.

' Power has been usurped by the Faculty. Very few
men can stand power ; they get to be assertive and
dogmatic, and eventually become tyrants.'

So I hear of bad health here, sufferings there, and,
what we used to say of old people when we were young,
' cases of fifteen mortal maladies and yet Hving on to a
good old age.' They live long because their constitutions
are good ; they suffer much, in my opinion, because they
eat what is not good for them, both as to quality and
quantity, only adding to their ailments instead of diminish-
ing them. The modern invalid always says : ' The

MARCH 223

doctor has ordered me to eat well,' and feels his conscience
absolved. This reminds me of a rather good old story
which a doctor told me, when I was a girl in Brussels, as
having happened to himself. A bishop who was eating
stuffed turkey with this doctor on Good Friday excused
himself to a punctilious friend, who was shown into the
dining-room by accident, saying : ' Le docteur me le
commande, et moi je lui donne absolution.' But can one
imagine anything more hopelessly exasperating for poor
doctors, who have to make their living, than to find that
loss of patients is the result if they venture even to ask
in chronic cases what people eat and drink? We all
know how they knock off food in cases of serious illness,
though even then I think they still allow far too much.
During convalescence it is often desirable for the patient
to eat anything that he can digest.

I know it will be said that the next generation may
suffer from the results of a low diet, as the doctors are
perpetually telling us that we have all suffered from
the port wine drinking and high living of our ancestors.
Nothing but time can prove this.

In my youth heaps of doctors, especially on the
Continent, still believed in bleeding, particularly in fever
cases. Now this is as unknown as if it had never been
practised at all. Is this right or wrong ?

I see even restaurants now advertise suppers which
are not indigestible ! An interesting pandering to the
growing faith that good health comes far before good
feeding.

I was asked the other day to give a lecture on the
right spending of money. Oh ! what a fraud these
appeals to my knowledge or wisdom make me feel ! I
who have so little knowledge of figures that I cannot even
keep my own accounts ! But most certainly, if I were to
give a lecture, I should say to everyone, high and low :

224 MORE POT-POURRI

' Spend far less in food and drink.' To the under-fed and
poor : ' Live twice as well as you do, on what you have, by
spending judiciously.' To the farmers : ' Grow more peas
and beans for wholesome human food.' And to the seeds-
man : ' Sell these food-producing seeds much cheaper, and
put the price on to something else.'

I have said nothing about the cheapness of the diet I
recommend, as it is not cheap if it does not make you
well. If it does, it is very satisfactory, I think, to spend
so very little on food ; and eating so much less at each
meal is so delightfully comfortable ! I could not have
believed some years ago that it was possible to keep in
excellent health on so little.

In Dr. Haig's little book ' Diet and Food ' he holds out
a kind of millennium where cooks might cease to exist,
and he gives a table of food requiring scarcely any cook-
ing, and which yet contains what he considers a sufficient
amount of albumen. This might prove extremely use-
ful under exceptional circumstances.

A reform I should much hke to see is that, when a
doctor leaves a house at the end of an illness, he himself
should burn his prescriptions ; and that it might be made
penal for chemists to make them up except by a doctor's
orders. Doctors frequently give strong remedies in severe
cases, but they themselves would be the first to regret
these remedies being taken again and again on the smallest
provocation by the patient. The insane desire to kill pain
and to gain relief by narcotics and strength by tonics
which pervades our modern society, from the youngest to
the oldest, is in my opinion very likely to act more dele-
tex'iously on the constitution than the excesses of past
generations. People become aware of the loss of health,
but the mysterious ways in which remedies may have
injured us are wrapped in as complete darkness as is the
origin of most of the diseases from which all classes suffer.

MARCH 225

I wonder if other people have noticed, as I have done
throughout my life, that the families where medicines are
least in use are those of doctors themselves. This want
of faith in drugs on their part was one of the first things
which years ago opened my eyes.

What strikes me is, how few people are really well !
And if they could put side by side the pleasure of eating
food which is harmless, and the better health and strength
this would bring, compared with the pleasure of eating
large dinners and the feeling of the following morning
thrown into the balance, I believe the bird-in-the-hand
pleasure would lose most of its attractions. It has been a
real surprise to me, though apparently doctors know it
well, how vast a number of people would much rather be
ill, or even die, than be convinced that the food they like
does them harm. The young especially seem to think
that one of the chief pleasures of life would be removed if
they did not eat what they preferred, quite forgetting that
fruit and sugar and many other good things are quite
harmless — nay, beneficial — to the non-meat-eater. What
we do daily soon ceases to be the penance that abstinence
once a week was supposed to inflict. It may be said that
' starving,' with many people, does not make them feel well.
All I can say is, it is very seldom tried on the right
lines ; at any rate, not for long enough time to give it a
chance.

It is curious how things repeat themselves. Sydney
Smith says in one of his letters : ' All gentlemen and
ladies eat too much. I made a calculation, and found I
must have consumed some waggon-loads too much in the
course of my life. Lock up the mouth, and you have
gained the victory. I believe our friend Lady Morley
has hit upon the right plan in dining modestly at two.
When we are absorbed in side-dishes, and perplexed with
variety of wines, she sits amongst us, lightly flirting with

Q

226 MORE POT-POURRI

a potato, in full possession of her faculties and at liberty
to make the best use of them — a liberty, it must be owned,
she does not neglect. For how agreeable she is ! I like
Lady Morley ; she is what I call good company.'

The really difficult part of practising any form of
diet, especially if you have gained immensely by the
results, is the irritation it causes to the people who
surround you. I was told the other day that having
mentioned in a letter the fact that I had become a
vegetarian was more than enough to account for my
receiving no answer. If any sufferers feel tempted to
follow my example of a strict diet, I stx'ongly recommend
them to do all in their power to make it as unobtrusive a
factor in family life as possible. It will also be found a
great advantage to those who go out in Society to cheat ;
by which I mean, take things on your plate as a ' blind,'
though you have no intention of eating them. The sym-
pathy expressed lest you should kill yourself, and the
terror lest your influence should prove the death of some-
body else, make life a martyrdom for a very insufficient
cause.

I never realised till this year that there is consider-
able danger in a sudden change of diet, especially in hot
weather and to those who ai'e most in need of it. One
is always hearing of cases where abstention from meat
answers for a few months, and then has to be given up
because the patient finds himself less well, and attributes
everything to his change of diet. Dr. Haig fully explains
the reason for this. He may, of course, be wrong in his
deductions ; if he is right, it should lead to great changes
in diet in this country through the conversion of the
medical profession.

One of the great advantages of the non-sentimental
over the sentimental vegetarian is that in case dislike of
foods occurs, as it very commonly does, and with it a

MARCH 227

decided depression of the nervous system from the drop-
ping of all stimulants, a slight return to ordinary diet for a
time may be beneficial. Anything is better than producing
a nervous irritation against the diet. Patients at any
rate are then able to realise for themselves whether it
does them good or not, and are able to remember how
they benefited at first from the cure and go back to it when
they feel inclined. They must also remember that much
that they suffer from is hereditary, and has to be con-
tinually fought rather than cured. To attribute every
ailment to the new diet, when people have lived on meat
and stimulants all their lives, and had constant attacks of
illness, is, to say the least of it, unreasonable. In the case
of vegetarians Dr. Haig has told me that they often come
to him insufficiently nourished. It is specially easy for
vegetarians to over-eat and yet be under-fed.

I am the last to deny that many, and especially old
people, have benefited from a purely meat diet (the
' Salisbury Cure ') when very strictly carried out, though
I never tried it myself. All that I feel, and I feel it
strongly, is that health is more likely to be bettered by
only taking food that clearly improves the blood than by
depending for cure on alterative medicines and tonics
which only relieve for a time.

True wisdom always brings us back to the old inile
that moderation in all things is the best guide for every-
body. The fact has long been known with regard to
alcohol ; but it has only lately been acknowledged that tea,
coffee, and beef or chicken tea, are also stimulants and
not food, and are injurious to the nervous system. Who
would not have laughed, a few years ago, at the statement
that tea-di'inking in large quantities produces a form of
delirium tremens ? And yet the illness is now quite re-
cognised as existing among the under-fed who drink tea
in excess. The craving for stimulants of some kind is

q2

228 MORE POT-POURRI

universal, especially when nourishment is insufficient.
This proves, I think, that what is most wished for is not
always best for us.

The law, and generally our own inclination, oblige us to
leave the treatment of disease, once acquired, in the hands
of doctors and surgeons, and this in spite of the many
mistakes they make — often giievous mistakes, such as
cutting people open and then merely sewing them up
again because nothing is wrong, or leaving pieces of lint
or even forceps inside after operations. Both these cases
have come under my knowledge. Knowing of these
things only depresses one and does no good. But the
maintaining of health from babyhood upwards and the
prevention of disease — for these, to my mind, all human
beings are individually responsible both as regards them-
selves and their children. The more the latest and most
conflicting scientific theories on the subject are known by
everybody the better.

For all who are interested in the subject of non-meat-
eating, much general information (cooking and other) is
to be got from ' The Vegetarian,' a weekly penny news-
paper. It is, of course, written from the sentimental
point of view of the non-killing of animals, the health of
man being considered as only secondary. Everyone with
any understanding must have his feelings aroused by
the sufferings of animals, whether caused by man or
by each other. The killing of animals comes under
a different category. Anyone who keeps cows knows
well the sad order that has to go forth for the slaughter
of the beautiful little bull-calf, as even the most fortu-
nate farmer cannot expect to breed only cows. Is not
all or nearly all our complicated civilised life directly
or indirectly mixed up with the kilhng of animals ? No
one can hate cruelty more than I do ; no one can wish
more than I do that legislation should be applied to

MARCH 229

control and rule the cruelty of man. But the most tender-
hearted of old maids has to shut her eyes to the fact that
superfluous kittens and puppies are put out of the way ;
and if we are told that the rats are devouring our beauti-
ful black and white pigeons, the cruel rat-catcher is sent
for to fight and kill the enemy, though, poor things !
Mr. and Mrs. Eat enjoyed their spring life and their
young families quite as much as the pigeons. Can
vegetaria,ns keep their kitchens full of blackbeetles or
their Eoses covered with green fly ? Do they give
over all their Peaches to the wasps, or their nuts to the
mice?

The wasteful redundancy of Nature involves the
whole question in a cloud of difficulties, and to my mind
not one of these is removed, nor is any light thrown on
the subject by the sentimental view that we should give
up eating meat, not for our own good, but with the idea
of sparing animal life.

Besides, such countless other products are dependent
upon the killing of animals that, even if the whole world
were non-meat-eating, hardly fewer animals than at present
would be bred and slaughtered.

I myself believe it has to be proved that people who do
not eat meat are less strong than those who do. The
subject is receiving much attention in Germany. Last
year I saw in the newspapers that a man left money to
build a school for poor children on condition that it was
conducted on vegetarian principles. The trustees refused
the bequest. On the other hand, last June a very in-
teresting walking-match took place in Berlin which, the
papers said, attracted the attention of the Minister of
War. The course was over seventy English miles. There
were twenty-two starters, amongst them eight vegetarians,
and the distance had to be covered within eighteen hours.
The interesting result was that the first six to arrive at

23© MORE POT-POURRI

the goal were vegetarians, the first finishing in fourteen
and a quarter hours. The two other vegetarians
missed their way and walked five miles more. All
reached the goal in splendid condition. Not till an hour
after the last vegetarian arrived did the first meat-eater
appear, and he was then completely exhausted. He,
moreover, was the only one, the others having dropped
oS after thirty-five miles. This does not look as if power
of endurance were necessarily diminished by non-meat-
eating, and a great many people who have tried non-
stimulating food find, as I do, that their brains are
immensely clearer, their capacity for work restored and
increased, they are much less affected by changes of
temperature, and their general powers of endurance are
much greater than before. In short, ray belief that
wrong diet in some form or other is the cause of all the
hundred and one complaints which are called by different
names, and that they do not originate from external
germs, is as great, and some will say of the same nature,
as that of Mrs. Crow, the ghost-seer in the old story.
This lady had unbounded faith that certain acts would
make her invisible, and so went out into the streets of
Edinburgh with nothing on and a prayer book in one
hand. A policeman rushed at her with his cape. She
was not disconcerted, but said : ' What, you see me ? Then
I must have put the book into the wrong hand.'

I have noticed before the fact of the extraordinary
economy brought about by reduction in food, wine, etc. ;
but this is not necessarily an argument in favour of a simple
diet. The money people have must go somewhere ; and if
they like meat and drink better than most things, but for the
injury to the body it might as well go in that way as in
any of the other luxuries of life which are not essentials.
Much as I enjoy providing food for others, I now feel that
it is anything but a true kindness to them. It is difficult

MARCH 231

to imagine the change that would come over civilisation
if that most improbable of all miracles were to take place
and the majority of people became non-meat-eaters. I
have a note from one of Walter Bagehot's books which
points out the evil of reduction in luxury. I am not
political economist enough to know whether his view is
generally accepted now ; it is in contradiction to that
of other teachers. He says : ' We must observe, what is
incessantly forgotten, that it is not a Spartan and ascetic
state of society which most generates saving. On the
contrary, if a whole society has few wants there is little
motive for saving. . . . Nothing is commoner than to read
homilies on luxury. Without the multifarious accumula-
tion of wants, which are called luxury, there would in such
a state of society be far less saving than there is. And if
it be good for the poor that capital should be saved, then
the momentary luxury which causes that saving is good
for the poor.' I spend in fruit and on the garden what I
should have spent under ordinary circumstances in meat
and wine, with certainly more enjoyment to myself and,
perhaps, less waste.

My nieces, I believe, look upon me as a kind of witch
— meant no doubt as a subtle compliment — and, now that
many are married and have babies, they say they want
my opinion on the important question of how to manage
them. I am very fond of babies and a great admirer
even of large families, now so out of fashion. In a book
lately published I read the other day of a bishop at the
beginning of this century who wrote to his young married
daughter : ' Go on, my dear Eliza, and never fear hurting
your constitution by honest child-beai'ing, since, for one
mother that grows thin with this work, there are five
hundred old maids that grow thin for want of it.' As a
matter of fact, I have seen very little of nurseries of late
years, but I never travel in railway carriages with babies,

232 MORE POT-POURRI

or look into the village perambulators, without being
shocked by the universal use of those terrible modern
inventions, sold by every chemist throughout the land,
called ' baby comforters or soothers.' I cannot imagine
any child's digestion not being vyeakened and injured by
them. The suction is exactly the same as with the real
bottle, and the waste of saliva must be excessive ; so great
that the flow must be much reduced when food is actually
taken, and this of itself must begin the non-assimilacion of
food which modern children, especially those brought up
by hand, suffer from so much. My objection applies to
babies after they are three or four months old ; before that
these ' comforters ' do not do much harm. But, the habit
once acquired, few nurses or mothers have the courage to
break it.

Every doctor I have asked has corroborated my view
on this subject. A thoroughly conscientious doctor ought,
I think, to refuse to attend the children of the rich where
such things are used. The mothers and nurses say : ' It is
such a comfort to the child, and prevents its crying, which
is so dangerous.' This is the modern receipt for every-
thing ! Momentary relief and palliatives at the cost of
eventual good ! What makes babies cry is not only dyspep-
sia and discomfort, but also spoihng; that is to say, respond-
ing to that natural appeal of crying for what they want.
Many a child that has been too much held in nurses' arms
from its birth cries when it is laid down. That does not
mean that it is bad for the child to lie down, for, if it is
quite loosely dressed, this does it only good. It cries, as a
dog whines, merely to express, in the only way that it can,
what it wants ; and if taken up directly it cries, this teaches
it, by the only way it can learn, to do it again next time.

I saw some years ago a most intelligently managed
baby ; it was half German, half French. I was also
much struck with the superior common-sense of many of

MARCH 233

the arrangements in the foreign nursery that I visited, and
was told that they were the general custom in that part
of the world. All babies' cots from the very beginning are
firm, never rocking — which must be better. And the little
mattress is made of hard, firm horsehair, not wool. On the
top of this is another mattress, made of strong linen, four or
five inches thick, loosely filled with husks. The pillow is
also loosely filled with the same material, viz. the husks
of oats, well dried and cleaned of all dust. The husks can
be got from a corn or forage merchant, and — to thoroughly
clean them — they should be washed in water, left to dry
for some days, then well shaken out in a thin muslin bag,
and also well aired. The reasons for this kind of pillow
are its cleanliness, and the fact that it is much cooler and
wholesomer than either wool, down, or feathers. In
Germany children sleep on a husk pillow till they are
seven or eight years old, and later in cases of illness. The
coolness of this pillow and mattress is particularly essential,
because the babies are never held in the arms of mother
or nurse except when they are being fed. This is an
important factor in the nursery management, especially
in houses without many servants, as it makes the nurse
or mother so much freer to do all that she has to do.
Small babies are far too much nursed as a rule in England ;
a child is trained from the first by the monthly nurse to
lie constantly on her knee, whereas abroad the first thing
done from the very beginning is to train a baby to be
perfectly content in its cot. And when the weather is fine
and it goes out, it is never carried or wheeled about before
it is seven or eight months old. It lies for hours in the
open air as in a bed. It is very important that children
of all ages should sleep on a hard flat bed, and that
mattresses should be re-made whenever they get hollow.
I believe that neglect of this is the cause of many round
shoulders and weak spines. A husk pillow (which can be

234 MORE POT-POURRI

made of dried and pounded bracken Fern if the husks of
oats are not available) is also used for washing a baby, on
a method which I think both safer and easier than our
English way. There is a large plain deal table, three
sides of which are surrounded by a rim as in our wooden
washstands. On the right and left of this table is placed
everything the nurse is likely to require for washing the
baby. On a little table next to this big one is a basket
with the clothes. In the middle of the large table is
placed the above-mentioned pillow covered with a piece
of mackintosh sheeting, over which is laid a large bath
towel. On this is placed the little naked baby, and it is
then the superior advantage of this system over the
English one becomes apparent. No one can see it done
without appreciating how much less experienced the
mother or nurse need be, as both hands are left free to
soap and sponge, and wipe and powder. After being
soaped, the baby is dipped, as with us, into the bath and
immediately laid back again on the pillow, where it looks
like one of the little Christian ' bambinos ' in sugar
or plaster which used to be sold in Italy at Christmas-
time.

The child is wrapped in the bath towel and dried.
The mackintosh and towel are then removed, and the
really difficult process of dressing a very young baby is
safely and easily performed on the pillow. I saw it done
by a young and inexperienced nurserymaid of nineteen,
who certainly could never have been trusted to wash a
baby as we do it in England, and I came away greatly
impressed with the merits of the chaff pillow.

A favourite trick practised by those who have charge
of babies is to cover or nearly cover over their faces, so
that the child breathes its own breath, which all educated
people know is poisonous. When you expostulate, the
nurse says : ' It makes the cliild sleep better ' — which means

MARCH 235

the child is more or less asphyxiated hy want of air.
This excuse could be urged for anything, even for giving
what, when I was in Canada, I saw advertised every-
where as ' Sirop calmant de Madame Winslow.' The
wretched stuff acquires a new dignity when translated
into French ! Fresh air, night and day, is the great
essential for health ; and, pretty as are babies' veils, I think
the babies are far better without them. All the same I
saw a lovely little baby's hood last year, made in a close-
fitting way, like an old-fashioned baby's cap, and over all
was thrown a large square of net hemmed and run with
three rows of baby satin ribbon.

The public mind has been a good deal disturbed and
exercised by the Bill, passed in '98, enabling people who
have ' conscientious objections ' to be absolved from having
their children vaccinated. I should like to see all vac-
cination voluntary, as it seems to me to be exceedingly
likely that the last scientific word on the subject has not
been said. But if it is really for the good of the com-
munity that vaccination should be universally enforced,
then the ' conscientious objector ' is a danger to the whole
community, and should not be allowed to have his way.
Anybody interested in this subject will find in the
twenty-fourth volume of the ' Encyclopaedia Britannica '
(ninth edition) an exhaustive article on vaccination, which,
the writer says, is ' the result of an independent and
laborious research.' To me it was interesting and most
instructive. The public now have such glorious chances
of learning the truth, instead of living on false tradition ;
but how few avail themselves of them ! The statements
at the end of the article about the epidemic of smallpox
in 1870-71 are most curious, and certainly contradict
many of the usual medical assertions.

Tp return to the babies. Anxious young mothers with
delicate infants are nowadays very apt to get hospital

236 MORE POT-POURRI

nurses to look after them. I am sure that is a mistake,
and I have known two or three cases amongst my
acquaintances where this was tried and answered ex-
tremely l)adly. The hospital nurse is apt to be over-
clever, and try far too many things, such as changing the
foods unnecessarily, and using medicines much too freely.
A baby wants ordinary animal care, warmth, regularity
of treatment, and the people who look after it to have the
courage that comes with love. It does not want remedies
which check ailments one day and reproduce them
the next day with renewed force. Why does it never
strike the mother or nurse, who gives a child — with
absolute courage — a harmful drag such as fluid mag-
nesia, that they could try instead such harmless remedies
as spoonfuls of orange- juice, or apples or prunes rubbed
through a sieve ? A doctor told me the other day that a
child brought up on fluid magnesia was bound to suffer
from that troublesome if not dangerous ailment too well
known in most modern nurseries, chronic constipation.

If a child is very delicate, the mother nervous, and
if no good experienced children's nurse is to be got,
then I would recommend a monthly nurse ; though, of
coui'se, they too are sometimes difficult to get. There is
an institution now started, called the Norland Institute,
16 Holland Park TeiTace, London, W., and the Principal
will send all information if requested. It is for the
training of ladies as children's nurses on Proebelian
principles. I do not know much about it myself, but it
appears to be useful both for employers and employed.
So many women, though willing enough, are unfit for
any employment through want of training, and many
a young woman would be an excellent nurse for young
children who could never make a good governess or school-
teacher.

Nursery arrangements arc much cleaner now than

MARCH 237

they used to be. A well cared-for baby has its little
gums wiped out every day with a soft rag, which is then
burnt. This plan is safer than the soft little bit of sponge
sold for the purpose, as sponges are difficult to keep per-
fectly clean, even if well washed and dried. The following
is the receipt for the mixture with which this should be
done, and which makes the baby smack its lips : Mix
one teaspoonful of powdered borax with two teaspoonfuls
of cold water, and add three ounces of glycerine. Shake
the bottle well, and the mixture is ready for use. In the
case of a baby that has been neglected, and when the
mouth has become really bad, it should be washed out
with warm water several times a day after food.

There is still a strong prejudice in England against
boiling and sterilising milk ; but, in the face of the recent
revelations as regards tuberculosis in cows, I trust this
will become less and less. The German patents are to be
got at all chemists'. Soxhlet's apparatus is one of the
best, I believe, but new sterilisers are constantly being
brought out ; and when once understood the process gives
no more trouble than any other careful preparation of
babies' food. To give children and invalids raw milk does
seem a most cruel risk. I know many young people who
say they would rather die than drink boiled milk. If
they were brought up from babyhood on cooked milk, I
am sure that this feeling would disappear. I copy the
following extract on this subject of milk-sterilising from
a lecture (published in the ' Journal of State Medicine,'
January 1899) on ' The Administrative Control of Tubercu-
losis,' by Sir Richard Thorne Thorne, Medical Officer of
the Local Government Board, as it interests and concerns
far more people than the mere management and health of
cows, although this is the chief point of Sir Eichard's
clear and admirable lecture. The extract may seem
rather long, but I feel compelled to copy it, as it may

238 MORE POT-POURRI

in that way reach homes where the more scientific
periodical may never have been heard of : ' It is a some-
what curious fact that the inhabitants of the United
Kingdom stand ahnost alone amongst civilised nations in
the habitual use of uncooked milk as food. This is the
more to be regi'etted because, by reason of this practice,
human life, especially that of infancy and childhood, is
being sacrificed on a scale which, to use the mildest term,
is altogether deplorable. That this should be so is also
altogether unreasonable in the face of the certain know-
ledge we possess, and which is set forth in the report of
the Royal Commission of 1890 in the following words :
" The most deadly tubercular material can be rendered
absolutely innocuous, in so far as any spreading of
infective disease is concerned, by the action of a tempera-
ture at which water boils." And again : " It is sufi&cient
to state that boiling, for an instant even, renders the
tubercle bacillus absolutely innocuous." Milk exposed
to a temperature of 100° C, whether by boiling or other
form of cooking, will not convey tuberculosis ; and milk
sterilised, as by placing it over the fire in one saucepan,
which stands in an outer one filled with water, until it
has reached a temperature of some 80° C. to 90° C, i.e.
176° F., or perhaps even less, is an equally innocuous
food. And yet, whilst we have this knowledge at our
disposal, and whilst we know still further that some
7,000 persons, mostly infants, are annually killed in
England and Wales by that form of tuberculosis called
" labis mesenterica," besides some thousands more by
tubercular meningitis — a cause of tuberculous death
which is on the increase under three months of age, is
undergoing no diminution at the next three months of life,
and which exhibits substantial increase during young
adult life — and yet we find people apparently intelligent,
including even heads of young families, who discard the

MARCH 239

remedy on the mere gi'ound of " taste." And what is still
more striking and reprehensible is the fact that in many
of our hospitals, established for the cure of disease, no
effort is made to avoid the chance of imparting disease,
merely because effort would cause some inconvenience.
The avoidance of all that is septic in connection with
surgical operations stands in striking contrast with the
courting of infection in the wards by the use of uncooked
milk. But even the taste which attaches to boiled milk,
and to which infants become at once habituated, may
be largely avoided if the milk boiled after the morning
delivery be stored in the cool for use in the afternoon,
and if the afternoon milk be similarly set aside until next
morning.

' But some allege another objection. It is maintained
that cooked milk is less nutritious than raw milk. I
admit that there is an element of truth in this. Milk is
a fluid having a biological character ; it is living fluid,
and this character is destroyed by boiling or sterilisation.
From the purely scientific point of view it is most desir-
able to bear this in mind, but in its practical aspect it is
well to remember that the slight diminution in nutritive
value which cooking brings about in milk cannot be
named side by side with the immense gain in freedom
from the risk of infectious disease and death which is
thus insured. . . .' He ends by saying :

' The need for educating the public of this country as
to the risks involved in the use of raw cows' milk, and as
to the simple methods by which these risks can be
effectually avoided, is a pressing one, and it can only be
met by enUsting the active services of my own profession.
Our influence in such matters is necessarily considerable ;
our responsibility is correspondingly a heavy one.'

I should like to know the opinion of the Faculty on the
dangers of butter, cream, and cheese, which I have never

240 MORE POT-POURRI

seen mentioned. Butter, however, is now often made from
boiled milk.

Here is a receipt for boiling milk for butter or keep-
ing : Let the milk stand for twelve hours in an open tin,
then put it on the stove, and let it just bubble round the
edges. Take it off, let it stand another twelve hours, and
then make the butter.

The popular impression is that separated milk is useless
as human food. Yet I beUeve it is now acknowledged by
scientific investigators that the nourishing and life-giving
properties of milk remain when the cream is taken off, the
cream containing nothing but the fat. Of course, to
children and many people fat is desirable, but can be
obtained in many other ways.

The newspapers of the last few months have been so
full of this most interesting question of tuberculosis in
cows that it seems almost superfluous to allude to it.
Yet nurseries are so under the power of women who,
however good and devoted, are uneducated, and therefore
bigoted in their opinions, that it is as well to caution
young mothers not to yield to what might seem to them
the greater experience of the nurse. I did it myself,
having as my nurse one of the best of women, who had
brought up several babies. All the same, I think now I
was wrong ; but in my youth the rules of health were in the
dark ages compared to what they are now. To-day every
young mother should learn for herself what is the last and
the most approved theory as regards food and fresh air. On
one subject science and Nature go hand in hand, and lead
more and more to the belief that the only really right
noiirishment for a baby is what Nature provides. In the
' upper classes ' it has become in my life-time rarer and
rarer for young mothers to nurse their own children.
When I was young the only women who were supposed
to be good wet-nurses were the Irish ; and why was

MARCH 241

this ? Because they were poorly fed ; they came, too, of
generations of poor feeders, and before the days when
they could obtain either meat or tea except in very small
quantities. In France and Germany the wet-nurses
always came from the poor districts, where as a rule meat-
eating was unknown ; and of late years these women are
more and more difficult to procure, though this may, of
course, be from many reasons other than Nature failing
to supply what is required. I believe that if young
mothers were greatly to reduce their ordinary food during
the time before the birth of their children, they would not
only greatly reduce the common suffering which Nature
has had to resort to, so as to lessen the food taken, but
the chances of the baby's health after its birth would be
infinitely greater. A large heavy baby often loses weight
after its birth, especially when the mother cannot give it
natural nourishment. This should not be ; they should
increase in weight during the first month. I was always
under the impression when young that a delicate mother,
and especially one threatened with consumption, ought on
no account to nurse her child. In the lecture from which
I quoted before. Sir Richard Thorne Thorne says that
* there is no sterilising apparatus that can give results
comparable with those provided by Nature in the healthy
female breast, and that tuberculosis in the human milk
glands is a disease so rare that it hardly needs con-
sideration in connection with the feeding of infants. At
the child-bearing age it is all but unknown.' I extract this
because I think it will help many a young mother to fight
the opposition of perhaps both her husband and the doctor,
who may be thinking, as is natural, more of what they
consider good for her than for the child.

I heard yesterday in our village an excellent lecture
by a young mother on what she called the ' New Educa-
tion.' I agreed with every word, and had myself tried

242 MORE POT-POURRI

to carry it out many years ago. It is sad that what she
propounded has made so Httle way these five-and-twenty
or thirty years. Her recommendations were much on the
lines of a book first published in 1868, called ' Essays on
Educational Reformers,' by Robert Herbert Quick. I
only did not mention this book before, much as it
interested me years ago, and much as I admire it still,
because I thought it was out of print and not to be got.
Now it is republished by Longmans, Green & Co. in a
cheap edition (2s. 3d.) and arranged on a clearer plan.
Get it, you young mothers, and read it. It is the most
comprehensive and illuminating book that I have ever
seen on the all-important subject. It is far better known
in America than in England. The chapter on Pestalozzi
is perhaps especially excellent. Nature should be helped
by art, and art should come to the assistance of Nature.
After showing how children can only learn in their own
way he ends with ' Of course I do not mean there is no
education for children, however young ; but the school is
the mother's knee, and the lessons learnt there are other
and more valuable than object lessons.' He goes on
to say : ' The mother is qualified, and qualified by the
Creator Himself, to become the principal agent in the
development of her child . . . and what is demanded of
her is a thinking love. ..." Is it not almost fearful how
many children grow up without any thinking love at all ?
Is there anything more pathetic in three lines than these
— by Blake — or more terribly true ? Think of all the
half-castes all over the world, not to mention our own

cities !

The Angel that presided o'er my birth

Said, ' Little creature, formed of joy and mirth,

Go, live without the help of anything on earth.'

It is the non-understanding of children makes the
difficulty. The following poem by Mrs. Deamer will give

Mx^RCH 243

a stab, I think, to many a young mother. Maternal love
often wants cultivating, and does not come naturally to
many young women ; of this I am sure. And though
they learn many things, they seem to think being a good
mother comes by instinct or not at all. This is not true.
Besides, the apparently devoted mother may want quite
as much training and self-cultivation as the indifferent
one ; perhaps more so, as she takes more responsibility on
herself, and so, possibly, deprives the child of being
looked after by someone else.

I think the world is really sad,

I can do nothing but annoy ;
For little boys are all born bad,

And I am born a little boy.

It doesn't matter what the game,
Whether it's Indians, trains, or ball ;

I always know I am to blame.
If I amuse myself at all.

said one day on mother's knee :
If you would send us right away
To foreign lands across the sea.
You wouldn't see us every day.

We shouldn't worry any more

In those strange lands with queer new toys ;
But here we stamp, and play, and war,
And wear your life out with our noise.

' The savages would never mind,

And you'd be glad to have us go
There; nobody would be unkind,

For you dislike your children so.'

Then mother turned and looked quite red,
I do not think she could have heard ;

She put me off her knee instead
Of answering me a single word.

244 MORE POT-POURRI

She went, and did not even nod.

What had I said that could annoy ?
Mothers are really very odd

If you are born a little boy.

I could go on quoting for ever from Mr. Quick's book,
but why should I when it is within reach of all ? His
last sentence is : ' The duty of each generation is to gather
up the inheritance from the past, and then to serve the
present and prepare better things for the future.' How
can there be a better motto for young or old ?

The Kindergarten system, when well carried out, seems
to be the best method of teaching children under seven,
and a Kindergarten child has more thoughtful independ-
ence than other children. I once tried to make a boy
of five clean his teeth, but he was rebellious that night,
and in an unguarded moment I said he must. So after
standing some time beside him I said : ' I do not know
how long you mean to keep me here, but I can't give in
now I have said you must.' The child answered quite
calmly : ' Well, it is odd, mother, you should say that, as
it is exactly what I feel.' And then we came in some way
to an amiable compromise which hurt no one's dignity.
It is so idiotic in the management of children to give
direct orders which they do not understand and which
appear to them as unreasonable tyranny. A mother had
better command by example, not by authority. Subjection
and blind olDcdience are all wrong, and result from what
is quite a mistaken idea of the evolution of the universe.
' Every human being has a claim to a judicious develop-
ment of his faculties by those to whom the care of his
infancy is confided.'

Teeth cleaning of children used to be thought rather
an unnecessary tyranny. It has assumed different pro-
portions now, and it ought to be seen to in all schools.
A great many people will be sui^prised to learn that

MARCH 245

often would-be recruits are rejected on the ground of
bad teeth. It is no better with officers, and cases are
common in which candidates after an expensive prepara-
tion have failed to pass their ' medical ' on account of
deficient dentures. In an examination of 10,000 of
British children of an average age of twelve years, eighty-
five per cent, required operative treatment. One more
example that the ordinary food of the present day is not
conducive to the health of the human race. Improve-
ment in teeth and gums is one of the most marked and
satisfactory symptoms experienced by people who take to
the health-giving food recommended by Dr. Haig.

I find among my old letters this anecdote of a young
mother trying to give religious instruction to a delicate

little girl of two and a half : ' M is a sweetly good,

dear child and in better spirits than usual, which is a good
sign. I was trying the other day to convey some notion
of a Creator to her mind. She started with pure Atheism
— that nobody made the trees, etc. Having made her
understand her clothes must be made, and dinner pre-
pared by somebody, she seemed to accept the notion of
" God " with a long-drawn " Oh ! " And when I said He
was a long way off, in the beautiful sky, she said quickly :
" What a bore ! " I asked : "Why ? " She answered : " Me
like to see God, mamma." In short, she caught up some
notion of a good fellow who made everything that was
good and beautiful, and has told me ever since : " Dod
made the trees, the sun and the moon, and all the pitty
things." So I flatter myself she is on the fair road to
Deism. Christianity must dawn upon her mind by very
slow degrees, poor little infant ! But she is so loving and
gentle she is no bad exemplification of "Of such is the
Kingdom of Heaven," and I am verydotingly fond of her.'
I think if this fond mother had given the love without
attempting the instruction, merely teaching the child to

246 MORE POT-POURRI

admire and notice and love, she would have been more
sensibly employed in fitting it for its future life than in
trying to explain and expound Deism or Christianity at so
early an age.

I knew, years ago, two conscientious young parents,
both equally religious, who stayed away themselves from
going to church, which they loved, in order, as they said,
to break the temper of their little daughter, aged two and
a half. As I said before, temper which is inborn and
hereditary should never be fought, but always treated
with love, gentleness, and tenderness, as an illness.
Temper cannot be conquered except from within. To
help the child to help itself, that is the only method. I
do not really believe that punishment ever does any good
to old or young, though self-mortification helps many
natures. Prisons rank with mad-houses ; they exist to
protect the public, not to benefit the individuals who
suffer punishment. The only way with children is
gradually to get them to see what most helps themselves.
I admit that to understand the way children's minds work
is a humiliatingly difficult task, and one cannot be too
careful not to shock their feelings by either laughing at
them or letting them see any contempt for their most
natural ignorance. There is a well-known story of a
little girl who, having been naughty, was told to ask
forgiveness of the Almighty in her evening prayers.
The next morning, when questioned as to whether she
had done so, she quietly answered : ' Oh yes, but Dod
said : " Don't mention it, Miss B " ' !

In a letter on some remark about children in my first
book a most kind and able woman wrote to me as follows :
' The only point on which I do not quite agree with you
is where you say you cannot judge of a child's character
before twelve. When I look back to my early childhood
I can see how exactly I and my brothers and sisters were

MARCH 247

as little children what we are to-day. What I do think
is that, from about twelve to twenty-two or three, or even
twenty-eight, a certain deflection takes place ; but as one
fully develops, one returns to what one was as a little
child. I know that I am to-day far more like what I was
at seven years old than what I was at sixteen. The child
is father to the man, not to the youth. Of course you
must be keen enough to read the child's character.
Children are such mysterious things that few grown-
up people, even those who are keen readers of adult
character, can understand them.'

So far as I understand what is called ' the New Educa-
tion,' it does not mean knowledge-teaching at all, but the
developing and fostering the good qualities that are born
in a child, and so keeping under the evil propensities
which are equally born in it. In fact, to make grow and
develop what is actually there in the best way you can ;
not try to cram in, as into an empty sack, what you
think ought to be there.

Some years ago the ' Pall Mall Gazette ' used, from
time to time, to contain charming original articles on
various subjects. Among my cuttings I find the following,
so true to child life that I think it will rejoice everyone
who cares to understand children. This study is really
only just beginning to be approached, as it should be, with
the humility that belongs to great ignorance and non-
understanding :

' It has often been remarked that one half of the world
does not know how the other half lives, but it is curious
enough that this should be the fact about a half of the
world who share our homes, who occupy our thoughts,
and who possess our hearts, perhaps, more entirely than
do any other earthly objects.

' The world in which our children really move and live
is as remote and unvisited by us as the animal kingdom

248 MORE POT-POURRI

itself, and it is only now and then that a chance glimpse
into the working of their minds makes us realise the gulf
that separates us. They can come to us, but we cannot
go to them ; nor are they, indeed, without that touch of
contempt for us and our aifairs which might naturally
be considered the exclusive privilege of the elder and
stronger beings. " Don't disturb poor father ; he is read-
ing his papers," is a sort of counterpart to " Oh, let them
play; they are doing no harm." "When we cast a remin-
iscent glance over our own childhood we realise how
solitai'y were its hopes and its occupations, shared at
most by one of our own age — a sister, a brother, or a
friend. The elders appear from time to time as the di ex
onachind of our existence, for redress or for deliverance.
We remember them as teachers, as purveyors of pleasure,
often as separators of companions and terminators of
delights, but rarely as sharers in our most exquisite
amusements. "What will mother say?" had about it a
half-gleeful anticipation of disapproval, seldom destined
to be unfulfilled ; and that not because of any severity
on the part of the parent, but from a radical want of sym-
pathy with the first principles of enjoyment. Wet, dirt,
fatigue, a very little danger, late hours — all were in them-
selves positive pleasures, and with some this flavour lingers
till far on in life ; but as a rule you cannot depend upon
a grown-up person not really preferring to be warm and
dull and dry, to any discomforts you can offer him.

' Then what a strange twihght reigns in children's
minds ! What dim mysterious associations of words and
phrases lost to us through the garish light of grammar
or of a clear and positive orthography ! Now and then
across the years comes a memory of difficulties never
guessed at by anyone but ourselves. How surprising it
was to hear of people with broken arms or legs, which
members nevertheless were not visibly severed from

MARCH 249

their persons nor lying on the floor, as in the more
rational world of dolldom ! And what mysterious and
terrible fate did " being killed on the spot " signify ?
What spot? or, rather, which spot? for we invariably
referred it to some bodily blemish of our own.

' Holy Writ, of course, offered countless problems to
the imagination, and so did the services of the Church.
The collects were fraught with a meaning their authors
never dreamed of. "The ills which the devil Orman
worketh against us " referred, we knew well enough, to
the deadly practices of some bottled Jinn or Efreet ; and
one companion has since confessed that the Pontius
Pilate alluded to by the congregation every Sunday was
for him the Bonchurch pilot, strayed into strange
company no doubt, but one with whom he had esta-
blished friendly relations during the week. " Keep thy
servant from consumptions sins," we said devoutly, for
doubtless a consumptions sin was connected remotely
with the store-room.

' What confusion must have reigned in the mind of
the white-robed infant we once heard murmuring at his
mother's knee the following invocation :

Tiger, tiger, burning bright,

Through the darkness, be thou near me I

And how fortunate that prayer is not always directly
answered ! The words our children use are generally
direct and picturesque, coined with a view to their
expressive value. We know few terms more felicitous
than " a sash-pain," by which a child (the sex is evident)
was in the habit of alluding to one of the ills to which
flesh is heir. A " rocking-bed " is a better name than a
hammock, and a " worm pool " is evidently the Early
Saxon rendering of a whirl-pool, or why should you be
in danger of being sucked down by it ? A " poor wheeler "

250 MORE POT-POURRI

delicately suggests the moral inferiority of square cabs to
hansoms. What can be better than a child's definition
of drawing : " First you think about something, and then
you draw a line round your think " ?

'Sometimes their utterances betray character, as of the
little boy who, when the tiger's growls behind the sofa
had become too realistic for human endurance, burst forth
with " Mother ! mother ! don't growl so loud ; it frightens
granny " ; or the self-conscious infant who rushed to leave
the lion-house at the Zoo because, he said, " The lion is
peeping at baby " — as if that wide-eyed majesty were
conscious of anything nearer than some Libyan desert
visible to his mental gaze. Often they are questions to
confound the wise. " Mother, does anyone have to-morrow
before us ? and will they use to-day when we've done
with it ? " has a flavour of Oriental wisdom about it
difficult to meet. Most grandparents can supply you
with genuine expressions and utterances drawn from
nursery life, and they are willing to do so on the smallest
encouragement; it is in them that children find their
most intelligent sympathisers. We noticed two of the
most distinguished men of the present day in deep and
confidential discourse at a State entertainment in London
the other season. To the superficial observer they
appeared to be settling the affairs of the nation, but in
reality they were capping stories about their respective
youngest grandchildren, and their confidences lasted long
and late.

' It seems strange that with an inexhaustible field of
observation open to everyone the children of fiction
should not be more hfelike and less sentimental than is
usually the case ; but the subject is one that might be
indefinitely pursued.

* Memory, it is tnie, is apt to play us false when we try
to re-enter the realms of our youth ; but few of us seem

MARCH 251

ever to have listened at the nursery door, or to have looked
through the eyes of childhood into the make-believe world
it inhabits.'

I knew a little boy once who used to go out into
Hyde Park when the soldiers were exercising, and on
his return give long and detailed accounts of the real
battles he had seen. His elder and less imaginative
brother would stand by in silent amazement at what
seemed to him absolute untruths. The child in a way
knew he had not seen what he described, and yet, as he
had seen with the eye of imagination, it was real and true
to him.

Here is a little child's song, the words by E. Nesbit,
set to music by Liza Lehmann. I think it charming, and
so illustrative of the kind of imagination children have,
knowing quite well that what they think is not the actual
fact, though true to them :

When my good-nights and pray'rs are said

And I am safe tucked up in bed,

I know my Guardian Angel stands

And holds my soul between his hands.

I cannot see his wings of light

Because I keep my eyes shut tight,

For if I open them I know

My pretty Angel has to go.

But through the darkness I can hear

His white wings rustling very near.

I know it is his darling wings.

Not mother folding up my things.

I never refuse to name anything I like when I am
told ' Everyone knows that,' for ' everyone ' is a very
limited London circle, where bright, pretty things come
like beautiful bubbles, are seen by what is called ' every-
body,' and are gone in a moment. I think of my kind
unknown friends who are far away bearing the white
woman's burden, and who have written to me saying they

252 MORE POT-POURRI

enjoyed the little breath of home my last book brought
them. They may not have seen or heard what I have
and even here in Surrey I find that often the thing that
' everyone knows ' does not even reach the next parish.

March 3rd. — This is the first year I have forced Spircea
confusa, and it makes a lovely pot-plant. We left it out
in the cold till the middle of January. In forcing all
hardy things, that is the great secret : send them to sleep
as early as you can by taking them up and exposing them
to cold. All plants must have their rest; they are not
like Baron Humboldt and his night of two hours. The
leaves of this Spiraea are a blue-gray, and the branches are
wreathed with miniature ' May blossoms.' Alas ! they do
not do well picked and in water.

I am sure, for anyone who wants to force coloured
Hyacinths, only the very best bulbs are worth while,
especially when single flowers are preferred, as in my
case. They are so sweet in the house that I think they
are worth the trouble of growing and the expense of
buying annually. I got last autumn a larger and later
flowering kind of white Hyacinth from Van Tubergen,
called ' Italian Hyacinths,' single ones and quite cheap.
They have come on splendidly. They are something like
the early Eoman ones, only far larger and stronger. They
flower much later and are of an accentuated white, well
worth growing, and I think they will do out of doors next
year or the year after. Two newly bought Staphylea
colchica are looking lovely now in the greenhouse, and also
a bought plant of white Lilac is covered with bloom. We
must cut them all back hard after flowering, plant them
out, and give them a year's rest ; then I hope they will do
again. Lihonia floribunda is also a very pretty little
greenhouse plant at this time of year. This is the time to
pot up some rested plants of Sweet Verbena, and put them
into the warmest house to start their growth. They soon

MARCH 253

come into leaf, and are then best in the ordinary cool
house. This gives plenty of Verbena for early picking.

March 8th. — The lion-like character of the weather is
softening, and all the little spring things begin to come
through. Each day makes a difference, but the delightful
feeling of new life is already everywhere. Our reason
tells us this is because Nature has been asleep, not dead.
There is no mistake about the poor really dead plants ; we
know them too well. Early spring here is not beautiful
at all ; it is dry and shrivelled and hard-looking, not
like the neighbourhood of my old home by the Hertford-
shire millstream.

The white Alyssum, the common Pulmonaria, and
the Wallflowers are all coming into flower. I feel more
and more sure that mixed borders ought not to be dug up
in autumn, as gardeners — especially gardeners new to a
place — are so fond of doing ; in that way half the best
things get lost. The best way is to re-plant, or dig out
large pieces and divide each plant if it wants it after
flowering and before they quite die down. The white
Alyssum and the Pulmonarias both do better under
the slight protection of shrubs than quite in the open
border, where the cold winds catch them.

My two large old Camellias planted out last autumn,
well under a Holly and facing north, are doing well, and
one has three bright rosy-red blooms. It remains to be
seen how they will do next year. It is a pleasure to think
Camellias do better in London gardens than almost
any other evergreens, and only want well planting in peat
and leaf -mould, and well syringing and watering in the
spring. But there also they must have the protection of
other shrubs, to hang over their tops and keep off the
spring frosts.

A semi-double Azalea for the greenhouse, called
Deutsche Perle, was given me the other day, and is a

254 MORE^ POT-POURRI

charming greenhouse plant. The flower has something
of the appearance of a Gardenia, but it has no scent.

I have had two real good days' gardening, and have
tried to carry out some of Miss Jekyll's hints, even in
this commonplace, every-day garden. I have pulled
down some of the climbing Eoses, to let them make low-
growing bushes ; for it is so true that, as she says, when
planted on a Pergola all their beauty is only for the bird
as it flies. In the lanes, too, I saw some of the wild
Arum leaves, and got out of the carriage to get some.
Having no garden-gloves or knife with me, I ran my
finger down into the soft leafy mould to gather them
with the white stalk underground. I trust these will
rejoice an invalid friend in London to-morrow. One gets
almost tired of the mass of flowers in London now, and
things that smell of ditches and hedgerows are what one
values most.

March 9th. — Odcrntoglossum Bossii major is a charming
little Orchid to hang up in a shallow pan in a greenhouse
when in flower. I am getting to like Orchids more and
more now that, instead of thinking of them in their
hot glass palaces, the easy-growing ones are treated here
like other greenhouse plants. They give me great
pleasure ; the flowers are beautiful and interesting to look
into and examine. I must learn more about them. In
all things concerning Nature it is only ignorance that
makes us take likes and dislikes.

This is the first spring morning. How one appreciates
the slightest rise in the temperature ! I quite pity those
who have rushed South, and who cannot watch the slow
development of our English spring, with all its many
disappointments.

The bright yellow flowers of the improved Tussilago
Coltsfoot, sold by Cannel, are now just coming out, and
the gravelly corner where they grow is a bright mass of

MARCH 255

buds. These flowers that come before their leaves, like
the autumn crocus, are attractive, though the size of their
leaves when they do come puts one sometimes out of
conceit with them, especially if crowded for room ; though
it is astonishing how corners can be found in even small
gardens for all sorts of things, if one gives the matter
constant attention. Having everything under one's eye,
one never forgets to notice how they get on ; the greatest
danger for the beds and shrubberies is the forking-over in
autumn. It is far better left alone, if it cannot be done
with care and knowledge.

My little plant of the Da2Jh7ie hlagayana is now in
flower, but none of the Daphnes do well here for long ;
even the mezcreitm goes off after a year or two, and
D. cneorum wants constant attention. D. hlagayana has
to be grown like D. cneorum, pegged down in peat and
with some low-growing plant to shade it. All Daphnes
are well worth the care they need, but it is a hard struggle.
I think the spring air is too dry for them.

The best gardeners tell me we ought to be able to get
Irises during eight or nine months of the year, and that
this is done by keeping back Japanese Irises with their
toes in the water till October. I confess I have never
seen any Kcsmpferi in bloom after the end of July in this
part of the world.

I have lately been given this most useful list for
the blooming-time of Irises : February and March, Iris
stylosa (blue and white varieties), I. reticulata, I.
unguicularis alba, I. persica, I. histrioides ; March and
April, I. ■pumila atropurpurea, I. pumila coerulea, I.
backeriana, I. tuherosa, I. orchioides, I. assyriaca ;
May, florentina ; May and June, German and Spanish
and 1. sibirica ; July and August, English and Japanese.
I have had the ground prepared, and to-day I am
sowing the Shirley and other Poppies and Sweet-peas.

256 MORE POT-POURRI

Early sowing of early summer annuals is most essential
here. I see Miss Jekyll holds much to autumn sowing. I
have tried it and failed in some cases, but that is because
I have done it too late in the autumn. Early sowing is
the only plan of spring sowing that is at all successful
here. This particular first week in March 1899 is per-
fection for all gardening work. I never saw the ground
in such a good state — pulverised by night frosts, without
being too dry and dusty. The gardening papers say there
has not been such a sunny February for thirty years.

The paper of instructions sent out by the secretary of
the Koyal Hoi'ticultural Society with the seed of the
Shirley Poppy is so excellent and such a help for many
annuals that I cannot do better than copy it. One of
the reasons people fail with hardy annuals is, as I said
before, from not sowing them early enough :

' 1. On as early a day as possible in February choose
a plot of ground sixteen to eighteen feet square or there-
abouts, give it a liberal dressing of rich dung and dig it
in well, and leave it to settle.

' 2. For sowing, choose the first fine open day in March,
free from actual frost, when the ground works easily, and
rake the surface over.

' 3. Mix the seed with five or six times its own bulk of
dry sand, so as to make it easier to sow it thinly.

' 4. Scatter the mixture thinly, broadcast, over the
raked surface and rake it again lightly.

' 5. When the seedlings are large enough to handle, if
there should be any bare patches in the bed, move with
the tip of a trowel a few tiny clumps from where they
stand thickest.

' 6. As soon as the bed shows regularly green, stretch
two lines across it parallel to each other, at eight inches
apart and, with a Dutch hoe, hoe up all between the lines,
sparing those plants only that are close to each line.

MARCH 257

Move the lines and so hoe all the bed, which will then
consist of a number of thin lines of seedlings eight inches
apart, and the hoed-up ones lying between.

' 7. About a week later stretch the lines again eight
inches apart at right angles to the previous lines, and hoe
again. This when finished will leave a number of tiny
square patches of seedlings eight inches apart each way.

' 8. A week later thin out the little patches by hand,
leaving only one plant in each. Now every plant will
have eight inches square to grow in.

' 9. Directly the plant shows the first sign of running
up to blossom, put a thin line of two-feet-high pea-sticks
between every two or at most every three lines of the
plants to strengthen them to resist the wind and rain.
They will soon grow above and hide the sticks.

* 10. In dry weather thoroughly soak the bed once a
week. A little sprinkle overhead is no use.

' N.B. — Be sure the operation described in No. 6 is
done early enough, otherwise the plants will have become
" leggy " before your thinning is complete, and when once
Poppies become " leggy " they are practically ruined.'

Mo.rch 1-kth. — My garden is now full of the old wild
sweet Violet {Viola odorata) of our youth— before even the
' Czars ' came in, much less the giant new kinds. I have
an immense affection for this Violet, with its beautiful
intense colour and its delicate perfume. It grew all
about the Hertfordshire garden under the hedges, and
little seedlings started up in the gravel paths, looking
bold and defiant ; but all the same they were rooted out
by the gardener when summer tidying began. At the
end of March or early in April, when the rain comes, I
divide up and plant little bits of these Violets everywhere,
and they grow and flourish and increase under Gooseberry
bushes and Currant bushes, along the palings covered
with Blackberries, under shrubs — anywhere, in fact — and

258 MORE POT-POURRI

there they remain, hidden and shaded and undisturbed all
the summer. Where seedlings appear they are let alone
all the summer and autumn till after flowering-time in
spring. They look lovely, and brave these cold, dry,
March days ; but their stalks are rather short here, for want
of moisture. If anyone wants to see this Violet to per-
fection, let him chance to be in Rome early in March,
as I once was, and let him go to the old English
cemetery, where Keats lies buried and the heart of Shelley,
and he will see a never-to-be-forgotten sight — the whole
ground blue with the Violets, tall and strong above their
leaves, the air one sweet perfume, and the sound (soft and
yet distinct) of the murmur of spring bees.

Just at this time we rake off the winter mulching that
has covered the Asparagiis beds, water them well with
liquid manure, and salt them when the rain comes.

March 16th. — As the seasons come round, the changes
often recall to my mind certain verses in ' Bethia Hard-
acre's ' volume. Such tender loving versions of some of
Nature's facts are there, and I go out to verify them. The
garden now is one mass of Crocuses, Violets, fading
Snowdrops and bursting DafiBes ; and this is how the
flower-chain is described by her :

Blossoms, meet to mourn the dead,
On each season's grave are spread ;
LiUes white and Roses red
O'er dead Spring are canopied ;
Eoses in their latest bloom
Blazen golden Summer's tomb ;
Stealthy showers of petals fall
At still Autumn's funeral ;
But the darlings of the year
Strew rude Winter's sepulchre.

Scarce a flower does Winter own ;
Of four seasons he alone

MARCH 259

Scarce a bud does to him take —
Barren for the future's sake,
Well content to none possess ;
And sweet Violets — faithfulness —
And white Snowdrops — innocence —
Are in death his recompense ;
And these darlings of the year
Strew rude Winter's sepulchre.

March ^Oth. — Of all the many catalogues I receive,
none, I think, are produced with anything like the
attractive intelligence of the one sent out by Messrs.
Ware, of Tottenham. This year one is tempted to say,
from the pretty European-Japanese dravying on the cover,
that Nature made a mistake in not giving us sometimes
an all-over pink sky instead of a blue ! The soil at
Tottenham is very heavy, and plants that flourish
admirably there, from my experience, unfortunately decline
altogether to grow when removed to a purer air and a
lighter soil. I am sure that all amateurs who are in-
terested in the rarer varieties of hardy and half-hardy
plants had far better try and raise them themselves from
seed. But a visit to Messrs. Ware's garden near London,
as well as constantly going to Kew, will show amateurs
what can be done. The old-fashioned idea that a garden
meant a place of quiet and repose is not the proper
mental attitude for suburban plant-cultivators. The
drawings in the catalogue are excellent, though they
perhaps rather represent the cultivator's expectations
than the truth. Still, it is well to have high ideals even
in annuals and biennials. To return to my catalogue —
no one can give time and study to it without being
the wiser.

In spite of all my resolutions to stay at home, I have
a very great longing to go once more to the ' Riviera,'
and see some of the really good gardens which have
grown up since my time, especially that of ' La Mortola,

s2

26o MORE POT-POURRI

Italy,' belonging to Commendatore Hanbury. Last yeai',
with his help and permission, a little book came out
which was a great success, and quickly ran out of print ;
it was called ' Eiviera Nature Notes.' A book of great
interest to us who are only English gardeners, what
would it be to those who are his neighbours on those
sunny slopes ? The first line in the book is : ' J'observe et
je suis la nature ; c'est mon secret pour etre heureux '
(Florian).

Can we hear this truth too often in prose and poetry
and in all art ? I have always thought one of the most
beautiful of Burne-Jones's early pictures is the one which
represents the wild god — Pan — lovingly receiving poor
little Psyche, thrown up by the river that refused to drown
her. And does it not mean that Nature from all time has
been the best comforter for one of the greatest of human
sorrows, unrequited love ?

These ' Eiviera Notes ' are full of desultory but most
interesting information. How delightful to read them in
a dry Olive yard or under an umbrella Pine, with the
blue sea behind the tree's rich stem ! Or, when too warm
to walk so far, to sit below the Orange-trees, whose tops
above one's head are masses of golden fruit and sweet-
smelling flowers ! At the end of the book are chapters on
birds, insects, and the ' Eiviera ' traces of that individual
— apparently so much alike in all countries — prehistoric
man. Were they happy, those dim mysterious multitudes
of the Old Stone and New Stone ages ? This little book
must have delighted many, as it delighted me ; and it is
not too difficult for anyone as ignorant as I am to under-
stand. As it bears on my favourite topic, I must quote
from this book the fact that ' polenta ' or Indian-corn
porridge is the chief food of the Piedmontese, and I observe
it is also stated that they do the hard manual labour at
' La Mortola.' They work all about the country as navvies,

MARCH 261

porters, and so forth, which proves that at any rate this food
does not make them unmuscular. They are powerfully
made men, and the Ni9ois are ludicrously afraid of them,
for they consider them capable of any act of violence. It
is also said that these Piedmontese suffer from a disease
called the ' pellagra,' caused by living on this polenta, ' one
of the least nourishing of the farinaceous foods.' May it
not be the food mixed with some form of alcohol ? It
appears as if some disease belonged to every kind of food
eaten without variety and in large quantities.

Mr. Barr gave me two years ago some small bulbs
of Crocus tommasinianus. I thought at first they were
going to do nothing ; but this year they have flowered
beautifully, and are of a very delicate pale lavender colour.
He says they will come up every year, and I think they
are really far prettier than the large, strong, cultivated
Crocuses. I have often been asked. What should be put
into Eose beds to enliven their dull branchiness for early
spring ? Strong clumps of v?inter Aconites planted very
deep, to be succeeded, when the Aconites are only bright
green tufts of leaves, by large pale Crocuses, white and
light lavender, are as good a combination as I know ; and
when they die down a fresh top-dressing can be lightly
forked into the Eoses without hurting the bulbs.

A correspondent noticed that I did not mention
Anemone PtUsatilla. It is quite true I have not got it.
In my ignorant days I bought it once or twice, and it
quickly died ; and I have not yet tried to grow it from
seed, but shall do so this year. This correspondent writes
from Gloucestershire, where he says it grows wild, and
that, when well grown, ' it is the most beautiful native
plant we have.' His letter is dated March 9th, and he
adds : ' I have one now in a twelve-inch pan, taken up
about three weeks ago, which has about 150 flowers and
buds on it. Like Lilies of the Valley, it grows in the

262 MORE POT-POURRI

poorest and dryest lime-soil. But it likes good feeding.*
I think that description sounds as if it were worth
trouble to produce. Of course he meant, when he took it
up, that he grew it under glass.

Two years ago I bought a plant of Holboellia lati-
folia, and planted it in the ground in my cool greenhouse,
where it is doing quite beautifully, and is now covered
with buds. It is a dehghtful plant for a cool gi'eenhouse
creeper, as the fragrance of its white flowers is delicious,
almost exactly like Orange flower ; and it is so nearly
hardy it will do out of doors against a wall in many parts
of England. I shall try it here when I have struck some
cuttings. It is often called erroneously Stauntonia latifolia.

I have just brought into the conservatory next the
drawing-room from the cool house in the kitchen garden
an interesting panful of one of the Moraeas. They seem
a large family ; all from the Cape of Good Hope. A piece
was given me by someone who called it M. fimbriata. It
has not been touched for two years, and was well baked
all the summer, is now healthy and growing, and has four
bloom-spikes ; last year it only threw up one. The flower
is like a small delicate Iris of a lovely cold china-blue
colour. The growth is quite different from that of an
Iris. The stalk has a graceful bend, and a branching end
with several buds, as is the case with so many of the
Cape bulbs. The buds open one after the other as the
flower dies. They will do when picked and in water.
■My Crinum Moorei I have had for three or four years in
a large pot. It makes its leaves in February, and throws
up without fail its enormous brown flower-stem. It is
beginning to open now its lily-like flowers ; these, like
the buds of the Moraa fimhriata, flower in succession, but,
as each one lasts about a week in bloom, the flowering
period is extended for a considerable time. It is well fed
while growing with liquid manure. Its healthy, strong

MARCH 263

appearance and delicate scent give me a great deal of
pleasure year by year.

Mustard and Cress, much grown in boxes in early
spring, and which is so delicious at five o'clock tea or
with bread-and-butter and cheese, many people will not
eat because it is often gritty. This certainly makes it
horrid ; and if the Cress is washed it makes it very wet,
often without getting rid of the grit. The best way to
grow it is to make the earth very damp before sowing,
press it down flat, and then sow the seed very lightly on
the top, making a division between the Mustard and Cress.
Cover it with a tile, or something else to make it dark, till
it has sprouted, and then cut it carefully straight into the
plate or small fancy basket in which it is to be served,
without washing it at all. If grown in this way and care-
fully cut, there will be no grit whatever. I find small, low,
round, Japanese baskets of various sizes (from Liberty's)
are most useful in a house with a garden. They are beauti-
fully made and very pretty, and fruit can be picked into
them at once, and served either at breakfast or luncheon
without any fingering in the pantry or kitchen.

March 28th. — Towards the end of this month, or quite
the beginning of next, it is most important to erect
shelters under walls or trees, where the sides can be
protected from wind and the top covered up on cold
nights, as now is the time it is so important to clear out
greenhouses, both for the sake of the hardier plants that
are going out, and the more special ones that remain inside.
When they are moving, feeling the spring in all their
fibres, that is the time they begin to get weak and drawn
up if not given room and air. This is especially the case
with the large old Geraniums that are in the greenhouse,
Carnations, Abutilons, not to mention all the forced things
that have done flowering. Putting them out under these
shelters hardens them off well before they are planted out

264 MORE POT-POURRI

in the open. Nothing is more distressing to a real plant-
lover than to see bulbs and Spiraeas and Azaleas lying
about untended, just after they have done their work so
valiantly for us early in the year. If a plant is not worth
care, it is not worth keeping. Throw it away at once where
it goes to make food for future generations, and the pot
is useful when many pots are wanted. As I said before,
but remind now, pieces of corrugated iron come in most
usefully in making these temporary pens and shelters.
For some plants a sunk pit with a raised rim of brick
or turf answers well. On this the sheets of iron are laid
at night.

March BOth. — At this time last year I wrote in my
notebook that the cold and tempestuous weather, which
had lasted the whole of March, moderated a little, and so
I drove to the lovely wild garden in this neighbourhood,
which is always so full of interest to me the whole year
round.

One of the most striking things in the garden was a
plant of Daphne hlagayana. I asked how they managed
to flower so well what I found so difficult, and was told
this Daphne had been protected with a wire hencoop
covered with green canvas, which keeps out six or seven
degrees of frost. The Adonis vernalis was out much
earlier than mine, but the garden is damper and more
sheltered. A. vernalis is a beautiful spring flower, but it
dislikes being moved. There must be some difficulty, I
suppose, about its cultivation, as one so seldom sees it. The
Chionodoxas were the finest and largest I have ever seen,
and were called Allenii. The true Anemone fulgens
grcBcii was a more brilliant colour than the ordinary one.
I imagine it is rather difficult to get. A blue Chilian
Crocus I had never seen before {Tecophylcsa cyano) is
slightly tender and requires protection. It was out of doors
in this sheltered wood, and had only been protected with

MARCH 265

a handglass. Forsythia intermedia is one of the best,
and was flowering well. For anyone who has a damp
shady wood, there are no shrubs more beautiful than the
various Andromedas. Yards of ground in this wood were
covered with the Pyrola (Winter Green). Its small red
berry was still on, and spring flowers and bulbs of all
kinds were growing up through it. A more beautiful
covering for the ground, where the soil is leafy and the
moisture sufficient, does not exist.

A good rockery label, as it shows very little, is a small
stick with the bark left on but for a flat piece cut off at
the top, which is painted white to receive the name.

Eeceipts

Turbot a la Portug-aise.— Cut into Julienne strips
equal quantities of carrots, onions, turnips, and celery.
Fry lightly in butter till a good colour. Add fresh toma-
toes, peeled and with the seeds taken out. Cut them in
slices before adding to the other vegetables. Moisten with a
glass of white Sauterne wine and a little German sauce
(see ' Dainty Dishes ') to bind the vegetables, a little veal
gravy, a little salt, a pinch of sugar ; and leave the whole
to cook for twenty to twenty-five minutes till of a good
consistency.

Meanwhile take the fillets of a moderate-sized turbot
without bones or skin. Butter freely a rather shallow
saut6-pan, place the fillets in it, season with salt and
white pepper, moisten with one or two glasses of Sauterne
wine, and bring to the boil on the fire. Cover with a
round bit of buttered paper, and finish cooking them
inside the oven. Baste them constantly, so that they
should not get dry. They will take from twenty to
twenty-five minutes to cook.

266 MORE POT-POURRI

Serve the fillets in a silver dish — whole or in slices.
Add to the vegetables the gravy of the fillets of turbot
which remains in the saut6-pan. Cook these to a turn,
add a good bit of fresh butter and a little Hungarian
' paplika ' ; in default of which a little cayenne pepper
can be used. Pour the vegetables over the turbot, to hide
the fillets. Place for a few moments in a hot oven, and
serve.

When mushrooms are small or not very fresh, they
are best chopped fine, warmed up with a little butter,
pepper and salt, and poured on to some squares of
hot toast. The yolk of an egg is an improvement
for non-vegetarians. For broiling mushrooms in the
oven they are much better if done in bacon-fat instead of
butter.

Sutton's winter salad is now getting rather old. If it
is cut up in small shreds, and a raw leek and beetroot
added (also sliredded fine), and the whole mixed together
with a little half mayonnaise sauce or plain oil and
vinegar, it makes a very good salad.

We get the seedling lettuces in boxes a little earlier
year by year, as it is such a pleasure to get back to a
really fresh salad. It always recalls to me the young
spring salads the monks used to bring to my mother at
Cimiez, and which she attributed to some mysterious
monkish secret. The fact is, the climate there enables
lettuces to be sown out of doors very early.

It is well to know that rhubarb can be made to take
the flavour of anything you cook with it ; but with forced
young rhubarb, when the flavour is delicate, it is a mis-
take to put anything except a little sugar. Cooks can be
reminded at this time of year, when dried fruits are so
useful as compotes — apricots, prunes, apples, etc. — that it
is a great improvement in the stewing of them to add
occasionally a tablcspoonful of cold water, to prevent

MARCH 267

their cooking too fast. Bleached almonds are a pleasant
addition as a change in these compotes.

I read with regi'et the other day in a leading evening
newspaper of the authoritative revival of the notion that
eating tomatoes is the cause of the increase of cancer.
This theory seems likely to deprive the poorer public of
one of the best and cleanest blood-purifiers within reach
of the inhabitants of our towns. It seems to me on a par
with Swift's idea that his life-long headaches were in a
great measure due to a surfeit of fruit consumed when
very young at Moor Park, and which, naturally enough,
brought on the first attack, as a dish of strawberries will
upset a meat-eating and gouty patient — this state of the
blood being produced by eating, not too much, but too
little fruit. The population of the whole South of Europe
has eaten tomatoes from time immemorial. Would it not
be far more sensible to look for the cause of cancer in the
great increase of meat-eating, especially in towns, the
over-fed and diseased cattle, tinned and other preserved
animal foods, and the much-consumed modern stimulant,
beef -tea ?

I do not vouch for the absolute correctness of the
following statements, but I find them among my notes,
and I think there is some truth in them :

Lettuce is calming and beneficial to anyone suffering
from insomnia.

Honey is wholesome, strengthening, cleansing, healing,
and nourishing.

Lemons afford relief to feverish thirst in sickness,
and, mixed with hot water, are a help in biUousness,
low fever, colds, coughs, rheumatism, etc.

In cases of disease of the nerves and nervous dyspepsia
tomatoes are a powerful aperient for the liver, and are
invaluable in all conditions of the system in which the
use of calomel is indicated.

268 MORE POT-POURRI

Onions are useful in cases of nervous prostration, and
will quickly relieve and tone up a worn-out system.
They are also useful in all cases of coughs, colds, and
influenza.

Apples are nutritious, medicinal, and vitalising. They
aid digestion, clear the voice, and correct the acidity of the
stomach.

269

APBIL

Newspapers on cremation — More about Suffolk — Maund on flowers
that close — Asparagus growing on the seacoast — Peacock feathers
for firescreens — Dining-room tables — Petroleum tubs in gardens
— Neglect of natural history — Cactuses again — Old mills — Mr.
Burbidge on sweet-smelling leaves — Florist Auriculas — Seed-
sowing — Kitchen garden — Poultry.

April 1st. — This book is the last bit of work of the kind
I shall ever do, and I am anxious to state, as I think
of them, any views I may happen to have on various
matters.

I am deeply interested in watching the gradual
development of public opinion on cremation. I casually
alluded to this before, in reference to Mr. Eobinson's well-
known book on the subject. So far as I can judge from the
newspapers, cremation is making a little way among the
rich and well-known, who alone seem in this country to
have the power of influencing the majority. But if what I
read is true, a terrible fashion is growing around this excel-
lent, clean, practical way of being dealt with after death, and
that is that instead of one funeral there are to be three — one
the cremation, another the funeral service in London, a
third (and worst of all) the burying of the ashes. The news-
papers gave an account of a cremated Peer who by his own
wish or his family's had the box with the collected ashes
deposited in an ordinary-sized coffin, in order that the
tenantry might have the honour of carrying the coffin in
the usual way to the vault. This kind of thing, I think,

270 MORE POT-POURRI

tends to make the process ridiculous. And as only those
are cremated who wish it, detailed directions might be
left that the ashes should be spread under the sweet vault
of heaven, and a memorial erected, useful or otherwise,
in church or street, as seems good to the family. That
alone, in my opinion, gives dignity to the whole proceeding ;
the burying of box or urn is meaningless and almost
puerile. How dogmatic it reads in print, to say simply
what one feels ! But I mention my view of the quastion
because, in talking with people, I so often find they have
done such and such a thing merely because they had not
thought of the other way. The old world, it is true,
collected the ashes. But we know that in later days they
wei'e used by the Eoman washerwomen, so long as they
could get them, as we use soda, for the purifying alkalies
they contained. I see no need for us to provide alkaline
matter for future generations.

April %ul. — I liave been lately to some of my Suffolk
friends, in whose gardens I always learn so much. In a
bowl of mixed flowers in my room I quickly detected a
flower I did not know, a pale lavender double-Daisy-shaped
ball, many on a branch, and yet not crowded or thick.
This turned out to be double Cineraria, grown from seed
sent out by Veitch. I can see the horror of many of my
good-colour loving, bad-colour hating friends, who dislike
the ordinary finely-grown gardener's Cinerarias as much
as I do. These double ones have the advantage of doing
exceedingly well picked, and are one of the few plants
which I really think are prettier double than single, though
I afterwards saw that some of the plants were very crude
and hai'd in colour.

Dimorphotheca eclonis is a very pretty-growing, long-
flowering pot-plant from Africa. It is of the same family as
Calendula (Marigold), and very like CaleJidida pluvialis,
figured in Maund's ' Botanic Garden,' that never-to-be-too-

APRIL 271

much-praised book. The whole family of Calendulas
close on dull damp days. Maund says of these plants :
' The Latin pluvialis, which pertains to rain, is used in
reference to the influence which rain or dew has on the
opening and closing of the blossoms of our present subject.
All flowers, we believe, which close in rainy or cloudy
weather have the property of closing at night. The same
object, protection from moisture, is attained in each
instance. This peculiarity is prettily alluded to in the
following lines, which I copy from Dr. Withering's
arrangement :

The flower enamoured of the sun,
At his departure hangs her head and weeps,
And shrouds her sweetness up, and keeps

Sad vigils, like a cloistered nun.
Till his reviving ray appears.
Waking her beauty as he dries her tears.'

The seed of this Calendula pluvialis may be sown in
the open ground in April.

I have never seen Messrs. Backhouse's gardens at
York ; but so far as I can judge, from seeing various rock
gardens they have made and planted, no one is half so
good as they are for all Alpines. They have so improved
the actual plants that they are scarcely to be recognised
as the same which grow in their mountain homes. Many
will say : ' What a pity ! ' But that applies to all rock-
gardening. If one tries to grow Alpines, one wants them
to be strong and to live. Saxifraga oppositifolia is, for
instance, really like what Mr. Backhouse describes in his
catalogues and David Wooster illustrated in his book on
Alpine plants. Saxifraga sancta blooms in profusion as
early as this, and is a bright pale yellow. All these plants
require either to be divided or else to have some handfuls
of light earth thrown over them after flowering. Saxi-
fraga burseriana is also very early, and has a pretty flower.

272 MORE POT-POURRI

But all these plants cost money, as they make no effect
except in large clumps ; and, to do well, I fear they want
stiff moist soils.

Those who live near the coast may be interested to
hear of an experiment which I saw being tried for growing
Asparagus in a wild state on the sandy shore of Suffolk.
The gardener wrote me the following description of what
he had done :

' In the spring of 1896 some yearling Asparagus plants
were planted on the lower portions of some raised banks
close to the sea. There was no attempt at preparing the
ground ; it was not even properly cleared of weeds, or
sufficient care exercised to plant the plants far enough
apart to give them growing-room. But the result far
exceeds what might have been expected from such rough-
and-ready treatment, for one can almost say they have
grown wild. As regards the soil of which these banks
are composed, the only remark one can make is that it
is of a very questionable character, although of three
classes : No. 1, pure fine drift-sand ; No. 2, drift-sand
crag and river-mud mixed ; No. 3, river-mud. The plants
in No. 2 mixture have given the best produce. No. 3 river-
mud being very close ; whilst the produce of No. 1, from
the fine drift-sand, is very poor. There has been no
attempt to give cultural aids in the way of manure up to
the present. In summing up the result of the above
experiment it is quite evident that our home-gi'own
Asparagus supplies might very easily be largely increased,
and it is to be hoped the idea may be taken up as a means
of profit by working men who are holders of land by the
sea.

' It will be necessary, if success in the production of the
first-class article is to be arrived at, to observe cleai'ly at
the onset three things of the utmost importance. First,
thoroughly clean the land to be planted with Asparagus

APRIL 273

of all such weeds as Docks, Spear-grass or any other
perennial weed, as if done at the first it is done for good,
leaving the land free to be taken possession of by the
Asparagus roots, and doing away with any after-necessity
of forking about them. Second, plant good strong yearling
plants not nearer together than two feet, better still if the
distance is increased to three or four feet, marking the spot
where each plant is planted with a stout stake, so that
their position can be known. Third, the land must be kept
free of weeds, and a dressing of manure, or any form of
liquid manure, may be given occasionally during their
season of growth.'

I may add that even in inland sandy places I am
certain a very fair success is to be obtained in gi'owing
Asparagus by planting them in odds and ends of places,
even amongst shrubs, or anywhere in suitable corners.
The difficulty is to mark the place clearly enough in
winter, so that when a new hand comes in the roots may
not be dug up. The Asparagus plants that annually bear
a quantity of berries are by no means so large as those
that are unfruitful, and great numbers of gardeners now
discard them at planting-time where they are known to
exist. This, no doubt, is a step in the right direction. I
believe this excessive seeding of some plants is the result
of check in growth in young stages, such as severe root-
injury, overcrowding in the seed-bed, and poverty of
soil. It is well to add that in all exposed places it is
necessary to secure by staking the summer's growth, as it
is very important that this should be preserved from being
broken down, and it should not be cut down till quite late
in the autumn.

April 4:th. — Eeturned home to-day. It is incredible
the difference a little warm rain makes. The whole garden
looks so changed from when I went away four or five
days ago !

T

274 MORE POT-POURRI

I have in the entrance drive a large Balsam-bearing
Poplar — or Tacamahac tree, as I believe it to be correctly
called. Mr. Loudon in his ' Arboretum ' describes it
exactly. Every garden of a certain size would be the
better for having one of these trees, because of the exquisite
smell of the long catkins produced in April. If one
passes near the tree in showery weather, the air reminds
one of a greenhouse filled with Cape Jessamine or
Gardenia. The scent does not last very long, but wnile it
does I know nothing sweeter.

April 5th. — Years ago I had the great pleasure of going
to D. G. Eossetti's studio. He was working at the small
replica of his beautiful big picture now at Liverpool —
Dante's dream — from the ' Vita Nuova.' In the picture Love
holds his hand and gives Beatrice — dead — the kiss that
Dante never gave her living. It is a poem which can be
interpreted in a hundred ways, according to the mind and
heart of those who look. To most people I suppose it is
the glorious interpretation of a very common mental
attitude — what we have not had is to us what is most
precious and most beautiful and most lasting. When
Eossetti ceased to be among us, and with the memory of
that afternoon at his studio strong upon me, I went to his
house in Cheyne Walk on the ' private view ' day before the
sale. I tried to buy one or two of his things, but they
went at very high prices, and I got nothing ; still I have
always remembered what struck me as a lovely and
original firescreen. I have had it copied several times,
and it has given pleasure to many ; so I will describe it
here, that it may give pleasure to a few more. It was a
little Chippendale plain mahogany screen consisting of
three narrow leaves. The surface of each of these was
entirely covered with the eyes of peacock feathers stuck
one over the other, like the scales of a fish, each eye having
the long feathers round it cut off. The other side of the

APRIL 275

panel was gilt, and I have lately found that thin oak takes
the gilding best. I think in the original Eossetti screen
it was gilt paper or leather. On this, long peacock
feathers, split at the back to make them lie flat, were
arranged in groups of three or five or six, at various
heights according to fancy. They look best if the stalks
nearly meet at the bottom. The panels are glazed on
both sides. A square firescreen can be arranged in the
same way. The effect is most satisfactory, and it has
that great merit in furniture — unchangeableness. The
colours, being natural, never fade ; and the glass preserves
the feathers from perishing.

The following is a receipt for varnishing plaster casts,
given me many years ago by Sir Edward Burne-Jones :

Quarter of an ounce of gum elami, two ounces of
white wax, half a pint of turpentine ; add a small squeeze
from an oil-paint tube of raw umber when a small quantity
of the varnish has been poured into a saucer ready for
use. Apply with a brush and spread quickly and evenly.
This has to be done three times, with a day between
each coating, and rubbed hard with a silk handkerchief
between each painting. It gives casts and plaster figures
the colour of old ivory and makes them useful and
decorative in a way they can never be without it. The
varnish on the casts lasts for ever, never becomes dirty,
and the dust can be rubbed or even washed off quite
easily. The best place in London for plaster casts is
Brucciani's (40 Eussell Street, Covent Garden). I know
few decorations more satisfactory — for those who appreciate
them and in certain rooms — -than these casts, eitlier from
Greek friezes or (best of all) the low-relief reproductions
of Donatello's almost divine work.

Dinner-tables in country houses are often a great
puzzle. I know nothing so dreary as two or three people
sitting down to a large empty table at breakfast or dinner,

t2

276 MORE POT-POURRI

because it is not worth while to change it as a few more
are coming to luncheon. When we first came here, even
our family party varied so much in numbers that I
thought it most desirable to find something that would
suit my notions, and be easily and quickly changed from
little to big and vice versd. I hunted the old furniture
shops with no success, and at last decided something
must be made to carry out my intentions. We got three
oak tables made of exactly the same size, the top of each
being forty-five inches square. It was impossible for
these tables to have four legs, as when put together, which
was my plan for enlarging, they would be much in the
way. The top was not very thick, so had to be firmly
supported. This was done by two pieces of wood placed
underneath the top and resting on four wooden columns
(after the manner of Chippendale's round tables) fitting
into a piece of wood fourteen inches square and eight
inches from the floor. From the four corners of this
spread out four feet, almost but not quite to the outside
edge of the table above, thus making it quite firm. This
table is equally suitable for two or four people. In order
to make it comfoi'table for six, we lay a false top upon it
a few inches longer at both ends. When guests are more
numerous, two of the tables are put together, and for
a still greater number the third can be added. They
remain perfectly firm and level if made of seasoned wood,
and need no fixing or machinery to join them. The oak
can be varnished or left plain, smoked or stained green,
according to taste. Mr. Watson, of 11 Orchard Street,
London, makes them to order. For breakfast or luncheon
we use the small tables apart, even when our party is
complete. But at dinner this gives so much more trouble
in waiting that we put them together.

Ajyt'il Qth. — This year gardening knowledge is given

APRIL 277

to the public cheaper than ever. There is a new penny
handbook on gardening to be got at any railway station
(Ward, Lock & Co.). It is quite good, giving all the
elementary instruction necessary.

The uses of petroleum tubs in a garden are endless.
I get my oil now from London, and so do not return the
barrels. Mr. Barr told me the other day he was knock-
ing the bottoms out of some, sinking them one below the
other with a pipe in between, and puddling them with
stiff clay at the bottom ; then he was going to plant them
with specimens of the beautiful new French Nymphaeas
(Water Lilies), M. Marliac's hybrids being the most
beautiful perhaps of all. A full, excellent, and detailed
account of the cultivation of these Water Lilies is to be
found in Mr. Eobinson's last edition of ' The English
Flower Garden.' As is natural at my age, I have a most
elderly affection for types and parent plants, because as
a rule they are less expensive to buy, and much more
willing to be managed when one has got them. But I do
not say this without from my heart giving all honour to
cultivators of hybrid plants.

Tub arrangements can be made of endless use even in
the smallest gardens and back-yards, if sunny — never
forgetting the precious rain-water, which every slight slope
in the ground makes it easy to collect if the tubs are
sunk level with the ground. I mention things again and
again, knowing well in our full modern lives how useful
it is merely to remind. This year I have sunk a tub
under every tap I have in the garden, as exposing the
water to the sun and air prevents its being so hard and
cold as when it comes straight out of the pipe.

We have just had, what we always feel to be doubly
precious in our sandy soil, a good shower of rain. Mr.
Stephen Phillips, in the ' Saturday Eeview ' last year, had

278 MORE POT-POURRI

a poem which describes this kind of shower beautifully
and originally :

After rain, after rain,

Oh, sparkling Earth !

All things are new again.

Bathed as at birth.

Now the pattering sound hath ceased,

Drenched and released.

Upward springs the glistening bough

In sunshine now ;

And the raindrop from the leaf

Runs and slips ;

Ancient forests have relief,

Young foliage drips.

All the earth doth seem

Like Dian issuing from the stream,

Her body flushing from the wave.

Glistening in her beauty grave ;

Down from her, as she doth pass

Little rills run to the grass ;

Or like perhaps to Venus when she rose

And looked with dreamy stare across the sea,

As yet unconscious of the woes,

The woes, and all the wounds that were to be.

Or now again,

After the rain,

Earth like that early garden .shines,

Vested in vines.

Oh, green, green

Eden is seen !

After weeping skies

Eising Paradise ;

Umbrage twinkling new

'Gainst the happy blue.

God there for His pleasure,

In divinest leisure.

Walking in the sun,

Which hath lately run ;

While the birds sing clear and plain.

Behind the bright withdrawing rain.

Soon 1 shall perceive

Naked glimmering Eve,

APRIL 279

Startled by the shower,

Venture from her bower,

Looking for Adam under perilous sky ;

While he hard by

Emerges from the slowly dropping blooms

And warm delicious glooms.

April 10th. — This is a time when I always find it a
little difficult to keep the conservatory next the drawing-
room gay. The large Crinum is going off, and the Azaleas
are rather a bad metallic colour, which kills everything else.
Primula farinosa is a pretty thing if well grown ; Cineraria
cruenta is in full bloom, but I must get some fresh seed,
as the flowers have all become one shade, which they
were not at first. A charming, sweet little shrub which
looks something like a white Daphne is Pittosporum
tohira ; it comes in usefully at this time. We have had
in succession since January pots of Polygonatum
(Solomon's Seals), and they all go out into the reserve
bed to be taken up another time, so are not at all wasteful.
I have never had Forsythia suspensa so good in the
garden as this year. The shrub is one golden mass, and
when picked in long branches and peeled it is quite
admirable in water. I suppose its being so good is
partly an accident of the weather, partly that after flower-
ing last year it was cut back hard, and partly that we
twisted black thread about it to prevent the birds eating
the buds in February, which they invariably do here, both
with this plant and with Pruuus pissardi. Spircza
thunbergi resTponds in the most delightful way to constant
pruning. The more the dear little thing is cut, the better
it seems to do. That is the real secret of all these early-
flowering shrubs; they do not exhaust themselves then
with leaf-making and growth. Under those shrubs where
there are no Violets and no white Arabis, the common
Lungwort (Pulmonaria) makes an exceedingly pretty

28o MORE rOT-POURRI

ground-covering ; for instance, under a Lilac bush or any
deciduous shnib. This kind of spring gardening is only
trouble, not expense, as all these plants divide into any
numbers after flowei'ing, and take away the bare look of a
spring garden on light soils. When the leaves are out,
the place they are in vs^ants nothing and v^ould grow
nothing else. In fact, in these kinds of gardens the more
the earth can be kept clothed and covered with light-
rooting dwarf plants the better, as it saves weeding —
always such a terrible business.

Nothing, I think, tempts me so much to neglect all
duties and to forget all ties as gardening in early spring
weather. Everything is of such great importance, and
the rush of work that one feels ought to be done without
a moment's delay makes it, to me at least, feel the most
necessary thing in life. A friend wrote to me once : ' The
best thing in old age is to care for nothing but Nature,
our real old mother, who will never desert us, and who
opens her arms to us every spring and summer again,
warm and young as ever, till at last we lie dead in her
breast.'

And another wrote : ' Serenity, serenity, serenity and
light ! Surely this is the atmosphere of Olympus ; and if
we cannot attain to it in age, in vain has our youth gone
through the passionate toil and struggle of its upward
journey to the divine summits.'

These thoughts fit better the solitude of bursting
woods in the real country than the cultivating mania in a
small garden, where we are all tempted to fight against
Erasmus's assertion : ' One piece of ground will not hold
all sorts of plants.'

A gi'eat deal of pleasure is to be got by striking
cuttings of Oleanders in heat, and growing them on in a
stove or greenhouse till the small plant flowers. I saw
the other day a cutting of double pink Oleander struck last

APRIL 281

summer, with the largest, finest blooms, both for colour
and form, I have ever seen. It had been brought forward,
of course, in considerable heat. Oleanders are now to be
had of all colours, from the deepest red to palest pink and
pure white. They strike easier in summer if the stalks of
the cuttings are stuck in water for a few days before they
are planted.

I have lately been able to procure a book called ' The
Insects of Great Britain,' by W. Lewin, 1795 — an
ambitious and comprehensive title indeed, and only one
volume of the series ever appeared. But Mr. Lewin
began with the most attractive and showy of the insects,
viz. butterflies. His plates are most beautiful and
careful, even for that excellent period of hand-coloured
illustration. I suppose that everyone knows the easy
way to distinguish between butterflies and moths. In
butterflies the antennae, or what children call ' horns,' are
always knobbed, and in moths they are the same thick-
ness to the end. When I was in Florence I saw an old
fireplace decorated with most lovely tiles. I am not
knowing enough to say if they were Dutch or Italian, but
they were very pretty. There were lines, brown and yellow,
round each tile, the inner lines cutting off the corners ; then
a dainty little wreath of Olive branches and inside it a
butterfly, the butterfly on every tile being different. The
ground-colour of the tile was a creamy-white. This book
would render the re-making of such tiles comparatively
easy.

Last summer (1898) a little book appeared called
' Where Wild Birds Sing,' by James E. Whiting,
published by Sydney C. Mayle, 70 High Street, Harap-
stead. The writer is a real Nature lover. The motto of
the book is from a speech by Gladstone, who said : ' I
think the neglect of natural history was the gi'ossest
defect of our old system of training for the young ; and,

282 MORE POT-POURRT

further, that little or nothing has hcen done by way of
remedy for that defect in the attempts made to alter or
reform that system.' It is as a slight help in that
direction tliat I name these charming modern natural
history books, full of observation and love of Nature, told
in the most simple way. This pretty little ' Invitation,'
at the beginning of the book, seems to be vn-itten by a
relative of the author, as it is signed ' S. Whiting ' :

Come, leave the city's toil and din,

The weary strife,
The cankering cares and sordid aims,

That deaden life.

Come, leave behind this restless rush,

This anxious strain ;
Dame Nature tenders healing balm

For tired brain.

Come, by yon grassy, shady lane

Eest tired eyes,
On yonder meadows vernal green.

On cloudless skies.

Come to the woods, where Oak and Beech

Their shadows fling.
Come, weary toiler, rest awhile

Where wild birds sing.

1 cannot understand anybody living in the country
and not taking a special interest in birds — from the sky-
lark, the smallest bird that soars, to the water wag-tail,
the smallest bird that walks. The constant fight always
goes on as to whether birds in a garden do good or harm.
Nothing convinces my gardener that we do not suffer
more than our neighbours from the non-killing of bull-
finches. Poor little things ! the harm they do is terribly
more apparent than the good, which has to be taken on
faith ; and this I do.

As I stated before, I have lately been growing Water-

APRIL 283

cresses in pots and pans, with some measure of success.
But I never feel my ignorance without looking about for
some book which recounts an experience greater than
my own. I have found a perfectly comprehensive little
manual called ' Home Culture of the Watercress,' by
Shirley Hibberd (E. W. Allen, 1878). Anyone interested
in the subject should try and get this book. The reason
of my comparative failure is that I did not stand the pans
in receptacles that would hold water. Also Watercresses
are much better grown from small cuttings than from
seed. Mr. Hibberd says that, if kept sufficiently moist
and grown in his way, in about twenty days or less one
ought to be able to pick a nice dish of Cresses. There
is no garden, however small or dry, if watering can be
abundant, that cannot grow Watercresses in summer
quite successfully as he recommends. The winter supply
requires to be kept from frost.

From the point of view of a real Cactus lover I am
but a weak-kneed disciple. I confess that a greenhouse
full of these plants in various stages of bumpiness and
without a single flower, as is often the case, leaves me
cold and rather depressed. But to grow a certain number
is of very great interest to me. The power they have of
clinging to life is shared by few plants. This accounts for
the fact that some of the finest kinds may be seen occasion-
ally in cottage windows. The most gratifying point about
cottage-window gardening is that in it fashion is unknown.
Plants are handed down from father to son, with a total
disregard as to whether these are fashionable or not. For
a lengthened period Cactuses have been a neglected
family. Just lately magnificent gi^oups have been ex-
hibited by London nurserymen, so they are fast coming
to the front again.

Since writing my last book I have learnt by experience
a good deal more about Cactus culture. In this country

284 MORE POT-POURRI

they require a kind of double treatment, according to
whether you want them to grow or to flower. If you
want small pieces to grow quickly, you must keep them
most of the year in heat and well watered. If, on the other
hand — and this especially applies to the hardier kinds — you
want them to flower, you must starve them well through
the winter. But I am sure that allowing them to shrivel
from want of water is wrong. To prevent this, once the
year is turned, I find occasional syringing better than
much watering at the roots. Over-watering in winter
generally means death, as they then rot at the crown.
Sun they must have all through the summer. They are
apt to be affected by a fungus blight ; this must be cleaned
off, of course. Like all the distinct plant families in
Nature, the more we know about Cactuses the more
interesting they are. I have a new sunny window which
I am looking forward to filling with Cactuses this summer.
I have there, now in a small pot, a red Phyllocactus (see
Mr. W. Watson's ' Cactus Culture '), which has upon it two
or three flowers in bloom and fifty-two buds. One of my
correspondents was exceedingly sceptical about the same
bloom of my night-flowering Cereus (see page 121 of my first
book) having lasted in a cool dark hall for two nights ; but
it certainly did. Last year I was away from home all the
precious summer months, so I do not know what happened
to the ' bright-blooming Cereus, grand and glorious.' My
correspondent adds that some years ago he got into a con-
troversy with experts in ' The Gardener's Chronicle ' about
these flowers, and one correspondent said that his Cereus
remained in bloom six weeks. That must have been a very
large plant with many blooms. Some of the most beautiful
Cereuses are so large they only seem to flower well if
planted in the open ground under glass. I think more than
ever that it is worth while to grow Cactuses — for anyone
who spends the summer at home. I am obliged to add this.

APRIL 285

as one says ' Do you take sugar or cream ? ' at teatime, for
hardly anyone now does stay at home. Cactuses have a
way of flowering when they choose. They will not wait for
you if you are away, and their blooms only last a short
time ; but when they do condescend to flower, the beauty
of them is exquisite — far more rare and lovely than any
Orchid that I know. I have lately been able to procure a
book for which I have waited a long time, ' Bliihende
Cacteen,' by Dr. Pfeiffer and F. R. Otto. It was published
in Cassel (Germany) in 1843, and is a monograph on
Cactuses, in two volumes bound in one. The prints are
very well drawn, and the flowers hand-coloured. The
text, unfortunately perhaps, is written only in German
and French.

For all who wish to increase their Phloxes, Michael-
mas Daisies, and hardy Chrysanthemums, it is quite
possible in this month or early in May not only to divide
them, as I said before, but to take off the shoots and stick
them in the gi'ound. This gives you the plants much
less tall than if allowed to grow on the original root.
Many of the herbaceous things will root in this way
in spring. Cuttings of the white Everlasting Pea cer-
tainly do.

Cerasus psetido-cerasus, as sold by Messrs. Veitch &
Co., is very like Cerasus ivatereri in Mr. Eobinson's book.
The whole family, and especially this one from Mr.
Veitch, seem to me as well worth growing as anything I
know among spring-flowering shrubs.

April 2Qth. — We have walked this evening down to
the old mill by the river Mole. I have, not unnaturally,
a great affection for a watermill, as I passed all my child-
hood so close to its thumping mysteries, and my bedroom
window as a girl was just above the rushing mill-tail,
where the brown trout lay under the Laurels. My old
mill is all modernised and altered now, while here the

286 MORE POT-POURRI

miller says with pride : ' I have been here fifty-two years,
and I grind the flour with the old stones — no modern
china rollers for me ! ' We buy his flour — his ' seconds '
and his ' whole-meal ' — and his bran. The latter is what
we really went down to fetch, as one of my nieces is fond
of bran-water. This wildly stimulating beverage— far too
much a tonic for my age — is an American drink. You
pour cold water on two handf uls of fresh bran, let it stand
for four hours, and then pour it off. It is supposed to
contain some of the phosphates in the husks of the wheat,
and consequently has much of the nourishing qualities of
brown bread.

April 26th. — Last year at this time I was able to go
and hear at the Drill Hall, Westminster, Mr. Burbidge's
exceedingly interesting address on ' Fragrant Leaves and
Sweet-smeUing Flowers.' This lecture has since been
published in the ' Journal ' of the Horticultural Society
for October 1898.

Beyond wishing to remind others how much pleasure
and instruction one gets from being a Fellow of the Royal
Horticultural Society, I take a sentence from his lecture
which seems useful and desirable for all gardeners. He
says : ' I want you to rate all fragrant foliage quite as
highly as you now profess to value sweet-scented blossoms.
I also want to point out some of the essential differences,
and advantages even, of foliage leaves as opposed to those
floral leaves we call flowers. I am also particularly
anxious to try and show that there is a sanitary basis,
rather than a merely sensuous reason, for the usage of
sweet odours and vegetable perfumes, whether the same
be fresh or dried, hving, dead, or distilled. Modern re-
searches have amply proved that ozone is developed when
the sun shines on most kinds of fragrant plants, such as
flowers, Fir and Pine trees, and sweet herbs generally.'
It is not much trouble to sow Lemon pips, and yet what

APRIL 287

is more delicioiis and reviving than the crushed leaf of a
Lemon-tree ?

I have found my increased number of Eosemary
bushes a great joy. They live everywhere v^ith the slight
protection before described — namely, stuffed in all sorts
of places under shrubs. But to grow and flower to
perfection, as they do in Italy, they want to be under a wall
in a warm corner, and fairly well nourished. No doubt
their tendency to be killed in hard springs in the open
must be the reason that so many gardens, especially
small ones, where they are most precious, are content to
do without them.

Many books and periodicals praise the old customs of
using aromatic herbs, but in old days the smells they had
to conceal must indeed have been innumerable. I suppose,
unless by reading the accounts of how Russian peasants
live even now, we cannot have any idea what England —
and indeed all Europe — was, as regards dirt, two centuries
ago. Our sweet modern homes are very different. All
the same, how many houses are disagreeable from the
smell of cooking which pervades them ! Burning dry
Lavender, dried Rosemary, dried Cedar-wood, or the
essential oils of any of these, entirely does away with this
nuisance, from which we have most of us suffered. Burn-
ing things of this kind is also most useful in cases of colds,
influenzas, etc. Putting a piece of stale bread into the
saucepan when Cabbages are being boiled prevents their
smelling at all. This is pretty well known, but seldom
practised ; and the fact is, what causes the nasty smell to
pervade a house is not so much boiling the Cabbages, but
throwing the water while still hot down the sink. This
should never be done till the water has cooled.

Cultivating the art of smelling has certainly been
neglected of late, which for every reason is a mistake, as
the absence of a sense is a sign of defective health ; and if

288 MORE POT-POURRI

children's smell were tested, it would be noticed when
deficient and the reasons would be diagnosed. In healthy
children the power of smell is often very acute. To the
blind, sweet-smelling leaves are more valuable than sweet-
smelling flowers, which they cannot see ; and the leaves
last longer, pack easier, and would be much appreciated
in hospitals for eye diseases.

Another very interesting letter I received about my
last book I will quote : ' I am simply writing with the
object of calling your attention to a group of plants which
I have in my small way been cultivating for years, and
which give me great pleasure every summer. I refer to
the night-flowering and night-scented plants. To a busi-
ness man like myself they are specially welcome, as my
time is all occupied with business during the day, and the
evening only is left in which we can enjoy our gardens.
The most interesting in the group is that exquisite little gem
of an annual, Schizopetalum Walkeri. It has no English
name unfortunately; you will find it in William Thomp-
son's catalogue. This little flower is pure ivory-white, of
a Maltese cross form, and after dark throws out a most
delicate perfume, not unlike the Almond. I also sow a
packet or two of Matthiola bicornis, or Sweet-scented Stock.
It is powerfully fragrant after dusk, and is of a pleasant
character. Then I have a few plants of Nicotiana affinis
scattered about the garden. These you will know better
than myself. There is also the Hesperis tristis, which
I find somewhat difiicult to grow here [Manchester].
Also CEnotJiera odorata, another of the type. So that
here you have a small gioup of plants which kindly
reserve their fragrance, store it up during the daytime,
and then considerately during the twilight and evening,
when the breadwinner of the family comes home after
his day's toil, throw out their precious odours and make

APRIL 289

the garden all the pleasanter and more refreshing for the
night stroll after supper.'

Api'il 28th. — Some years ago I was anxious to grow
some Florist Auriculas, but I must frankly own we were
never very successful. They took too much frame-room
and wanted too much care ; but for anyone who likes to
grow special flowers in a small space I cannot imagine
anything more interesting than Auricula growing. The
following directions were written out for me by a most suc-
cessful Auricula grower, and they may prove very useful
to some few people who are fond of these flowers :

' The fancy or Florist's Auricula is divided into green
edges, gray edges, white edges, and selfs. These flowers
should be grown in pots. One of the most famous growers
(and a man of high class, although his station is only
that of a Sheffield workman) is Ben Simonite. According
to him a compost of two parts fibrous loam, one part old
hot-bed manure, one part old leaf-mould, with sufficient
charcoal the size of split peas to keep the soil open, is
suitable. This should be put together in the autumn,
and turned over frequently during the winter. The right
time for re-potting is after the bloom is over ; at this
moment (early in April) my earliest plants are in bloom.
When potted, the plants require occasional watering, but
freedom from drenching rains. If by chance over-much
watered, time should be allowed for this excess to pass
away, and the plants not watered again until quite dry,
although not flagging. Little else is needed, save to
remove decaying foliage and keep down the aphis or
green fly. All the summer and until November the
plants may remain in the open air, save when they are
protected from heavy rains. Early in November they go
into a cold frame, but ventilated by day whenever the
weather is at all fine. Water should be given seldom, but

u

290 ATORE POT-POURRI

suflBciently when given at all. Great dryness will be
endured without damage, but there is a point which must
not be overpassed. Towards the end of January life revives,
and water is more needful. Prior to this, if it be possible,
the pots should be so placed as to receive what light
there is, which accelerates the resumption of growth.
About the middle of February, if the growth is evidently
progressing, the plant should be top-dressed with compost,
rather stronger than that used in planting — -so fully that
side-shoots may be able to root into the top-dressing. On
these offsets depend the reproduction of named kinds.
From seed new varieties may be raised, but the offspring
are often very unlike the parents. In March the flower-
stems begin to rise, and during April the plants flower.
In this month the annual exhibition at the Kensington
Horticultural takes place. It is important to protect the
plants in severe weather by means of matting, also against
cutting wnnds ; but they are hardy, and their great risk is
not cold, but rotting through excessive moisture, which,
affecting the foliage, attacks the neck of the plant if
decaying leaves be not picked off.'

Alpine Auriculas are easily grown from seed, and
require much less care (see ' English Flower Garden ').

I am often asked what my vegetable-seed bill amounts
to. The fact is, I never know. Seeds are so cheap that I
get what I want. Where the waste comes in is in sowing
them in too large quantities at one time, instead of in
succession, not thinning out, etc. It is always worth
while to sow all useful vegetables several times over,
whether in spring or summer.

The ordinary amateur feels the extreme difficulty of
gi'owing flower-seeds either in boxes or even out of doors,
and says that in the end it is decidedly cheaper to buy
plants. This is, of course, true of all the strong-growing
herbaceous things. But every gardener soon finds that if

APRIL 291

you want any quantity of one thing, or if the plant is not
particularly suited to the soil, it is infinitely better to grow
the plants from seed than to buy one or two specimens^
which constantly die. I would always advise beginners
to try sowing seeds in little squares in the seed bed. It
is only by this process that they can learn what does well
from seed and what does not. Seed beds in April should
be in different aspects — some cool and damp, and some dry
and sunny, according to the nature of the plant sown and
the country it comes from — and left, only weeded, for one
or two years. I am quite sure no garden will ever look
full and varied all the year round without a great number
of plants being grown from seed. It is a later stage of
gardening, that is all, just as collecting and saving your
own seed is a later stage still.

I saw the other day in a Suffolk newspaper some
observations on seed-sowing under glass. They seemed
to me so useful just at this time of year that I copied part
of the article : ' Sowing seeds may to the superficial
observer seem a simple affair ; yet it is one of the most
important operations in gardening. There is a great
difference even amongst gardeners in raising plants from
seed. One may succeed with all kinds of seeds, providing
the seed is good ; whereas another gardener will have
the greatest difficulty even in getting ordinary seeds to
germinate. Of course, the kind of seeds I mean are choice
greenhouse, stove, or Alpine. My experience teaches me
that a great many failures are the result of sowing the
seed too early in the year. The particular seeds I mean
are those sown early in spring, either of plants for
conservatory decoration or to bloom in flower beds and
borders during the coming summer. Take, for example,
those charming gi'eenhouse flowers the Cape Primrose
(Streptocarpus). Sow this seed in January, and the greatest
difficulty is experienced in getting it to germinate ; but if

d2

292 MORE POT-POURRI

sown in April, it will germinate as easily as Lobelia. But
perhaps giving choice seeds daily — nay, I might almost say
hourly — attention is the most important point of all. The
seed may be sown at the proper time and be placed in a
suitable place ; the soil may be everything to be desired ;
in fact, everything used — pots, pans, boxes, and drainage —
may be all right, yet if they do not receive proper attention
for days, weeks, and months before the seed grows, and
after as the case may be, failure will surely follow such
neglect. This attention means keeping the compost in
that happy condition which is neither wet nor yet too
dry.*

Sometimes it is a help to put a little wet Sphagnum
moss on the top of the pot under the piece of glass, or the
pot may be covered with paper. The great thing to aim
at with all seeds, whether large or small, is to try to keep
the soil sufficiently moist, without having to water them
until they begin to grow. This is difficult, well-nigh
impossible, with those seeds which are a long time in
the soil before they germinate. Still, this is what should
be aimed at. Once they are up, it is necessary to water
very gently. A good way is to put a small piece of
sponge in the hole at the bottom of a flower-pot, and then
fill the pot with water of the same temperature as the
greenhouse, and move it about so that the water dribbles
gently through. With large seeds it is always a good plan
to soak them twenty-four hours in tepid water before
sowing them. An excellent way of handling very small
seedlings is to take a little bit of bamboo, bend it in two
like a pair of tweezers, and lay the seedlings on a piece
of paper ; it is then quite easy to handle the smallest
seedlings without injury.

The three or four weeks of severe frosty weather in
March has made us very short of vegetables. I never
buy when I have not guests, as feeling the pinch makes

APRIL 293

one alive to one's deficiencies, and causes one to manage
better another year. So I thought I would try and see
how I liked the root we grow for the cows. We have
plenty left, as the winter has been so mild. It is Sutton's
Mangold Wurzel, a yellow kind. We boiled it till tender,
whole like a beetroot, and when hot cut it into slices,
and ate it with cold butter. It was excellent. In texture
it was like a Beetroot ; in taste, half like a sweet Potato,
half like a Chestnut. When Mangolds are young they
mash like Turnips.

Early this month Hops begin to show through the
ground. When the shoots are about six or eight inches
high, before the leaves develop, they can be picked, tied
together in a bundle, and cooked exactly like green
Asparagus. They have not much taste, but are pleasant
in substance, and are supposed on the Continent to be
exceedingly wholesome. A vegetable called ' Good King
Henry ' is worth growing to eat in the same way, and later
the leaves cook like Spinach.

It is also worth knowing that at this time of year,
when vegetables are scarce in the country, the fresh
green leaves of Ehubarb — generally thrown away — make
an excellent vegetable dressed like Spinach, either with
or without a little butter.

One of the great difficulties in a light soil is a con-
tinuous supply of Spinach, and gardeners never will sow
a sufficient succession in dry weather, when it must be
watered. It has a great tendency to run to seed. In
Sutton's book ' The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers '
he faces the difficulty and gives instruction for its remedy
very efficiently. No other Spinach approaches in excellence
the real one, Spinacia oleracea ; but for an extension of
the supply two others should be grown in every fair-sized
kitchen garden. The New Zealand Spinach {Tetragonia
expansa) flourishes in the hottest weather, and is best

294 MORE POT-POURRI

started in a box under glass. The perpetual Spinach or
Spinach Beet {Beta cicla) is a most valuable plant for its
continuous supply of leaves. Sutton says : ' When the
leaves are ready for gathering they must be removed,
whether wanted or not, to promote continuous growth.'
This is the case with a good many vegetables — Garden
Cress, Watercress, Chicory, etc. I shall give special atten-
tion this year to sowing Spinach in all sorts of places.
Aspect and shade make so much difference in the rapidity
with which things grow !

Pm-slane is a vegetable often not sown in English
gardens, but it makes a good summer salad, and is useful
in soup or dressed as Spinach.

Last year I tried growing several kinds of Potatoes —
five or six varieties recommended by Sutton — but I do not
think any turned out better than, if as well as, Sutton's
' Magnum Bonum,' which we have grown for years. ' Ring-
leader ' is the one we grow for the first early Potatoes ; and
a red waxy Potato, whose name I do not know, is most
useful for cooking in some ways. All must find out
for themselves what Potatoes suit their soils best, as it
is a subject deserving every attention and care.

The small, round button Onions so much used abroad
are often omitted in English gardens, though they are
merely the result of not thinning out the crop at all. Choose
a piece of poor, dry ground ; make this fine on the surface ;
sow in the month of April, thickly but evenly; cover lightly ;
roll or tread, to give a firm seed-bed. If sown shallow, the
bulbs will be round. Besides looking much prettier when
braised, this small kind keeps much better through the
winter than when made to gi'ow large by thinning.

We grow two kinds of Sorrel now — one with a small
round leaf, and the other the large-leaved ordinary garden
kind. It is quite easy, for those who like the vegetable, to
lift plants in the spring and gi'ow them on in a frame

APRIL 295

or greenhouse. It is a thing there is always difficulty
about buying, and it is not much liked by English people.
It wants to be freshly gathered and well dressed.

There are endless numbers of books on poultry
within the reach of everybody ; and lately in "Ward,
Lock & Co.'s collection of penny handbooks, one has
been issued on poultry which is quite useful. But, like
all modern books, it is a little above the ordinary keeper
of cocks and hens for domestic purposes, making the
matter appear unnecessarily difficult. Having a good big
field for them to run in here, and the soil being dry and
hght, I have not had disease amongst my poultry.
Among the list of horrible diseases given in this penny
book we come to the following sentence : ' Egg-eating. —
This is rather a vice than a disease, and very troublesome
to cure.' The author then gives a cruel account of
punishment to be used, in the hopes of disgusting the
offender. This is an excellent instance of the trend of
modern thought. Egg-eating is, I am sure, solely the
result of giving the poor hens an insufficient quantity of
the food required by Nature to make their shells hard.
Disease among animals is much the same as among
people, and is produced often by large quantities of food,
but of an improper kind. Diseased poultry means over-
crowding, over-feeding — in fact, the fault lies in the way
they are managed. Hereditary vice may, we hope, in
hens at any rate, be left out of the question. Another
thing the author suggests is that when a fowl is killed
the entrails should be given to the pigs. This is abso-
lutely wrong in my opinion, as pigs are essentially
vegetarians, and unclean feeding is apt to make them
diseased, which is very serious for the eaters of pork.

One is always being asked. Does keeping poultry pay ?
I never keep strict accounts of what things cost me.
Nothing one does at home ever pays, unless one looks

296 MORE POT-POURRI

into it entirely oneself. I only bring the i-ules of ordinary
common-sense and proportion to bear on the matter.

For early egg-laying it is, I think, desirable to have
some of the southern breeds, such as Leghorns, Spanish,
etc.

I know very little about my own poultry, as I cannot
make pets of things that have to be killed, and they are
entirely managed by my gardener and his wife. The
following is their account of what they do, and they
certainly have been very successful : ' We set the hens
as early in January as we can on about nine eggs, as the
weather is cold ; on thirteen eggs later, being careful that
the eggs should not have been frosted. We make the
nests of hay in the henhouse, which is a warm one. The
early-hatched chicks are best for autumn killing, as they
begin to lay about July for a short time, and then stop
laying till the next spring. The sitting hens are fed once
a day on barley, about a handful to each hen ; the little
chickens on grits the first day, and then on oatmeal about
every three hours. When they are about a fortnight old
they have a little barley in the middle of the day. The
mother hen is kept cooped up away from the other fowls
till the chicks are about six weeks old, when they all run
in the field. March- and April-hatched birds we keep for
stock, as they make the best fowls and layers about
October. We shut up the pullets in a run for laying.
We keep no hens older than two years, and have fresh
cockerels every year. We feed the stock-fowls twice
a day — on soft food in the morning, and barley in the
afternoon. The fowl-houses are white- washed every spring,
and kept cleaned out twice a week, and the floors dusted
with slack lime. The fowls have a good field to run in,
so they get plenty of grass. The shut-up pullets require
plenty of grit and greenstuff, and they are fond of a
Mangold to pick at. Fowls are very fond of bones

APRIL 297

or scraps, or anything that amuses them. It is very bad
for fowls to be dull. When we see a fowl not eating or
not looking well, we keep it apart for a day or two, give
it a dose of castor oil, and, if not soon better, we kill and
bury it.' I am sure this is a better plan than trying to
doctor sick birds. I know no more miserable sight than
unhealthy poultry. We rear a few ducks every year,
but kill them in the summer, as they are great consumers
of food.

In October I always buy, as I have said before, three or
four young turkeys, and have them fed here for Christmas-
time. It saves three or four shillings on each bird. Any
fowls that are going to be killed ought to be shut up for
twelve hours without food. Turkeys and geese require
rather longer. Home-grown poultry is much better not
plucked or cleaned out till just before cooking. Very
young chickens are best eaten quite freshly killed.

For Preserving* Eg"gS. — Put some fresh eggs in
a large basin or jar and pour lime-water over them.
Two days after, take out the eggs and look through them
carefully. Put away those which are at all cracked.
Those which are quite in good condition put into a
second jarful of lime-water, and stand this jar in the
cellar. See that the eggs are always covered by the
lime-water. They will keep for quite six months or more.
The first jarful of lime-water can be used to try another
lot of eggs.

This is another and even simpler way of preserving
eggs, which we find answers perfectly well here : Fill
a small shallow box deep enough to cover the eggs —
cardboard does quite well — with chaff. Put the fresh
eggs, just laid, into this with the points downwards. Tie
on the lid ; and when you have more than one box, they
can be tied together as they fill. The whole reason of
this plan is that the box should be reversed once every

298 MORE POT-POURRI

twenty-four hours. If this is really done, the eggs keep
perfectly fresh for weeks — so fresh that they are not to be
distinguished from new-laid eggs, except that they poach
beautifully ; which, as everyone knows, a new-laid egg
does not, any more than a stale one. If the boxes are
tied together, it is no trouble turning them over beyond
remembering it. The natural history of this is that
when the egg is laid the germ is alive, and if the egg lays
on its side the germ is not only alive, but grows for many
days. When the germ in the egg has consumed its
nourishment, it dies from cold, and instantly the egg goes
bad. By putting the eggs end downwards, and turning
them daily, the germ dies at once and never grows, and
the egg remains good. Many will not believe this. I can
only say ' Try it.' If you either turn the box yourself, or
have anyone you can depend upon to do it for you, you
will not find that it fails.

If you rub perfectly fresh-laid eggs with butter, they
keep for a long time. If they have been laid twelve
hours before the butter is applied it is no good.
Mrs. Koundell says this receipt is of no use : perhaps
because she has not tried it with fresh enough eggs.

The word ' egg ' reminds me of such an extremely funny
anecdote in Mr. Max Miiller's ' Auld Lang Syne ' that I

must crib it. A certain Duke of M , being very fond

of natural history, was much interested in some emus
which he possessed. Having occasion to go to town, his
agent wired to him : ' The emu has laid an egg. In
your Grace's absence we have taken the largest goose we
could find to hatch it.'

I am told that the receipts both in my former book and
those in * Dainty Dishes ' were considered extravagant.
I have now found a cheap little book, called ' Economical
Cookery,' by Kate Addison, which meets the want and is
true to its name. At the end are two or three most

APRIL 299

useful hints. If you want your onions to fry a good
colour, do not peel them. Another hint is that if you
boil corks for five minutes before using them they fit in
the bottles much tighter, and so preserve what is inside
much better.

There is a French confectioner named De Bry (45
Southampton Eow, and New Oxford Street, London),
whom I have only lately got to know, and who has the
excellent device : ' Vendre bon pour vendre beaucoup.'
He sells jams which will be highly appreciated by that
increasing class — jam-eaters. I recommend this motto to
all those who bottle fruit and make jams, especially in our
colonies. I have been lately given a large sample of West
Indian jams, but they are not up to the mark. I should
imagine there was a great opening for all kinds of pre-
served fruits, syrups, jams, etc., from abroad, where so
many excellent fruits grow almost wild. But they never
can be a commercial success if not done carefully. They
must look pleasant to the eye, be juicy, and not too sweet.
The French alone seem to have the art of knowing how
to bottle and preserve fruit. I can buy in London bottled
French raspberries, not preserved in sugar at all, and as
fresh and good as if newly gathered from a garden ; indeed,
better than from my garden, where in dry seasons rasp-
berries always fail.

300 MORE POT-POURRI

MAY

The 'French Sugar Pea' — The 'Westminster Gazette' on Tulips—
The legend of the Crown Imperial — Article on ' Sacred Trees an
Flowers' — Peeling of Poppies — Cooking receipts — Books on
Florence — Mr. Gladstone on travelling — Journey to Italy —
Arrival at Arcetri.

May 1st. — Gorse thoroughly peeled and wedged (see first
volume) lasts for weeks in water, and the warmth of the
room makes the flower come out so well it is almost a
different-looking plant.

In these light soils all the fruit-trees over-flower them-
selves so much, like pot-bound plants, that no one need
scruple to pick branches of blossom to put in water in
the house. The trees can never carry even the fruit that
sets.

The evergreens are beginning their spring shoots. I
think it must have been at about this time of year, when
the young leaves on the Holly have no spines, that
Southey wrote :

All vain asperities, day by day, would wear away.
Till the smooth temper of my age should be
Like the high leaves upon the Holly Tree.

A book published in 1857, called ' Curiosities of
Natural History,' by Francis T. Buckland, is very in-
terestingly written, and will be found full of information
on all sorts of subjects — from the anatomy of the water-
rat to Virgil's description of the death of Laocoon.

At this time of year, when the frame double Violets

MAY 301

are over, which do so well for finger-bowl bouquets in
spring, I find a plant or two of Nicotiana affinis sown in
the autumn and grown in the greenhouse very useful.
One flower cut off with a branch of Prince of Orange
Geranium or a piece of Sweet Verbena — of which there
ought to be plenty now, if they have been properly grown
on — make charming little bouquets for this purpose.

The gardener of a friend of mine sowed some self-
saved seed of Nemesia stru^nosa in September in a pan,
pricking them off twice — the second time a single plant
in a small pot. The result was some charming well-
grown plants, which flowered beautifully in April, and
the flowers were larger and finer than the summer ones
out of doors.

The French ' Mange-tout ' Peas (Sutton catalogues them
as ' French Sugar Peas ') are not yet sown generally enough
in England. Enghsh cooks do not understand (and how
should they without explanation?) that they are not
shelled, but the pod and the pea are boiled together, and
a little butter added before serving.

In the ' Westminster Gazette ' of last spring there
was an interesting article on the history of Tulips, called
forth by the Tulip show at the Eoyal Botanic Gardens
and the general revival of interest in the flower, which
has as romantic a history as any plant all the world over.
The article being too long to quote here entirely, I give a
few extracts : ' In the seraglio of the Shadow of God,
when the world was a few centuries younger, there was
one festival in early spring which for dazzling splendour
outshone the rest of the Eastern fairylike night scenes.
Unnumbered artificial suns, moons, and stars lit up the
Sultan's beautiful gardens, and in the mystic light which
turned night into day tens of thousands of Tulips stood
proudly up on their tall slim stalks, the goblet of each
blossom perfect in form and in colour. Among this

302 MORE POT-POURRI

dazzling dream the Sultan and his harem, and whoever
else was great and mighty at the Court of Constantinople,
worshipped at the shrine of the Tulip, and the whole of
the East echoed the praise of the thouliban, or turban
flower, the corruption of which term has become our
name for the flower.

' The West at that period knew nothing of the Tulip
though it had been gi'eat in the East for more years than
men remembered. India, Persia, and the Levant had in
the course of ages woven around it countless legends of
love and life and death ; great poets sang its praises ; the
heathen laid it at the feet of his gods, and the early
Christian of the East pointed to it as the " Lily of the
field " which afforded to Christ the subject of a divine
sermon to which the world has clung, and still is clinging,
as to a never-failing help when the burden of life grows
heavy.

' In the sixteenth century an ambassador of the
Emperor of Germany to the Sublime Porte, going from
Adrianople to Constantinople shortly after mid-winter,
came upon a wondrous sight. On the roadside,- among
the weeds and grasses, there rose in glorious beauty clump
after clump, bed after bed, of tall goblet-shaped flowers.
As the sun shone upon them they blazed with the colour
of fire and sunlight, and the smooth broad petals formed
a deep cup classically simple and perfect, closing over a
heart of gold.

' Before long a few Tulip bulbs reached Germany, and
thence in 1577 came to England.'

We all know how Tulips were then taken up by
Dutchmen. The article says that for the three years from
1634 to 1637 Holland was but a large asylumful of tulipo-
maniacs. I have just been told how that in one vineyard
in Alsace, and in one alone, the pretty wild tulip Tulipa
reflexa flourishes abundantly. I think more might be

MAY 303

done by planting in England the type Tulips, and leaving
them to their fate, especially on chalky soils, which they
seem to like.

The Crown Imperials are nearly over. They have not
been as good as usual this year ; the hard frosts in March
blackened their poor crowns. A kind correspondent was
shocked at my non-botanical language in speaking of the
beads of liquid in the hanging flowers as water, not honey.
I merely meant that they looked like pure water. He
writes : ' I think on examination you will find them honey.
As you do not mention it, you may not know of the legend
in connection with this flower, which is as follows. Please
forgive me if a twice-told tale : When our Lord in His
agony was walking in the Garden of Gethsemane, all the
flowers save this one alone bowed their heads in sym-
pathetic sorrow. It held its head aloft in supreme
disdain ; whereupon our Lord gently rebuked it. Smitten
with shame at last, it hung its head, and since then has
never been able to raise it, and those who care to turn its
face upwards always find tears in its eyes.' He closed his
letter v^th the following practical hint : ' For protective
purposes — shelters — you may find the bamboo baskets in
which moist sugar is sent from South America, about
three feet high and nearly six feet round, when split
open on one side and flattened out make good light
shelters.'

I am very fond of reading old ' Edinburghs ' and
' Quarterlies,' and one is apt to find in them a helpful con-
tribution to anything that one may have been thinking
about. This happened to me the other day when, taking
up the ' Quarterly Eeview ' for July 1863, I came upon a
most fascinating article, full of folk-lore and tradition,
called ' Sacred Trees and Flowers.' I should delight in
quoting several of the stories, but room fails me. Work-
ing through all the older traditions of Europe, the writer

304 MORE POT-POURRI

gives full credit, as is due, to the monks, and says : ' To
the Benedictines and Cistercians — the first great agricul-
turists of Europe and the first great gardeners, the true
predecessors of the Hendersons and Veitches of our own
day — we are indebted for many of the well -loved flowers
that will always keep their places, in spite of their gayer,
but less permanent, modern rivals. The Wallflower, that
" scents the dewy air " about the ruined arches of its con-
vent ; the scarlet Anemone, that flowers about Eastev-tide,
and is called in Palestine the blood-drops of Christ ; the
blossoming Almond-tree, one of the symbols of the Virgin,
and the Marigold that received her name, are but a few
of the old friends, brought long ago from Syria by some
pilgrim monk, and spread from his garden over the whole
of Europe. ... In the cloistered garden, too, the monk
was wont to meditate on the marvels of the plants that
surrounded him, and to find all manner of mysterious
emblems in their marks and tracings. Many displayed
the true figure of the Cross. It might be seen in the
centre of the red poppy ; and there was a " Zucca " (fig) at
Rome, in the garden of the Cistercian Convent of Santa
Potentiana, the fruit of which, when cut through, showed
a green cross inlaid on the white pulp, and having at its
angles five seeds, representing the five wounds. . . . The
Banana, in the Canaries, is never cut with a knife because
it also exhibits a representation of the Crucifixion, just as the
Pern-root shows an Oak-tree.' But the fame of the greatest
of all such marvels arrived at Rome in the year 1609, when
Bosio describes as maraviglioso fiore the Passion Flower of
the New World. The first to describe the Passion Flower in
England was our own Master Parkinson, who said that it
should be assigned to that ' bright Occidental star, Queen
Elizabeth, and be named in memory of her the Virgin
Climber.' The Passion Flower, however, has retained
its original name and significance. It is the one gre^t

MAY 305

contribution of the Western Hemisphere to the symboMcal
flowers of Christendom ; and its starhke blossoms have
taken a worthy place beside the mystical Eoses and Trefoils
of ecclesiastical decoration.

When I replanted the Ornithogalum 'pyramidale in
September last year, I planted between them some pieces
of Galega officinalis, so easily divided in the autumn. The
fresh bright green makes a groundwork for the long
spikes of the bulbs, and later it gives a succession of
flowers of its own pretty white or pale lilac. In dry
seasons it is most useful for picking. In one place I find
it is growing quite successfully. In a more shaded
corner under a wall — no sun reaching it in winter — every
plant of the Galega has died. I merely mention this as
one more instance of how the hardiest plants do well or not
within a few yards of each other. I saw in a friend's garden
to-day Alstrcemerias growing like weeds all over the place.
I remarked on this. ' Yes,' she said, ' it's quite true. For
five years I had never been able to get one seed to grow,
and the plants I bought invariably died. Now I have so
many that I must dig them out with a spade.'

I do not think I mentioned before that all kinds of
Poppies travel beautifully if they are gathered in bud ; and
if on arrival the hard husk is peeled off from the buds,
they revive and flower and last longer. Forcing open the
buds exhausts the flowers, and then they open but to fade
and die. The Shirley and Iceland Poppies are prepared in
this way for the London market. Some of the Campanula
tribe do best dry and starved ; they flower well instead of
going to leaf. This is especially the case with the little
G. ccBspitosa and with C. grandis, which is so useful for
covering the ground under shrubs and in bare dry places.
C. pyraviidalis, though it likes half-shade, enjoys a rich,
rather moist place. The C. persicifolia is never quite so
beautiful here as I have seen it on stiff soils.

3o6 MORE POT-POURRI

It is well in spring and early summer to make constant
cuttings of the white Swainsonia. It does well out of
doors and in, and is a very refined, pretty little plant.

Eeceipts
To Cook Spag'hetti (small Italian macaroni). — Put
some bacon-fat, or any pieces of fat, in a saucepan
with onions, carrots, herbs, etc., all chopped up, and
a little sugar. Fry them slightly. Pour off the fat.
Cut up some tomatoes, add a little stock, and simmer
it all together till the tomatoes are cooked. Pass the
whole through a sieve, so that the sauce may be quite
smooth. Boil the spaghetti separately till quite tender,
then drain off the water, and mix with the tomato sauce.
If cheese is liked, mix in some grated Parmesan the
last thing before serving ; also a little fresh butter, which
can be added without the cheese if preferred.

Italian Way of Dressing a Cabbag-e with a Hard
Heart. — Plunge the cabbage into boiling water. Take
out the heart, cut it into ribbons. Mix with it bacon,
chopped meat or game, onion, garlic, parsley, herbs, and
above all some Gruyere and Parmesan cheese — in fact,
almost anything. Bind this mixture with egg. Eeplace
it in the cabbage, and tie it up well to prevent the stuffing
from escaping. Boil fast till done. Serve with a brown or
white sauce, or butter only.

Another Risotto a la Milanaise. — Italian rice is the
best of all, though rather difficult to get. It is different
from either Carolina or Patna. FaiUng it, boil half
a pound of best Carolina rice. When it is about half
cooked, drain it off and replace it in stewpan. Add a
good quarter of a pound of butter, stand it on the side
of the stove, allow it to fry gently till the rice is quite
done, stirring very frequently to prevent burning, which it
will do unless constant attention is given. Then mix about

MAY

307

half a pint of good demie glaze de volaille, or, if that should
not be convenient, a little ordinary half-glaze. Add about
a quarter of a pound of grated Parmesan, some tongue cut
to size of a shilling, and about four or five truffles cut in
slices, also bits of chicken the size of a shilling. Season
to taste, and serve very hot in a silver souffle-dish, with a
very little Parmesan grated over the top. It is an im-
provement as a change with risotto to press it into a
round basin and turn it out before serving.

A very good way of cooking young potatoes is to put
them into a black frying-pan, whole, in hot butter. Cover
them up, and let them cook for an hour. This does very
well for small old potatoes also.

A very creamy puree of potatoes (see ' Dainty Dishes ')
put into scallop-shells and browned in the oven, handed
round with roast mutton, is rather a pretty change.

Fresh summer spinach, plain boiled and chopped (not
too fine), and rolled in the middle of a large pancake is
excellent.

A good puree of sorrel (see ' Dainty Dishes ') with
small Asparagus cut up into little pieces is an excellent
May or June dish.

Asparagus Salad. — Thin boiled asparagus cut up
into short lengths {pointes d'asperges) and mixed with oil
and lem.on-juice makes a nice salad. It is much improved
by the addition of an apple (' New Zealand ') peeled and
cut up into thin Julienne shreds.

When apples get scarce and tasteless in the spring, a
very good ' Charlotte ' can be made in exactly the same way
as * Apple Charlotte ' (see ' Dainty Dishes '), by making a
smooth purde from stewed sun-dried apricots, to be had
of all London grocers and Stores.

A good cookery book is called ' A Younger Son's
Cookery Book, by a Younger Son's daughter ' (Bichard
Bentley & Son).

3o8 MORE POT-POURRI

May 22nd. — "When I made up my mind last year to
go to Florence I thought I would try and collect a few
appropriate books to enlighten my ignorance and refi'esh
my memory. I asked my friends what I should take,
merely reminding them that Mr. Hare's volumes on Italy
and George Eliot's ' Komola ' had naturally occurred to
myself. I got very little help before I went; but by
degrees, during the month I was in Florence and since
my return, I have collected and read several bookii which
I should have been glad to have had last year, and which
may help those who go straight from a busy home life
and take a short trip to Florence. Of course the litera-
ture on Florence is so enormous, and people's taste in
books differs so greatly, that to write a mere list of names
would enlighten no one, I shall only mention those
books which I either possess or have had lent to me to
read ; and if I describe them a little in detail, I think it
may help the inexperienced to make a selection of those
which they themselves would enjoy. At Florence there
is a most excellent lending library ; in fact, probably more
than one.

As an example of ' art ' teaching at the end of the last
century there is now a cheap edition of Sir Joshua
Eeynolds's ' Discourses,' which are full of wisdom and
general instruction. He shares with the greatest — Michael
Angelo especially — the misfortune that those who came
after him degenerated, which seemed at one time to
justify the condemnation of his teaching. Here is a
sentence from one of his ' Discourses ' which comes home
to me as a reason why, instead of giving my own super-
ficial opinions, 1 try to help others by recommending
books which I think will j^reatly add to their enjoyment
of a visit to Florence :

' The great business of study is to form a mind
adapted and adequate to all times and all occasions ; to

MAY 309

which all Nature is then laid open, and which may be
said to possess the key of her inexhaustible riches.

' A detail of instruction might be extended with a great
deal of pleasure and ostentatious amplification ; but it
would at best be useless. Our studies will be for ever in
a very great degree under the direction of chance. Like
travellers, we must take what we can get and when we
can get it, whether it is or is not administered in the
most commodious manner, in the most proper place, or
at the exact minute when we would wish to have it.

* The habit of contemplating and brooding over the
ideas of great geniuses, till you find yourself warmed by
the contact, is the true method of forming an artist-like
mind. It is impossible to think or invent in a mean
manner ; a state of mind is acquired that receives those
ideas only which relish of grandeur and simplicity.

' I do not desire that you should get other people to do
your business, or to think for you. I only wish you to
consult with, to call in as councillors, men the most
distinguished for their knowledge and experience, the
result of which counsel must ultimately depend upon
yourself. Such conduct in the commerce of life has
never been considered as disgraceful or in any respect to
imply intellectual imbecility ; it is a sign rather of that
true wisdom which feels individual imperfection, and is
conscious to itself how much collective observation is
necessary to fill the immense extent and to comprehend
the infinite variety of Nature. I recommend neither self-
dependence nor plagiarism. I advise you only to take
that assistance which every human being wants, and
which it appears, from the examples that have been given,
the gi'eatest painters have not disdained to accept.

' Let me add, the diligence required in the search, and
the exertion subsequent in accommodating those ideas to
your own purpose, is a business which idleness will not.

3IO MORE POT-POURRI

and ignorance cannot, perform. Men of superior talents
alone are capable of thus using and adapting other men's
minds to their own purposes, or are able to make out
and finish what was only in the original a hint or
imperfect conception. A readiness in taking such hints,
which escape the dull and ignorant, makes in my opinion
no inconsiderable part of that faculty of the mind whioh
is called genius.'

Before I begin my list of books I think I will say
that there are few more useful things for young people to
take with them to Italy than a biographical dictionary
of the painters. I have two ; but they are old ones. I
have had them all my life. Doubtless there are better
and more modern ones now, which I have not taken the
trouble to look up. One is Pilkington's ' Dictionary of
Painters ' by Allan Cunningham, and the other a
' Dictionary of Italian Painters ' by Maria Farquhar,
edited by R. M. Wornham. This is a dear little book
published in 1855, and light and portable, but probably
long out of print. In studying art, nothing is more
necessary than to know — not only the chronology of the
pictures themselves, but also to a certain degree the
evolution of the minds of the men who painted them.
This we can partly arrive at by the dates of their births
and deaths. The galleries as a rule are not arranged to
help one much, though many pictures now have dates on
their frames. Still, it requires a peculiar head — certainly,
I think, one not possessed by most women — to arrange
these dates of the painters' lives, overlapping each other
as they do, on the spur of the moment, in a way that is
of the smallest use for judging the merits of the pictures,
and above all the mind of the man that shines through
his work.

One should know the date of a picture, as in biography
everything depends upon the age at which incidents occur.

MAY 311

Men of genius often do at twenty what is usually not done
at forty ; so every now and then a painter anticipates by
centuries the thought or the execution of future ages.

In accordance with the taste of her day Maria
Parquhar gives five double-columned pages of her little
book to Eaphael, and half a single column to Botticelli.
In this she did not differ from her contemporaries, for,
as Mr. Hewlett says in ' Earthwork out of Tuscany ' :
' Seriously, where in criticism do you learn of an earlier
painter than Perugino until you come to our day ? And
where now do you get the raptures over the Carracci and
Domenichino, and Guercino and the rest of them, which
the last century expended upon their unthrifty soil?
Euskin found Botticelli ; yes, and Giotto. Eoscoe never so
much as mentions either.'

I have four little daintily printed volumes published in
1834 — an early work of the well-known authoress Mrs.
Jameson, who has written so much on Italian art. These
books are not without interest to the student of life, art, or
art criticisms. The two last volumes are a reprint of a still
earlier work, which had a success in its day, called * The
Diary of an Ennuyee.' The book is still interesting to me,
not only for its dcmodee style, but also as being a kind of
' Pot-Pourri ' of the day. This ' Diary of an Ennuyee '
contains an account of the author's stay at Florence,
which is my reason for mentioning the book here. Her
reflections are young and genuine, and the courage with
which she lays them down gives them a human interest.
I feel considerable sympathy with what she says about
Michael Angelo. She thus speaks of the Medici statues :
' In a little chapel in San Lorenzo are Michael Angelo's
famous statues— the Morning, the Noon, the Evening,
and the Night. I looked at them with admiration rather
than with pleasure ; for there is something in the severe
and overpowering style of this master which aflects me

312 MORE POT-POURRI

disagreeably, as beyond my feeling and above my com-
prehension. These statues are very ill-disposed for effect ;
the confined cell (such it seemed) in which they are
placed is so strangely disproportioned to the avs;^ful and
massive grandeur of their forms.

' There is a picture by Michael Angelo, considered a
cJief-d'c&uvre, which hangs in the Tribune to the right of
the Venus. Now if all the connoisseurs, with Vasari at
their head, were to harangue for an hour together on the
merits of this picture, I might submit in silence, for I am
no connoisseur ; but that it is a disagreeable, a hateful
picture is an opinion which fire could not melt out of
me. In spite of Messieurs les Connoisseurs and Michael
Angelo's fame, I would die in it at the stake. For instance,
here is the Blessed Virgin — not the " Vergine Santa d'ogni
gi'azia plena," but a Virgin whose brickdust-coloured
face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular masculine
arms give me the idea of a washerwoman (con rispetto
parlando !) — an infant Saviour with the proportions of a
giant ! And what shall we say of the nudity of the figures
in the backgi-ound ? — profaning the subject and shocking
at once good taste and good sense. A little further on
the eye rests on the divine Madre di Dio of Correggio.
What beauty, what sweetness, what maternal love and
humble adoration are blended in the look and attitude
with which she bends over her Infant ! '

Just as a contrast to this bald dislike of Michael
Angelo, which I more or less share, I will copy, as an
example of modern subtle scholarly criticism, a sentence
on the same picture from Pater's ' Eenaissance ' — a book
to be read indeed :

' When the shipload of sacred earth from the soil of
Jerusalem was mingled with the common clay in the
Campo Santo at Pisa, a new flower grew up from it, unlike
any flower men had seen before — the Anemone, with its

MAY 313

concentric rings of strangely blended colour, still to be
found by those who search long enough for it in the long
grass of the Maremma. Just such a strange flower was
that mythology of the Italian Eenaissance which grew up
from the mixture of two traditions, two sentiments — the
sacred and the profane. Classical story was regarded as
so much imaginative material to be received and assimi-
lated. It did not come into men's minds to ask curiously
of science concerning the origin of such story, its primary
form and import, its meaning for those who projected it.
The thing sank into their minds, to issue forth again with
all the tangle about it of mediaeval sentiment and ideas.

' In the Doni Madonna in the Tribune of the Ujffizi
Michael Angelo actually brings the pagan religion, and with
it the unveiled human form, the sleepy-looking fauns of
a Dionysiac revel, into the presence of the Madonna, as
simpler painters had introduced there other products of
the earth, birds or flowers ; while he has given to that
Madonna herself much of the uncouth energy of the older
and more primitive " Mighty Mother." '

Is it possible to see side by side more different
criticisms of the same picture ? And it is not only the
difference of a young woman and a scholarly man ; it
means the immense march the world has made altogether
in the understanding of its own evolution.

To return to Mrs. Jameson. She runs on with her
criticisms through the sights of Florence. Most of the
pictures she admires are certainly not those that excite
the greatest admiration in these days. The name Botti-
celli is never once mentioned by her, any more than it
is thirty years later by George Ehot in her notes on
Florentine art in the diary pubhshed in her Life. Pater,
on the contrary, tells us that Sandro Botticelli is the only
contemporary mentioned, whether by accident or intention
by Leonardo in his treatise on painting.

314 MORE POT-POURRI

I only possess tlie translation of tliis treatise published
in 1835. Just lately a new ' Life and Works ' of Leonardo,
by Eugene Muntz, has been published by Heinemann,
but it is 42s. net.

To leave high things for low, Mrs. Jameson touches
on the society of the day at Florence and parties at the
Countess of Albany's, etc. She gives an amusing story
of a ti'avelling young lord who, when presented with the
Countess of Albany's card, exclaimed :

' The Countess of Albany ! Ah !— true — I remember !
Wasn't she the widow of Charles the Second who married
Ariosto ? ' There is in this celebrated bSviie a glorious
confusion of times and persons.

For those interested in the byways of history a well-
known modern author, Vernon Lee, has written a ' Life ' of
this Countess of Albany. I think it the most interesting
of Vernon Lee's books that I have read. It was published
in the ' Eminent Women ' series — why, I cannot imagine ;
for it seems to me as incongruous as Hawthorne's ' Life '
being in the ' English Men of Letters ' or Lady Hamilton's
picture having a place in the National Portrait Gallery.

Vernon Lee's ' Studies of the Eighteenth Century in
Italy ' I have not read ; but if they are half as interesting
as this ' Life,' I have something to look forward to. The
pictures of even a portion of society in Florence drawn in
this ' Life ' of the Countess of Albany set one wondering
how a hundred years can have brought about such changes.
Vernon Lee's later works, mostly about Italy, ' Limbo
and Other Essays ' and ' Genius Loci,' there seems no
need for me to praise ; they have been so recently in the
reading public's mind, and so much appreciated.

It seems to me very clearing to the mind to read
French or German criticisms at the same time as English,
especially with regard to Italy, as at all times the French,
of whom I know most, take such an absolutelv different

MAY 315

point of view. ' L'ltalie d'Hier,' by the brothers De
Goncourt, written in the winter of 1855-56, is entirely
devoid of what we should call ' the feeling for Italy.' To
read this description of Italy is very like taking up a book
illustrating the contents of the first Exhibition of 1851 ,
when all sense of the beautiful seemed absolutely lost.
Georges Sand, in her youthful bitterness, exclaimed in
the 'Thirties that Italy was ' Peintures aux plafonds,
ordure sous les pieds ' ; but that criticism is again of a
totally different kind. Edmond de Goncourt looks at a
picture and says : ' La Vierge chez ce peintre, c'est la
Vierge du Vinci, mais avec une expression courtisanesque.'
The drawings by one of the brothers in this book are rather
clever, and in describing a ball at the Pitti in the Grand
Duke's time he gives an absurd caricature of our English
Minister of the day. Lord Normanby, which no one who
remembers him can read now without a smile. The book
is well worth looking at as typical of French ciiticism
of that d?„y, and anybody who cares to enjoy a strong
literary contrast has only to take up afterwards Paul
Bourget's 'Sensations d'ltalie' (pubhshed in 1891, and
dedicated to Eobert Lord Lytton by his affectionate friend
and admirer) and his most daintily illustrated little gem
called ' Un Saint,' published in 1894. Here the forty years
have indeed altered sentiment, feeling, aspiration, and de-
scription. Both are French ; I prefer the Bourget.

The famous ' Voyage en ItaHe ' by H. Taine (1866)
is literature of a much more serious kind. It is descrip-
tive rather than critical in the modern sense, and the
chapter ' La Peinture Florentine ' should be read by
anyone seriously interested in the Florence galleries. It
contains an enlightened sentence on the famous Venus de'
Medici, forcing one to remember — what so many forget —
that the arms were a I'estoration by Bernini, and are very
likely the cause of much that foils to please in this statue.

3i6 MORE POT-POURRI

What he says of the galleries are only slight sketches,
but these are by the hand of a master. The end of the
second volume is Venice ; the first volume is Kome.

' The Makers of Florence,' by Mrs. Oliphant, is a most
helpful book and one of her best. It should be read,
I think, before the more detailed ' Life and Times of
Savonarola ' by Professor Pasquale Villari, as the mind
then will be in a more receptive condition for absorbing
the greater detail of the larger book. It is almost incon-
ceivable that Savonarola's skull formation should have
been as low as it is represented in the portrait reproduced
in this book of Mrs. Oliphant's, with the head covered
with his Dominican cowl.

' The Life and Times of Savonarola ' by Villari,
translated as it is into English by his wife, has been
lately republished in a cheap edition by Fisher Unwin.

Signora Villari has also written a pretty little book of
her own, called ' On Tuscan Hills and Venetian Waters.'

I have long had that amusing classic, the ' Memoirs of
Benvenuto Cellini ' by himself, translated by Thomas
Eoscoc (1823), on the title-page of which is a saying of
Horace Walpole's : ' Cellini was one of the most extra-
ordinary men of an extraordinary age. His Life, written
by himself, is more amusing than any novel I know.'
This book was again translated into English by John
Addington Symonds, and published in 1888. It is
pleasanter reading than Eoscoe's, but the engi'aved
portrait in the old book is infinitely better than in the new.

I found Symonds's ' Life of Michael Angelo ' a book of
rare interest. Symonds is often criticised for inaccui'acy
of detail. The same accusation is always brought against
Froude ; hut both writers have a power of popularising
information which, joined to their gift for vivid description,
make one live in the past, in spite of the atmosphere of
modern thought through which they present it.

MAY 317

Symonds's ' Italian Sketches,' which are so conveni-
ently published in the Tauchnitz edition, speak of many
things in a charming way, but do not actually touch on
Florence itself.

Amongst the books I have been I'eading none seem to
me more remarkable or stamped with a stronger or
more interesting individuality than Walter Pater's. His
' Eenaissance,' which he calls ' Studies in Art and Poetry,'
and ' Marius the Epicurean,' with its vivid word-painting
and its pictures of old Italy, so unchanged even to-day,
are books which must be immensely admired by those
who read them, or not liked at all. They are certainly
not light reading, and more fitted for the study than the
railway carriage ; but they are books which I believe will
live in English literature when many of the productions
of this period will have passed into the unknown. They
are full of study, thought, and knowledge, and it is not
only a knack of beautiful writing which is their chief
attraction and merit.

Many years ago two old ladies, Susan and Joanna
Homer, lived in Florence and wrote one of the first and
the most satisfactory of the detailed guide-books I have
ever seen, called * Walks in Florence.' An interesting new
French book by A. Geffroy, called 'Etudes Italiennes,'
published in 1898, I thought worth reading, as it gives
another historical view of the Eenaissance ; Art being
only indirectly alluded to. The chapters are on ' Les
Grands M6dicis,' ' Savonarola,' ' Guichardin.' He quotes
of ' Laurent ' ' Ce refrain rest6 populaire qui r^sonne
encore comme un 6cho lointain et gracieux de la
Eenaissance !

Quanto e bella giovinezza

Che si fugge tuttavia I

Chi vuol esser lieto, sia,

Pi doman non c' d certezza.'

3i8 MORE POT-POURRI

The second part of the book is called ' Rome Monu-
mentale.' In this there is a chapter on ' La 16gende de la
Cenci,' in which he also sweeps away the whole story.

Only last summer a book appeared called ' Tuscan
Artists, their Thought and Work,' by Hope Eea. Sir
W. B. Richmond writes the preface and says : ' I desire
success to this little volume, so interesting, so full of
sympathy with those various emotions whose expression
in all forms of art has made Italy their foster mothsr.'

A book has just been sent me called ' Stray Studies
from England and Italy,' by John Richard Green, the
author of the famous ' Short History.' The title is not
quite correct, as there is an excellent chapter or two on
the South of France, and an exceedingly interesting
historical paper on the home of our Ange\dn kings, which
was also the home of the Renaissance in Fi-ance ; and it
has a still earlier interest for the modern English tourist
who rides through Touraine by the Loire to Saumur, for,
as Mr. Green says, ' Nothing clears one's ideas about the
character of the Angevin rule, the nile of Henry II,, or
Richard or John, so thoroughly as a stroll through Anjou.'
Another charming chapter is ' The Florence of Dante.' In
fact, I have most thoroughly enjoyed this little gem of
desultory information.

For serious modern criticism of Italian painters and
their work I have found nothing that has interested me
so much and which seems to me so new as Mr. Bernhard
Berenson's three little volumes — ' The Venetian Painters
of the Renaissance,' ' The Florentine Painters of the
Renaissance,' and ' The Central Italian Painters of the
Renaissance.' The author evidently aims at representing
the modern scientific school of art criticism, started, as far
as I know, by Giovanni Morelli. The indexes at the end
of each volume will be found valuable, though many of
Mr, Berenson's conclusions will be cavilled at ; and his

MAY

319

attributions of pictures, differing as they do from the
official catalogues, raise much antagonism.

Where doctors differ, the public may be amused, and
art critics of the future must worry out their various
opinions.

' Italian Literature ' by Richard Garnett is one of those
books for which the pubHc ought to feel grateful, as it
condenses an incredible amount of labour and study into
a very small convenient volume. It brings us down to
the present day, D'Annunzio's novels, etc.

In 1897 Mr. John Morley pubHshed one of his
brilliant lectures, delivered in the Sheldonian Theatre, on
MachiaveUi. He begins by a reference to Dante's liken-
ing of worldly fame to the breath of the wind, that blows
now one way, now another, and changes name as it changes
quarter. He says of MachiaveUi : ' In our age, when we
think of the chequered course of human time, of the shocks
of irreconcilable civilisations, of war, trade, faction, revolu-
tion, empire, laws, creeds, sects, we seek a clue to the vast
maze of historic and prehistoric fact. MachiaveUi seeks n
clue to his distribution of good and evil. He never tries
to find a moral interpretation for the mysterious scroll.
We obey laws that we do not know, but cannot resist.
We can only make an effort to seize events as they
whirl by, and to extort from them a maxim, a precept, or
a principle, to serve our immediate tm-n. Fortune, he
says — that is, Providence, or else circumstances, or the
stars — is mistress of more than half we do. What is her
deep secret, he shows no curiosity to fathom. He con-
tents himself with a maxim for the practical man
("Prince," xxv.), that it is better to be adventurous than
cautious, for Fortune is a woman and, to be mastered,
must be boldly handled.'

Mr. Morley's defence of MachiaveUi is on the lines of
his concluding words : ' It is urue to say that Machia-

320 MORE POT-POURRI

velli represents certain living forces in our actual world ;
that science, with its survival of the fittest, unconsciously
lends him illegitimate aid ; that " he is not a vanishing
t)^e, but a constant and contemporary influence." This
is because energy, force, will, violence, still keep alive in
the world their resistance to the control of justice and
conscience, humanity and right. In so far as he repre-
sents one side in that eternal struggle, and suggests one
set of considerations about it, he retains a place in the
literature of modern political systems and European
morals.'

I Avind up by taking from my list of books that were
recommended to me a few I have not yet had time to
read : ' Christ's Folk in the Apennine,' by Miss Alexander ;
' Roadside Songs of Tuscany,' by the same. ' A Nook in
the Apennines,' by Leader Scott. ' Italian Sketches,' by
Mrs. Ross. 'HistoiredesM6dicis,' by Dumas. 'UneAun6e
k Florence : Impressions de Voyage,' by Dumas. ' Italian
Commonwealth, or Commonwealth of Florence,' by
Trollope.

Last year on May 26th I left my Surrey garden
for three months. The account of this time I had
abroad and the return in August will bring my year to
its conclusion.

My spring gardening was spoilt by the feeling that
the buds I had watched so carefully would be seen in
flower by others and not by myself ; and there is no deny-
ing I left home with a considerable wrench. The garden
looked very full, but green and flowerless ; only one or two
large Oriental Poppies were out. I do not know why, but
I travelled by night to Paris, resting some hours in an
hotel in order to go through by the Cenis train, arriving
at Florence early in the evening instead of in the middle
of the night. I might just as well have slept in Paris ;
it would have cost no more than the six hours' rest. I

MAY 321

started from there to travel alone for the first time in my
life.

I did not want to feel sad or lonely, which would have
been foolish, as I was deliberately going to please myself ;
and I could not help smiling as I thought over a sentence
in the Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff, and what she says
about travelliag with one's family : ' Je comprend qu'on
soit heureux de vivre en famille, et je serais malheureuse
seule. On peut aller faire des achats en famille, aller au
Bois en famille, quelquefois au Theatre. On peut etre
malade en famille, faire des cures en famille, enfin tout ce
qui est de la vie intime et des choses n^cessaires ; mais
voyager en famille ! ! ! C'est comme si on prenait plaisir
^ valser avec sa tante. C'est ennuyeux mortellement, et
m6me quelque peu ridicule.'

Eailway travelling is always such a joy to me. I
never know which I like best — looking out of the window,
or feeling that I can read in peace without the disturbances
which are perpetually occurring elsewhere. Going through
France, I am always struck afresh by the thinly populated
look of the country, except just near the towns.

I had in my travelUng-bag a cutting from the ' Daily
Telegraph ' of January 5th, 1898 : Mr. Gladstone's account
of Hallam. A remarkably interesting paper, one of those
rare gifts sometimes bestowed upon us by the daily press.
It must have been almost the last, if not quite the last,
thing of any importance the old man ever wrote.

Has it ever been explained why the recollections of youth
are so engraven on the brain and flash out in old age with
such vivid clearness ? Educated and uneducated, clever
and stupid, all seem to share the same experience. The
dullest of old people are interesting if allowed to talk of
their youth and themselves. The only drawback is that they
enjoy repeating over and over again what they remember.
Gladstone's half-jealous criticism of Hallam spending

Y

322 MORE POT-POURRI

eight months in Italy between Eton and Cambridge in-
cludes so excellent a description of travelling in the days
that are gone that it haunted me as I flew and rushed in
my express in one bound from Paris to Florence :

' The agencies of locomotion have within the last
seventy years been not only multiplied, but transformed.
We then crept into and about countries ; we now fly
through them. When Arthur Hallam went with his
family to Italy, there was not so much as a guide-book.
It was shortly afterwards Mrs. Starke, under the auspices
of Murray, founded that branch of literature, and within
the compass of one very moderate volume expounded in
every particular the whole continent of Europe. But this
is only the outside of the case. A visit to Italy was then
the summit of a young man's aspirations ; it now supplies
some half-dozen rapid stages in larger tours, where we
run much risk of losing in discipline and mental stimulus
what we gain in mileage. When it took sixteen or eighteen
days to post to Eome, each change of horses was an
event. The young traveller could not but try to make the
most of what he had bought so dear. Scene, history, and
language now flash before the eye ; then they soaked into
the soul. Men were then steeped in the experiences of
Italy ; they are now sprinkled with the spray. Its scenery,
its art, its language, which was a delight and luxury to
learn ; its splendid literature ; its roll of great men,
among whom Dante himself might serve to build up the
entire fame of a nation ; and its place in history, which
alone connects together the great stages of human civilisa-
tion— all these constituted a many-sided power which
was brought to bear almost in a moment on the mind
of Arthur Hallam. I knew it, for I suffered by it. The
interval between his progress and my own, always long,
became such that there was no joining hands across it. I
was plodding on the beaten and dusty path, while he was

MAY 323

Where the lost lark wildly sings,
Hard by the sun.'

Everyone takes with him to Florence Mr. Hare's
* Cities of Central Italy.' In his introduction to the
' Cities of Northern Italy ' he puts it well as regards the
changes that have in my life-time come over travelling.
I can remember things as he describes them :

' The old days of Italian travel are beginning to pass
out of recollection — the happy old days, when with slow-
trotting horses and jangling bells we lived for weeks in
our vetturino carriage as in a house, and made ourselves
thoroughly comfortable there ; halting at midday for
luncheon, with pleasant hours for wandering over unknown
towns and gathering flowers and making discoveries in
the churches and convents near our resting-place. All
that we then saw remains impressed on our recollection
as a series of beautiful pictures set in a framework of
the home-like associations of a quiet life, which was
gilded by all that Italian loveliness alone can bestow
of its own tender beauty. The slow approach to each
long-heard-of but unseen city — gradually leading up,
as the surroundings of all cities do, to its own peculiar
characteristics — gave a very different feeling towards
it from that which is produced by rushing into a railway
station.'

This is all perfectly true ; but when we think that
hundreds can now see and enjoy the great cities of Italy,
which in old days was only the privilege of the idle, the
rich, and the few, we can without regret give up the more
romantic methods of travelling of bygone days.

The only book I had with me, given me before I left
for Florence, was called ' Earthwork out of Tuscany,'
being ' impressions and translations ' of Maurice Hewlett
(J. M. Dent & Co., 1895). It describes Florence, not as
I saw it, but in autumn and early v»'inter, the usual

y2

324 MORE POT-POURRI

tourist time. It is very modern in tone, and although
slightly affected, yet the enthusiasm and delight in Italy
are as great as, or even greater than, those of writers of
a past generation. His preface, which he calls ' Proem,'
is an apologia for writing at all on such well-known
gi'ound, for he feels his book must risk the charge of
being ' a rechmiffd of Paul Bourget and Walter Pater
with aiia lightly culled from Symonds, and perchance
the questionable support of ponderous references out of
Burckhardt.' My journey was shortened for me by the
pleasure I got from reading this book, and it made me
feel glad as I sat in the train that I was on my way to
this Italy of undying interest.

I had, of course, the usual luggage scare at the Custom
House at Modane in the middle of the night. I was idiotic
from sleep, and the officials declared my boxes were not
in the train. I felt like the French cabman with a
heavy load when a passing friend asked him how he was.
' Pour moi, je suis plong6 dans la misere jusqu'au cou.'
Just as the train was starting, to my intense relief I spied
my boxes, and could once more complacently smile and
remember a nice little story I had just been told. An
American lady, having lost all her luggage, said : ' Any
great trial sent by the Almighty I can bear, but these
collateral smacks are too much for anyone to endure.'
How true it is !

One of the drawbacks of the facility of modern travel
is that it enables people who have a short holiday — say, of
three weeks — to rush through Italy from place to place.
Disappointed with the climate, they imagine sunshine is
to be found further on. I heard a young man who spent
his three weeks at Eome, Florence, and Venice, say that
he had ' done that tour, and that Florence was the vilest
climate on the face of God's earth.' Whereas a great
deal more pleasure is to be had, and one gains a much

MAY 325

more lasting impression, by going straight from home
and spending the whole time in one place.

Everyone warned me so much against the heat I
should find in Italy in June. But I began my disappoint-
ment by finding the Alps all cloud and rain, and, in spite
of its being the last days of May, the weather was quite
cold. At Turin the sky was as inky black as in London.
The torrents were bursting, and the roads floating with
water over black mud. As we got near Genoa, of which
absolutely nothing can be seen from the railway, it was
like a gray July day at home, the hay cut and the Acacias
in flower.

The journey along the seashore is a most irritating
series of tunnels. When I arrived at Florence, all
loneliness was at an end. Kind friends met me, and we
drove through the town, which I had not visited, except
for one night, since I was twenty. In the gray damp
drizzle it did not look its best, but no weather can spoil
the majestic appearance of the Ilex and Cypress avenue
outside the Eoman gate — the approach to what was once
a Medicean villa. Through this we had to drive to reach
the village of Arcetri, where my journey ended.

The joy of being once more in Italy was indeed gi'eat ;
my pension — close to the Torre del Gallo — was a large,
fine house, quite empty. All the upper floor was my
own, and I could roam from room to room and enjoy the
most beautiful views conceivable. The whole country
is like a gigantic rockwork — hill and vale and sloping
sides and varied aspects, and all that can be imagined
as perfect for the growth of vegetation. I was rather
disappointed at the excessive gi'eenness of everything on
my arrival. Even the Olives, in spite of the green corn
underneath them, looked green — not gray — from the
masses of small yellow flowers that covered them. One
cannot look at all this redundant vegetation without

326 MORE POT-POURRI

realising that Florence must be blessed with an abundant
rainfall.

They talk here of the probabiHty of a wet ' San Gio-
vanni ' as we talk of ' St. Swithin ' — meaning, of course,
there is generally much wet about that time.

The Italian papers were naturally full of Mr.
Gladstone's recent death, and one of them published his
translation of Cowper's hymn, ' Hark, my soul,' which
seems already at the end of a year almost a literary

curiosity :

Senti, senti, anima mia
(Fu il Signer che sentia)
Gesu paila e parla a te :

• Di, figliuolo, ami Me ? '

' Te legato svincolai,
Le tue piaghe risanai,
Fuorviato rimenai,
Notte e di per te mutai.'

• Vien la madre a quando a quando
II suo parto obliando ?

Donna 11 pu6, non posso lo,
Mai non viene in Me 1' obblio.'

• L' amor Mio sempre dura,
Alto piii d' ogni altra altura,
Tocca gi^ le nere porta,
Franco e fido, in fino a morte.

' Tu la gloria Mia vedrai,
Se le piene grazie avrai,
Te del trono meno al pi^ ;
Di, figliuolo, ami Me ? '

' Ah, Signor, mi duole il core
Pel mio stanco e fiacco amore,
T' amo pure, e vo' pregare
Che ti possa meglio amare.

My food in my out-of-town pension, as I had it all
to myself, consisted of vegetables, macaroni, rice, Alpine

MAY 327

strawberries, etc. I learnt the secret of the delicious
little vegetable they call ' Zucche,' which I had often heard
of. It is called in the English Vilmorin vegetable book
Italian Vegetable Marrow, ' an extremely distinct variety,
stems not running very thick, and short. The luxuriant
foliage forms a regular bush. All through Italy, where
this gourd is very commonly grown, the fruit is eaten
quite young, just before the faded flower drops off. The
plants deprived of their undeveloped fruits continue to
flower for several months most profusely, each producing
a great number of young gourds, which, gathered in that
state, are exceedingly tender and delicately flavoured.'
' This should be tried in England,' adds Mr. Kobinson.
The same excellent way of gathering them quite young
might, I think, be adopted for other gourds and Vegetable
Marrows.

328 MORE POT-POURRI

JUNE

What I saw from my window at Arcetri — Fireflies — Cypresses —
Youthful memories in the ' Cascine ' — Deodar in cloister of San
Marco — F^te at Santa Margharita — Villas — Gardens — Want of
colour in Tuscany at midsummer — Slight allusion to picture
galleries — The cabinet of Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici — June
24th in Florence — Botanical Garden — Silence of birds and
summer sounds.

June 1st. — I alluded in May to a book called ' Earth-
work out of Tuscany.' The introductory chapter contains
the following passage, which comes home to me most
strongly as I begin to write a few notes about ray visit
to Florence : ' Has any city, save perhaps Cairo, been
so written out as Florence ? . . . . Florence has often
been sketched before — putting Browning aside, with his
astounding fresco music — by Ruskin and George Eliot
and Mr. Henry James, to name only masters. But that
is no reason why I should not try my prentice hand.
Florence alters not at all ; men do. My picture, poor
as you like, shall be my own.' I, too, can only in great
humility beg you to accept this little account of my June
near Florence, ' not as what I would fain offer, but what
I am able to pi-esent.'

June 2nd. — The weather is getting finer and warmer,
and I am more and more delighted with my large, empty
house and with the views all round. A more perfect
spot could not be found even here. The actual town I
cannot see ; it is hidden by the undulating ground that
rises behind San Miniato, ending in the Torre del Gallo,

JUNE 329

close to the villa where Galileo was exiled, when blind
and old, to die. Tradition says that he worked from the
top of this tower. I wonder whether he did, or whether
Milton was right in saying that he studied the moon
from the top of Piesole. Milton only saw Galileo on his
second visit to Florence, as during his first visit the
astronomer was kept a close prisoner by the Inquisition.

What was really at the bottom of Galileo's persecu-
tion ? Eeligious people thought it militated against the
dignity and importance of man that this planet of his
should go spinning round the sun — with men's hopes
and feelings hanging on by their eyelids instead of
remaining quiet in a dignified manner while the sun did
its duty in going round, warming and lighting, the earth.

Galileo's blindness seems to have had a ' prophetic
fascination ' for Milton, and the deep impression left by
the sight of the Tuscan astronomer is shown by the way
in which Milton once or twice alludes to him in ' Paradise
Lost,' not published till nearly thirty years later.

Mr. Stephen Phillips's fine poem to Milton blind might
almost apply to Galileo :

The hand was taken by Angels who patrol
The evening, or are sentries to the dawn.
Or pace the wide air everlastingly.
Thou wast admitted to the presence, and deep
Argument heard est and the large design
That brings this world out of woe to bliss.

Ouida says of Galileo's tower in 'Pascarel,' perhaps
the most imaginative and delightful of her Italian books
(so true to Nature and so false to human nature !) : ' The
world has spoilt most of its places of pilgrimage, but the old
star-tower is not harmed as yet where it stands amongst
its quiet garden ways and grass-grown slopes, up high
amongst the hills, with sounds of dripping water on its court,
and wild wood flowers thrusting their bright heads through

330 MORE POT-POURRI

its stones. It is as peaceful, as simple, as homely, as closely
girt with blossoming boughs and with tulip-crimsoned
gi-apes now as then, when from its roof in the still mid-
night of far-off time its master read the secret of the stars.'

But to Galileo at seventy and blind, I wonder what
was the use of the old fighting tower ? The sight of it
was a ceaseless joy to me, flanked by splendid Cypresses
standing ochre colour against the blue, or dark against
some ' billowy bosomed cloud ' ; and at evening it was
' one red tower that drinks its fill out of the sunset sky.'

This was as I looked to the east. Moving round to
the south, the view widened and spread right up the valley
of the Arno, where the little puff of gray smoke curled
along the base of the hill and showed where the train
sped on its way to Rome, through the mountains as they
folded one over the other in tints of pearly-gray. Still
more south came the hill where Vallombrosa stands, and
then a long stretch of villa-dotted low hills. At the end
of the ridge was a little grove of pointed Cypresses, and
the well-known favourite peasant church of all the
country round stood out on its own little hill in the
middle distance. Towards the west came a hillock
crowned with a flat white villa cut by the Cypresses that
surround nearly all the houses, sinking and swelling with
Olive and Vine towards the distant view of the Certosa
of the Val d'Arno. And so round to the whole beautiful
broad valley running towards Pisa, ending in the blue
shadows of the Carrara Mountains, with the top of Bello-
sguardo in the middle distance sharp and black against
the gray mist of the plain. Evening after evening I used
to try and get home to see the sunsets from my windows,
as nowhere else were they so beautiful, and nowhere else
did the air blow so fresh and yet so warm as in my home
of the winds, the ' Pension d'Arcetri.'

The only sadness that I know of in these Southern

JUNE 331

summers is that the twihghts are so short. I missed
much the long, pale primrose evening skies of June, which
at home throw up their faint Northern brightness right
into the indigo of the star skies of night and almost meet
Aurora at her waking.

But the dark evenings are wanted to show the beauty
of those wonderful fairy-like things that flit about in
millions under the Olive-trees and in the corn. I had
never seen the fireflies since the summer I passed under
Fiesole when I was a little child of ten, but I had not
forgotten them. The poetry that hangs around them is
endless ; their natural history is prosaic. They are
beetles. Both sexes are luminous, though that is not the
general belief in Italy. They are nearly related to our
glowworm. The colour of the fireflies is warmer and
more golden than the blue light of the glowworm, and
their beauty is enhanced and made more mysterious
because the light comes and goes, and shows much more
brightly at intervals. These fireflies are usually only to
be met with in quite the South of Europe, but in fine
hot summers they can be seen in rarer numbers as
far north as Switzerland and even the middle of
Germany. The Italians call them lucciole, and associate
them with all sorts of pretty poetical stories. Ouida says :
' One cannot wonder that the poets love them, and that
the children believe them to be fairies carrying their little
lanterns on their road to dance in the magic circle under
the leaves in the wood. Some say they die in a day ;
some say they live on for ages. Who shall tell ? They
look always the same.'

On one side of my house was a much-neglected but
lovely little square, walled garden with beautiful tall iron
gates. The beds and paths, edged with stone, were of a
simple formal pattern, which gave great dignity to the
weedy little wilderness ; and there were the usual large

332 MORE POT-POURRI

terracotta pots with strong, well-grown Lemon-trees in
them, the pride of the Tuscan peasant's heart. The
flowers on them scented the air ; the peasants sell the pale
fruit at a special price all the summer through in the town
as we sell glass-grown Peaches. I think that if we tried to
grow plants of this sort of Lemon at home in pots or tubs,
it would be far better than trying to grow the more delicate
Oranges usually seen on terraces in England. I was
told I should find it too hot, but I never did once. Indeed,
at first I was disappointed ; it w^as not warm enough. But
in England they had snow early in June. The Irises, the
Tulips, all the wild spring flowers were over. I found
the fields in places filled with a cmious orchidaceous-
looking plant which, terrible weed as it was, I thought
would look beautiful as a spring pot-plant. It turned
out to be a cruel parasitical growth, called Orohanche
pruinosa, which grows on the roots of the Broad Beans,
destroying whole crops — to the ruin of bad farmers.
It also gi'ows on the roots of Geraniums, I am told ;
which will be convenient in making it a pot-plant at
home.

My villa pension was surrounded with fine Cypresses
of all sizes and ages. I wonder when and how they
came to be planted round the houses? Some say the
peasants from all time have planted one as a kind of
dower when a daughter was born in the house. In
justification of this Mr. Loudon says that Pliny tells
several extraordinary stories about the durability of the
wood, and that the plantations of Cypresses were cut
down every thirteen years for poles, rafters, joists, etc.,
which made the wood so profitable that a plantation of
Cypresses was thought a sufficient marriage portion for a
daughter. Theophrastus states that it grew naturally in
the isle of Crete, and that those who wish to have the
Cypress flourish must procure a little of the earth from

JUNE 333

the isle of Cyprus for it to grow in. The early botanists
supposed that the upright and spreading Cypresses were
male and female of the same plant — C. horizontalis the
male, C. stricta the female. This is not the case. The
horizontal Cypress is quite a distinct species, which comes
from the Levant, The evergreen Cypress is a flame-shaped,
tapering, and cone-like tree. The male catkins are yellow-
ish, about three inches long, and very numerous. The
female catkins are much fewer and of a roundish-oblong
form ; but both grow on the same tree. I have a sentiment
for Cypresses that amounts to a passion. All my life they
have remained in my mind as emblems of the fairest land
I have ever known.

June 5th. — To-day being warm, I went down to
Florence ; and dropping my companion — who had to call
on a sick friend — I went on alone to the ' Cascine,' the well-
known public park, which I had not seen for over forty
years. The ghost of my youth sat beside me in the little
shabby carriage ; and as I drove along the well-remembered
alley, with the racecourse on the right, and the shaded
roads where I used to ride, the past all came back to my
mind. To the outward eye all seemed very much the same
— a little smartened up and modernised perhaps. As I drew
up on the Piazzone there was another carriage with a mother
and three young daughters, as we used to be. It was a
strange, lonely, sepulchral sort of feehng — that in all that
gay crowd very few were even born when we lived in
Florence and I used to go daily to the ' Cascine ' and dance
half the night through at balls. That winter at Florence
seemed to me at the time to be the last of my youth, and
it altered all my life.

How strange are the depressions of youth ! Life seems
over when really it has scarce begun ! It was in such a
mood I left Florence at twenty. De Musset has ex-
pressed this sadness of youth with concentrated pathos :

334 MORE POT-POURRI

J"ai perdu ma force et ma vie

Et mes amis et ma gaiety ;

J'ai perdu jusqu'a la fiert6
Qui faisait croire a mon g6nie.

Quand j'ai connu la verity

J'ai cru que c'6tait une amie ;

Quand je I'ai comprise et sentie
J'en 6tais d6ja degout^.

Et pourtant elle est ^ternelle, '

Et ceux qui se sont passe d'elle
Ici bas ont tout ignor^.

Dieu parle, 11 faut qu'on lui rdponde,
Le seul bien qui me reste au monde
Est d'avoir quelquefois pleur6.

As I drove back into Florence the air was heavy v^ith
the perfume of the Lime-trees — such Lime-trees as I
have never seen before. The leaves are few and small,
and were absolutely hid by the size and number of the
yellow flowers with their big sheaths on each side like
wings. The evening sky was reflected in the Arno in the
old familiar way, and the air was warm and still. I called
for my friend, and once more shut up the memory of the
past in that far-away corner of the brain where such
things remain. We drove through the town, and I first
saw the Duomo with its facade completed. In my day, of
course, it was rough bricks, with the holes for the scaffold-
ing left in it. Beautifully as it is done, and I do think it
is a noble piece of restoration, the new fa9ade at first gave
me a shock. It seemed to cheapen Giotto's lovely tower,
and made one feel that what had seemed inimitable could
be copied.

My first fortnight at Florence was spent in driving
about seeing old gardens, and dropping into dim churches
on summer evenings before returning home. My critical
feelings were all absolutely dead. I could do nothing but

JUNE 335

gasp and admire, and with it always the dim memory of
somehow having seen it all before as in a dream. The
churches in the fading evening light looked very solemn
and very beautiful — portals to death perhaps rather than
windows into heaven. But I do not know that I liked them
less for that. I found Florence very little changed in its
general aspect, in spite of the many alterations which have
been such pain and grief to the English inhabitants. It
is almost, if not quite, unspoilable. There are trams and
omnibuses and incongruous things, no doubt ; but, oh ! it
is wonderfully unchanged — from the time-worn stones of
its pavements to the black eaves of its roofs against the
brilliant sky.

One need not be in Florence to give one's entire
sympathy to the good people there who are trying their
utmost to save the beautiful old city from destruction.
To destroy old streets to build hotels may defeat its own
object, for if Florence becomes less beautiful the demand
for hotel rooms may diminish ; though honestly I think
that, to keep up the influx of strangers, sanitary precautions
and a certain content among the people are more necessary
still. Five thousand English and other tourists left
Florence the week before I arrived, in consequence of a
very slight riot which followed on the two days' Socialist
outbreak at Milan. The departure of strangers means
ruin to the hotel-keepers and poverty to all those they
employ ; so my sympathy to a certain extent goes with
the difficulties of the Italian Government, who have to
consider the material benefit to the city and its people
that may come from wider streets and bridges. When
I see protests such as have appeared lately in the columns
of our newspapers a feeling of shame always comes over
me at the wholesale destruction that has gone on within
my memory in our own poor old London, and which few
people think about. For instance, the destruction of

336 MORE POT-POURRI

Temple Bar because it was thought too expensive to make
a road each side of it. Also the clearing away of sixteen
or eighteen of Wren's beautiful churches. I would far
rather see them used in some way for the people's good
than destroyed. I cannot see why they should not be put
to some useful service, as the monasteries and convents
have been in France and Italy. If this is sacrilege, surely
it is much more so wantonly to destroy ! At least, we
might still have the beautiful spires of the kind which Mr.
Watson describes :

It soars like hearts of hapless men who dare
To sue for gifts the gods refuse to allot ;

Who climb for ever toward they know not where.
Baffled for ever by they know not what.

Not to speak of the hideous spoiling of the Thames
by the railway and other bridges, narrow streets and
old houses are constantly pulled down. Only the other
day the picturesque almshouses of Westminster ceased to
exist. Last, but not least, Wren's work is being disfigured,
as most people feel, by the modern decorations in St.
Paul's. I often msh a deputation of influential Italians,
with a petition signed by hundreds of non-influential
names, would come here and protest against this destruc-
tion of old buildings and our many other municipal
short-comings. May the Italians respect their lovely
buildings ! — and I believe they will — better than we do.
They certainly restore —with apparently only the wish to
copy and maintain — a great deal better than any other
European nation I know. I cannot make up my mind
that in this they are wrong, in spite of the constant
protests of the Anti- Restoration Society, with whose work
I have been in much sympathy all my life. It seems
hard to say that the beautiful buildings of the Middle
Ages ought to be allowed to fall into ruins, and the effort
to preserve what we admire will, I think, earn the gi"atitude

JUNE 337

of the ages to come. In the eighteenth century, ruins as
such were admired even to the extent of making artificial
ones, and the landscape painters not only steeped all
Nature's bright colours in black and brown, but painted
the ruined columns under thunderclouds, with Eoman
soldiers in togas walking about. And our grandfathers
bought and admired their pictures !

June 6th. — When I was young in Florence a great
mystery hung over the convent of San Marco, as women
were not allowed to visit it, and we young ones thought
of it principally in connection with its perfumery shop,
where the Iris-root powder and pale pink Hp-salve were
better than anywhere else. It was with a real feeling of
curiosity that I saw the interior and the famous frescoes
that have survived so many centuries. I found them
very sweet and child-like — these decorations of the little
cells by the humble Christian monk ; but I suppose I had
expected too much, for as works of art they disappointed
me. In the little square surrounded by the cloister of
San Marco, where Fra Girolamo sat sotto wi rosajo di
rose Damaschme preaching to his contemporaries, the
monks — or rather, I suppose, some unimaginative oflBcial
who has charge of the public buildings in Florence, has
planted, instead of the gentle damask Eose and the
Lavender and Eosemary, a huge flourishing Deodar. No
doubt this tree is beautiful enough on the high steep sides of
the Lower Himalayas, but with its symmetrical growth,
and the size to which it has already attained, it is a most
unsightly and inappropriate object in the restricted
cortile of Savonarola's monastery. It puts everything out
of all proportion, and is such an anachronism ! Deodars
are quite modern trees in Europe, and are not pretty
even in villa gardens. I do wish it could be cut down ;
plain, daisy-spangled turf would be much better. Nothing
is so striking or so general as the want of imagination in

338 MORE POT-POURRI

planting. Sometimes plants are put in entirely out of
character with the rest of a garden ; another time trees
are planted which, when they grow well, entirely obscure
the view or shut out the summer sunset. One curious
anachronism I have noticed is that an artist in painting a
scene for the background of a Greek or Eoman play intro-
duces American plants in his foregi'ound ! So many places
are merely spoilt in an effort to improve them, and this is
especially the case all round Florence.

Of all that I have read about Florence since my
return I think nothing is more attractively clever or
more full of character, both of the place and the writer,
than a chapter called ' A Florentine Mosaic ' in ' Tuscan
Cities,' a little volume by W. D. Howells, the American.
It is published in the ' English Library ' series at Leipzig.
Half the book is about Florence. It is a perfectly
charming mixture of humour and history, bewildered
tourist and most cultivated man of letters. It takes one
so instantly into the very heart and core of the Middle
Ages that one purrs with a delightful feeling of ' Oh,
certainly ! Yes, I always did know all about it,' Popes
and Parties, Blacks and Whites, the ins and the outs, etc.
Art, which generally forms such a large portion of a book
about Florence, is left out altogether, or at any rate is
only like a brilliant tapestry backgi'ound to his living,
moving figures. It is so clear and so comprehensive that
it satisfies the idle and whets the appetite of those who
wish to know more. Mr. Howells has a masterly way
of sketching, and his appreciation of the cloisters is so
real that, to my mind, he makes one feel it would be
worth while to go all the way to Florence to see them
and nothing else. Cloisters are, perhaps, the most
characteristic things in Italy. He thus writes :

' The thing that was novel to me, who found the
churches of 1883 in Florence so like the churches of 1863

JUNE 339

in Venice, was the loveliness of the deserted cloisters
belonging to so many of the former. These enclose nearly
always a grass-grown space, where daisies and dandelions
began to abound with the earliest consent of spring.
Most public places and edifices in Italy have been so
much photographed that few have any surprise left in
them ; one is sure that one has seen them before. But
the cloisters are not yet the prey of this sort of pre-
acquaintance. Whether the vaults and walls of the
colonnades are beautifully frescoed, like those of Santa
Maria Novella or Santa Annunziata or San Marco, or
the place has no attraction but its grass and sculptured
stone, it is charming ; and these cloisters linger in my
mind as something not less Florentine in character than
the Ponte Vecchio or the Palazzo Publico. I remember
particularly an evening effect in the cloister of Santa
Annunziata, when the belfry in the corner, lifted aloft in
its tower, showed with its pendulous bells like a great
graceful flower against the dome of the church behind it.
The quiet in the place was almost sensible ; the pale light,
suffused with rose, had a delicate clearness ; there was a
little agreeable thrill of cold in the air ; there could not
have been a more refined moment's pleasure offered to a
sympathetic tourist loitering homeward to his hotel.'

As I write I feel ' Of course everyone knows this book,'
but it is often not so, and no one told me of it till long
after I got back. I experienced one of those ' refined
moments of pleasure ' when one beautiful June afternoon —
warm, but not one bit too hot — we drove to the Certosa,
and, sending the carriage round, walked up its steep Olive
slopes to the monastery. A few of the white-robed
monks still remain in possession. I did not make out if
they are renewed or not, but their presence preserves the
character of the place. I had never seen it before ; for of
course years ago, like San Marco, it was not shown to

1^%

340 MORE POT-POURRI

women. The garden was peaceful to a degi'ee, shimmer-
ing in the golden-veiled summer sunshine. Never did I
see such lovely Lavender ; it was as different from our
Northern plant as could be. The flowering part was just
double as long, and one mass of gray-blue flowers, which
gave a general effect in the garden as of blue haze. One
side of the cloister had been thrown down by the earth-
quake of three years ago. They were beginning to repair
it — with the usual Italian patient fidelity in restoration.

No one who goes to the Certosa should fail to take
special notice of the remarkable pietra tombale — so
different from our dull interpretation of the ' tombstone '
— of Cardinal Lionardo Buonafede. I am told it is often
missed. This recumbent statue is as fresh and well
preserved as the day it was made, which is very rare with
any of these peculiar effigies. The figure of the old
Cardinal lies on the tessellated marble floor. His head is
propped l)y costly pillows, and he wears his jewelled
mitre. His stockinged feet and simply crossed hands,
with the long straight draperies of his robe, are a most
perfect example of the realistic sculpture of the Middle
Ages — as true as waxwork, with none of its vulgarity — so
different from the degeneracy of modern Italian art. I
wish I knew why it has been a Christian custom to clothe
the feet of the dead ; they are especially beautiful. If all
else is changed, they remain the same.

Ju7ie 9th. — This being the Festival of Corpus Christi,
we went in the afternoon to the little church close by of
Santa Margharita. Ouida describes, much better than I
can do, ' the little, brown, square church with its bell
clanging in the open tower high above in the sweet air
on the hills ; there is level grass all about it ; and it has a
cool, green garden, shut within walls on every side except
where a long parapet of red dusky tiles leaves open the
view of the Valdarno ; underneath the parapet there are

JUNE 341

other terraces of deep grass and old, old Olive-trees, in
whose shade the orchids love to grov^ and the blue Iris
springs up in great sheaves of sw^ord-like leaves.

' There are trees of every sort in the cloistered garden,
the turf is rich and long, the flowers are tended with the
greatest care, the little sacristy glows red in the sun, an
Acanthus climbs against it ; the sacristan's wife comes out
to you plaiting her straw, and brings you a cluster of her
Eoses ; you sit on the stone seat, and lean over the parapet
and look downward ; birds flit about you ; contadini go
along the grass paths underneath and nod to you, smiling ;
a delicious mingled loveliness of Olive wood and Ilex
foliage and blossoming vineyards shelve beneath you ; you
see all Florence gleaming far below there in the sun, and
your eyes sweep from the snow that still lies on Vallom-
brosa to the blue shadows of the Carrara range.

' It is calm and golden and happy here at Santa Mar-
gharita's, high in the fragrant hill air, with the Guelder
Roses nodding above head, and the voices of the vine-
dressers echoing from the leaf -veiled depths below.'

That is an exact description of the spot ; we went there
often, and we, too, hung over the parapet and thought of
the tempo passato. I could see the little church tower
always from my bedroom window.

On this beautiful June afternoon we saw the most
picturesque and characteristic procession — the Host
carried from the church to the chapel of a villa about
half a mile off. The houses round, year by year, take it
in turns to be so honoured. The priests in general were
very ugly and common -looking, but the young man who
on this occasion carried the Host was superb, like the
Giorgione in the Pitti. The lighted candles in the outdoor
evening light, the white-robed priests, the long procession
of peasants, were most striking. Arriving at the villa,
they passed to the chapel under a loggia, the tessellated

342 MORE POT-POURRI

pavemeut of which was drawn out in a beautiful coloured
pattern made of the petals of flowers — Poppies, Eoses,
Larkspurs, the brilliant yellow Broom — and all between
the pattern filled in with little leaves of bright gi-een Box.
The eflfect was to me quite new and very decorative. The
procession passed on each side, and the priest alone,
carrying the Host, was esteemed worthy to walk straight
down the middle of this Nature-coloured carpet. Nothing
could have been more rurally peaceful and lovely than the
whole scene. In the earlier days of the century we were
taught to believe the troubles of Italy, like the troubles of
Ireland, were owing to Catholicism. Now the theory
is that the Latin races are dying out ; but if this is true,
is it certain they are dying of Catholicism ? Is it not
quite wonderfully clear the Italians have never lost their
Paganism ? I confess, as I watched the whole scene, I
could only think of Pater's opening to ' Marius the Epi-
curean,' in which he describes how the purer forms of
Paganism had lingered in the villages after the triumph of
Christianity — ' a religion of usages rather than the facts
of belief, and attached to very definite things and places.'
Then comes the description of the ' little ' or private
Ambarvalia in the home of the youth Marius, and it
almost exactly describes what I saw this June day quite
at the end of the nineteenth century. ' At the appointed
time all work ceases ; the instruments of labour lie
untouched, hung with wreaths of flowers ; while masters
and servants together go in solemn procession along the
dry paths of vineyard and cornfield. . . . The old Latin
words of the Liturgy, to be said as the procession moved
on its way, though their precise meaning was long since
become unintelligible.

' Early on that day the girls of the farm had been busy
in the gi'eat portico, filling large baskets with flowers cut
short from branches of Apple and Cherry, then in spacious

JUNE 343

bloom, to strew before the quaint images of the gods —
Ceres and Bacchus, and the yet more mysterious Dea Dia
— as they passed through the fields, carried in their little
houses on the shoulders of white-clad youths, who were
understood to proceed to this ofiBce in perfect temperance,
as pure in soul and body as the air they breathed in the
firm weather of that early summer-time. The clean lustral
water and the full incense-box were carried after them.'

So far the description is exact. The butchery which
disgusted Marius, Christianity has swept away ; but every-
thing else remains, almost entirely the same.

All trace of costume amongst the peasants has
disappeared even in this Arcetri neighbourhood, the most
simple and countrified side of Florence. The people,
from the outside, look well-to-do and comfortable, and on
festal days the young of both sexes walk about the roads
in cheerful happy bands. They never go in couples, as
we everlastingly see them on the same occasions in
England ; but the boys were together, and the girls
together. The figures of the women in the long plain
skirts and coloured shirts struck me as very graceful and
dignified. George Eliot says of Eomola : ' Let her muflfle
herself as she will, everyone wants to see what there is
under her veil, for she has that way of walking like a
procession.' That is just what one may say of many of
these young Tuscan women. She also says : ' There has
been no great people without processions, and the man
who thinks himself too wise to be moved by them to any-
thing but contempt is like the paddle that was proud of
standing alone while the river rushed by.'

All my early time at Florence was spent in driving
about, seeing villas, wandering through the poderes,
resting and drawing. For the amateur sketcher, what a
mental struggle it is ! — whether to give the time to drawing,
or to see all one can. One day we started at eight, and

344 MORE POT-POURRI

drove up to Monbe Sennaria, fifteen miles or so on the
Bologna Koad. This took us past the villa we lived in as
children. I found that all had been much changed and
grown up. Even the road — which in my day passed
between walls out of which gi-ew the large, handsome
house — was now turned to the left, and the space between
it and the villa thickly planted with evergreens, thus
entirely depriving it of its original Italian character.

I can remember now the mysterious tremble with
which I used sometimes to lie awake at night and hear
the tinkle of the bell of the dead-cart as it passed under the
windows up to the cemetery on the hill. I had been told
no coffins were used, and I always thought some one
might wake during the long drive. The morning we
went to Monte Sennaria the weather was lovely, and,
though rather hot on starting, it soon got delicious ; and
as we reached the higher ground many spring flowers
remained. I particularly noticed quantities of the blue
Italian Borage, growing small and low on dried banks and
a sheet of gentian -blue bloom. Grown in good soil in
English flower borders it is coarse and leafy, and flowers
but little ; at least, that is my experience. I shall find it a
most valuable plant in Surrey if it will grow in poor, dry
places. Last autumn, after I got home, I immediately
moved some of my plants of Italian Borage to the driest,
sunniest spot in the garden. I shall see if it will flower as
abundantly as it did in Italy. The Eush or Italian Broom
ought to be sown every year in light soils, as it is such
a useful July-flowering plant, and rarely seen — not being
quite hardy — in Surrey.

The villas of the rich that I saw round Florence — and,
of course, there are a great many which I did not see — are
to be recognised by the fact that the Vine and Olive, Lemon
and Pomegranate, Fig and Mulberry, are turned out for the
planting of Laurels, Deodars and other conifers, Ehodo-

JUNE 345

dendrons, and coarse-growing, unpruned shrubs. The
beautiful old walls are often levelled to the gi'ound, to
make a slope of coarse-growing grass ; or the wall formerly
used for the trained and well-pruned Vine is smothered
with a mass of untended creepers. The newly planted
Crimson Eambler is doing very well and making excessive
growth, though it will never be a general favourite, as it
flowers too late and is not a marketable Eose ; so the
gardeners despise it, which is lucky, as its colour is not
good. The greatest crime of all as regards the spoiling of
Italian gardens is destroying the effect of space and cool-
ness, and at the same time entirely shutting out the view
by planting trees — say, even a row of Poplars. The old
gardens as perhaps Dante and Boccaccio saw them are
now smothered in Virginia Creeper, and made to look
as much like a villa at Hampstead or Putney as possible.
Magnolias are crowded out, and Camellias seem no longer
cultivated (I suppose, because they are out of fashion in
English conservatories) ; and instead of the cool gray
gravel, so easily kept raked and weeded in the old days,
unsatisfactory grass paths are attempted. In the garden
that I especially remember, having spent months there
twice in my life, the view towards the city and the Val
d'Arno right away to the Carraras — which on favoured
evenings are rubies or sapphires or beaten gold against
the sky — all this, so ineffaceably impressed on my memory,
is now hidden from sight by a dark, gloomy, tangled mass
of evergreens. As regards the modern treatment of newly
made gardens in Florence, it is only fair to say that I saw
them much too late, all attention being given to make
them beautiful up to the end of May, as at about that
time most of the English visitors fly northward.

The gardens which gave me most pleasure were those
which had remained in the hands of Italians and retained
their old character. All over the world the English have

346 MORE POT-POURRI

an insane, inartistic, though perhaps natural desire, not
to develop the capabilities of the soil and climate in which
they are forced to live, which would give a real interest
to every plot of cultivated ground inhabited by the white
man, but to have a garden as like ' home ' as possible —
to make a lawn which fails and is ugly, and to plant a
shrubbery which grows apace and chokes everything
really worth growing.

I got last year from Seville a letter describing what a
Southern garden should be : ' The Alkasar Garden is the
most beautiful I ever saw : very neglected as regards
individual plants, but so lovely as a whole. The beds are
all sunk. You walk between dwarf Myrtle hedges on
tiled, paved, or brick paths, and every now and then you
come to a round point with coloured tile seats. Some of
the outside Myrtle hedges are waist-high and very fine.
The beds are eighteen inches below the path, and again
di\aded by little MjTtle hedges six inches high (no doubt
the origin of our Box edgings). They are mostly filled with
Violets and sweet-scented shrubs, and above tower gi'eat
Magnolias, Lemons, Oranges, Verbenas, Heliotrope, Jas-
mines in clumps, and a host of other things I do not know
the names of. Here and there the path leads to a great
raised marble tank or Moorish l^ath. There are innumer-
able small fountains sunk and tiled ; round one of these is
a great tiled walk with Orange-trees sunk in round holes
about two feet deep, making a fine double avenue. I fancy
the garden is pretty much as it was originally laid out by the
Moors. I wish you could see it. The Spaniards have added
their favourite carnations grown in pots, but little else.
It seemed to me that the style might well be copied in
England, making the beds much less ; certainly the little
shallow fountains would look lovely anywhere. We have
seen one or two other gardens, always the sunk beds and
tiled or paved paths, and always Violets used as grass

JUNE 347

round the roots of anything. Where we are has been an
eye-opener to me about the Enghsh abroad and their
narrowness in household management. Our garden was
made by an Enghshman, so all our beds are raised, and
are washed away in every storm, and the would-be gravel
path is most of it in the high road below. Your book has
been of the greatest use in our tiny garden. Even though
the conditions are so different, the spirit is the same.'

My dear young friend a little misses the spirit of what
I mean when she thinks the system of the garden she
describes can be brought to England. Where there is
frost and damp, such things get soon spoilt and injured,
and look mournful and decayed. Broken-up paving-
stones are pretty in a formal garden, and — planted with
Lavender, Pinks, Carnations, Eosemary, Saxifrages, and
Eoses — can be made to look lovely at all seasons. But
sunk beds as she describes them, which are perfect for
irrigation in the South, would never do here. The plants
would damp off. Eaised beds, however, are undesirable
even in England in light soils. We can no more imitate
what is best in the South than they can imitate our
velvet lawns and our sweeping Beech-trees. Planting the
Viola odorata (the Old English garden Violet) under
every shrub or tiny Gooseberry and Currant bush in both
flower and kitchen garden has been a great success with
me in Surrey. If tried with even Czar Violets, which
require more care and cultivation, it would be a failui'e.
The cultivation of Cax'nations in pots might be more
carried out in England — with advantage, I think. And it
would be better if the pots were painted or glazed half-
way down, as done on the Continent, to prevent evapora-
tion. The single-branching Larkspurs of all colours were
grown in pots at Florence, and looked so well. I am
trying some. They are far prettier than the double
annual Larkspur generally grown in England.

348 MORE POT-POURRI

The two most beautiful villas I saw truly carried out,
with their lovely grounds, the half-monkish ideal expressed
by Newman : ' By a garden is meant mystically a place
of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, and
delight.' Our gay, modern, brilliant, flowery English
parterres and Scotch and Irish gardens express, to my
mind, none of this. Apart from everything else, their
limited size renders this impossible. They tell us a garden
is the reward of toil ; the earth's cry of delight that winter
is over and gone ; the full enjoyment of plenty and rich
colour, requiring constant care ; not a place of ' spiritual
repose, stillness, and delight.'

The more splendid of these two villas was, tradition
says, designed by Michael Angelo, and it is worthy of his
brain and hand. In its large simplicity it reminds one
of his will : ' Lascio 1' anima a Dio e la mia roba ai piu
prossimi parenti.' This villa stands many miles high on
the hillside south-west of Florence, and is approached by
the usual stately Cypress avenue. Its massive plain front
and its open arcade are most impressive. On the right
was the solemn shade of the Ilex grove, and beneath was
the boundless view of sunlit Florence.

The other villa, most wonderful of all as regards its
surroundings and views, was Villa Gamberaia (which
means, ' Pool of the Crayfish '), four or five miles from
Florence beyond Settingiano. I suppose everyone who
goes to Florence sees it, or used to do so ; now it is more
difficult. Napoleon III. lived in it at one time. I wonder
if in after-life his thoughts sometimes turned with
sorrowful regrets to the peaceful days passed there?
Here were Cypresses taller and straighter than any I
had ever seen ; long green alleys ending in small temples ;
high walls over which Oleanders tossed themselves, their
branches heavy with the bloom of their exquisite pink
flowers ; and all the long afternoon of the late June day

JUNE 349

the nightingales sang. Why in colder climes do they
stop singing so much earlier in the year, and here they
sing well into midsummer ? With the exception of these
nightingales in favoured woods, the birds are very silent
in Italy in June. But the sounds are many — frogs,
insects, the constant singing of the grasshoppers. Keats
says : ' The poetry of Earth is never dead. When all
the birds are faint with the hot sun and hide in cooling
trees, a voice will run from hedge to hedge about the new-
mown mead. That is the gi'asshopper's.'

For associations with the South, there is nothing in
the way of sounds to equal the sad call of the little night-
owl — or aziola, as the Italians call it. The following
colloquial poem of Shelley's, if not a gem amongst his
lyrics, expresses the tender affection we must all feel for
this little bird :

' Do you not hear the aziola cry ?
Methinks she must be nigh,'

Said Mary, as we sate
In dusk, ere stars were lit or candles brought;
And I, who thought
This Aziola was some tedious woman,

Ask'd, ' Who is Aziola ? ' How elate
I felt to know that it was nothing human,

No mockery of myself to fear or hate !
And Mary saw my soul,

And laugh'd and said, ' Disquiet yourself not ;
'Tis nothing but a little downy owl.'

Sad aziola ! many an eventide

Thy music I had heard
By wood and stream, meadow and mountainside.
And fields and marshes wide, — ■
Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird,

The soul ever stirr'd ;
Unlike, and far sweeter than them all.
Sad Aziola 1 from that moment I
Loved thee and thy sad cry.

350 MORE POT-POURRI

One of my first inquiries on my arrival in Florence
was about an old villa that in my time belonged to a rich
Eussian. They said it was all swept away and the
treasures gone to St. Petersburg. The reason this villa
made so deep an impression on me was that there I saw
for the first time a picture of ' Paolo and Francesca ' ; it
was by Ary Scheffer. I was so young that it set me
wondering how Dante could call it Hell and yet leave
them together. The same thought has been rendered
finely, I think, by a young friend who signs himself ' M. B.'
His sonnet was written on seeing the much stronger and
more beautiful representation of the same subject by Mr.
Watts :

Though borne like withered leaves upon a stream,
Perished and dead, they would not live again.
Nor in the hard world face the wiles of men ;
Their past is but the haunting of a dream.
And yet they would not sleep in Asphodel,
Nor — for without remorse is their regret —
Drink deep of bliss and utterly forget ;
Not for all Heaven would they exchange their Hell.
And they give thanks because their punishment
Is sealed and sure, because their doom shall be
To go in anguish through eternity

Together on the never-resting air.
Beyond all happiness is their content

Who know there is no end to their despair.

At the end of June the whole colour of the country
had changed and become much richer from the corn
ripening. This restored to the Olive-trees once more
their gray colour in the sunlight, and in evening light
they again looked cool and almost blue against the warm
madder and ochre of the corn. How endless in Nature
is the making of colour by contrast !

Custom often has in it more reason than at first
appears. I never could understand why so few people
go to Italy in summer. But the fact is they hunger for

JUNE 351

bright strong colour — blue skies and yellow sunsets,
purple mountains and brilliant flowers. These they find
in spring and autumn, to their hearts' content ; but summer
in Florence is mellow and veiled, and very tender in
colour, truly represented in Mason's pictures, and so
totally unlike the typical water-colour drawings of Italy
from the brush of Eichardson or Aaron Penley, much the
fashion fifty years ago.

At one villa I saw a pond of lovely Burmese goldfish,
quite different from any I had ever before seen alive, and
exactly resembling the fish in Japanese drawings and
Chinese bowls — little fat bodies, and large swimming
bladders, and long waving tails which made their move-
ments very swift and graceful. They were fed with little
bits of wafer, the same as that used in Catholic churches and
also used all over the Continent for wrapping up powders so
that you should not taste the medicine. The fish pounced
on these delicate morsels with extraordinary rapacity
and greed. I have never dared feed the goldfish in my
fountain, as they remain so much healthier with only the
natural food they are able to procure. Where the foun-
tains are kept very clean, the best food for them, if these
wafers cannot be procured, is crumbled vermicelli.

June nth. — My time was half over in Florence
before I went to the picture galleries at all — not because
I did not wish to go, but there was so much else to see
and enjoy and admire. It is almost useless to speak of
the pictures themselves. Those who have seen them
know what they are ; and to those who have not, no words
would convey any idea. It was very interesting to me to
realise how my own taste had altered. The outside of the
Pitti, grand and massive as the building is, gives me no
pleasure. Under the archway, and beyond the public
entrance into the building, there is a little yard where
a wonderful sight can be obtained of the Arabesque

352 MORE POT-POURRI

patterns which adorn the outside of the old Medici
passage to the Uffizi. It is worth while to go through to
look at them. Inside the galleries, pictures that used to
be pointed out to me as the great gems in my youth
seemed now compai'atively uninteresting. Botticelli,
whom I at that time never heard of, stands indeed a head
and shoulders above his contemporaries. Two quite
little cabinet pictures in one of the small rooms at the
Uffizi gave me much to think of. One was the exquisite
little 'Judith.' His rendering of the subject first gave
me a kind of understanding why the old masters were so
fond of the ghastly story which must have appealed to
them from their own wars and dissensions. I have
always hated the usual ti'eatment of this subject — the
bleeding corpse on the bed and the uplifted head in
Judith's hand. But here the beautiful heroine widow,
her deed accomplished, her country saved, trips home
again with stately pride across the open country.
Warriors are in the distance, fields and flowers in front,
and her child-like innocent face is turned full towards one.
In one hand she holds the emblem of peace, an OHve
branch ; in the other the sword of power. Behind her
comes the maid with the handsome head of Holofernes in
the meat-bag on her head. The maid's expression of
mingled awe and admiration is quite as much beyond the
time in variety of expression and powerful story-telling
as is Judith's own, which shows one how she will shortly
say with a loud voice : ' Praise, praise God, praise God,
I say ; for He hath not taken away His mercy from the
House of Israel, but hath destroyed our enemies by mine
hands this night.'

The other picture, ' Calumny,' is hung quite near. It
is a little larger, and is unique and remarkable in every
way ; an allegorical picture full of thought. The idea
was suggested to Botticelli by Lucian's description of a

JUNE 353

painting by Apelles. For the benefit of those as ignorant
as I was I may as well say that Apelles was a famous
painter at the Court of the first Alexander, and then of
Ptolemy, about 330 B.C. ; and that Lucian was a Greek
writer of the time of Marcus Aurelius, and that his
manuscripts were brought from Constantinople to Italy
about 1425, and printed for the first time at Florence
in 1496, BotticelH's own date being 1437-1515.

The whole picture is painted with the greatest finish
and delicacy, and with an immense wealth of detail. In
the background are three highly decorated arches, with
a pure blue slcy, tenderly graduated, showing through.
In the middle of the picture is Calumny, hurrying
towards the Judge, and attended by two women repre-
senting Hypocrisy and Treachery. Calumny drags a
rather feeble young man, without clothes, by the hair of
his head along the ground. He holds his hands up in an
attitude of supplication, and is supposed to represent
Innocence. Envy, a male figure clothed in shabby
garments, stands between this group and the Judge's
throne. Ignorance and Distrust are whispering into the
long donkey's ears of the Judge. On the left of the
picture is the black, draped figure of Eemorse, who turns
and looks at a beautiful naked young woman represent-
ing Truth. Calumny has seized and is carrying before
the Judge Truth's lighted torch. It is impossible to look
at this picture and not have brought to one's mind the
wretched fate of the modern prisoner on the Devil's Island.

Had nothing been preserved to us of Botticelli's but
these two pictures, I think we should have known that he
was one of the men who were most in advance of iheir
time, and one of the greatest painters the world has
ever known. To my mind, the Botticellis in our own
National Gallery give no sort of idea of his gifts and
powers as seen at Florence.

A A

354 MORE POT-POURRI

An old friend, to whom I had written of my love of
the early Tuscan painters when I was at Floi-ence as a
girl of twenty, answered me as follows, and I suppose
many would agree with him :

' The modern taste for the very early Florentine
masters must, I think, be an acquired one, and though in
your own case it may have seemed spontaneous I doubt
whether any intellectual taste or tendency is wholly self-
formed in the case of a girl of nineteen. At that impres-
sionable age living in a mental atmosphere congenial to
it, you with your quick receptive temperament probably
imbibed from those around you, whose opinions on art
were entitled to your respect, and without any conscious
effort or critical process of your own, that sentiment
about the early Florentine masters to which the writings
of Euskin had already given so strong an impulse, and
which was then the pervading sentiment of connoisseurs
and persons interested in pictorial art. Perugino is the
earliest master in whose works I can find Beauty — a
quality essential to my enjoyment of Art as such. The
earlier masters, Giotto, Cimabue, Taddeo Gaddi, Masaccio,
Lippo Lippi, etc., seem to me only interesting.'

With regard to Botticelli I feel that he alone perhaps
among the Tuscans strikes the note which Berenson
alludes to in the following passage from his ' Venetian
Painters,' and I like to feel that Berenson's optimism
about modern art and life is true :

' Indeed, not the least attraction of the Venetian
masters is their note of modernity, by which I mean the
feeling they give us that they were on the high road to
the art of to-day. We have seen how on two separate
occasions Venetian painters gave an impulse to Spaniards,
W'ho in turn have had an extraordinary influence on
modern painting. It would be easy, too, although it is
iiot my purpose, to show how much other schools of the

JUNE 355

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — such as the Flemish,
led by Kubens, and the EngUsh, led by Eeynolds — owed to
the Venetians. My endeavour has been to explain some
of the attractions of the school, and particularly to show
its close dependence upon the thought and feehng of the
Eenaissance. This is perhaps its greatest interest, for,
being such a complete expression of the riper spirit of the
Eenaissance, it helps us to a larger understanding of a
period which has in itself the fascination of youth, and
which is particularly attractive to us because the spirit
that animates us is singularly like the better spirit of that
epoch. We, too, are possessed of boundless curiosity.
We, too, have an almost intoxicating sense of human
capacity. We, too, believe in a great future for humanity,
and nothing has yet happened to check our delight in
discovery or our faith in life.'

The head of Eembrandt in his youth, painted by him-
self, in the Pitti (not either of those in the Ufifizi) is
perhaps the most beautiful of his many self -painted por-
traits. None, certainly, in the Eembrandt Exhibition at
Burlington House this winter came near to it for beauty,
in my humble opinion.

There is also an unusual portrait of Charles I. and
Henrietta Maria, painted together in one frame, divided
only by the twisted column of an Italian window. I
have never before seen a double portrait treated in quite
the same way. It is Van Dyke at his best — so finished,
so refined ! Perhaps he took extra pains, knowing it was
going to the young Queen's Medicean relations, in the
then far-away beautiful Florence.

I find I p.m doing exactly what I meant not to do, and
must stop noticing pictures, as any guidebook describes
all the best pictures quite enough.

I found a treasure in one of the smaller rooms at the
Pitti which Mr. Hare, at any rate, does not mention. It

A A 2

356 MORE POT-POURRI

was the most remarkable piece of furniture from some
points of view I think I ever saw in my life, though
perhaps many would call it unartistic. Historically,
it is interesting from the religious attitude it represents.
It was a large cabinet on a raised stand. It belonged to
Cardinal Leopoldo dei Medici, and was placed in his
dressing-room. One side of it, when the doors were
opened, acted as an altar, with a delicately-carved cnicifix
in a recess, before which the Cardinal could say Mass.
On the other side the doors opened on to an elaborate
toilet table of a most luxurious kind, with looking-glasses
and every other appliance. The whole piece of furni-
ture contained a number of small drawers, many of
them secret. The black wood of which it was made
was highly polished and a beautiful specimen of cabinet
work. The whole was richly inlaid, outside and in,
with various marbles, stones, and alabasters of different
colours and sizes. The veinings and colourings of these
were used and adapted as the landscape backgrounds
of wonderfully delicate little oil paintings, representing
almost the whole of the Bible stories, both Old and New
Testament. It requires hours to see this cabinet pro-
perly, and among all the treasures in this wonder palace
it is, perhaps, the object that gives one the greatest idea
of the wealth and luxury of that God-and-Mammon
period that can possibly be seen. It is supposed to have
been made in Germany and painted by Breughel. Some
paintings on wood, using the graining of the wood as
suggestive of the landscapes, are the only attempts I have
seen in modern art to carry out this idea of Breughel's
paintings on stones. The natural markings of the wood
give gi'eat variety to the composition of the landscape.
This is very much increased by the varied materials used
for the decoration of this marvellous cabinet.

Of course I re-read ' Eomola ' ; everyone does and

JUNE 357

ought, as being in the atmosphere of Florence extra-
ordinarily increases the enjoyment of what is in many
ways a very wonderful book, full of fine things and
passionately sympathetic with women's trials.

In a very old notebook of mine I find the following
sentence. I have no idea by whom it was written ; but it
so exactly describes why certain books, and indeed certain
people, appeal to me when others that are in many respects
better leave me cold and indifferent, that I repeat it now
in my old age, agreeing with it as I did at twenty :

' We readily overlook all that is tasteless and ignorant
for the sake of that power which, in reminding us of the
misery of the world, translates it into something softening,
elevating, uniting. "We should fully allow that some
immortal work and a great deal of the most popular
work is almost entirely without the feeling. There is
scarcely a touch of it in Homer ; there is not a touch of
it in many a novel much sought for at the libraries.
But to us it appears one of the greatest gifts of the writer
of fiction. It is not that we desire to be always com-
templating the misery of the world ; when we take up
a novel we often desire to forget it. Bvit an author who
does not know it cannot make us forget it ; and a writer
who is to deliver us from its oppressive forms must be
able to translate the manifold troubles of life, with all
their bewildering entanglement, their distracting pettiness,
into something that releases such tears as the foreign
slaves shed on Hector's bier. " Their woes their own, a
hero's death the plea." '

No modern novelist that I know does this better than
George Eliot.

In Florence, with the sky and the sunshine and the
whole mind in a receptive condition, no effort was neces-
sary fully to appreciate ' Eomola.' What a difference
that does make ! Eeading some books at unfavourable

358 MORE POT-POURRI

times is as great an injustice towards the author as
looking at pictures, no matter how beautiful, in the dark.

June l^tli. — Sad news has come from England to-day
of the death of Sir Edward Burne-Jones. What a loss .

The following very simple little poem by Byron — not
much known, I think — is not modern in feeUng, but
fits singularly, for those who believe in spirit-land, the
death of a man like Burne-Jones :

Bright be the place of thy soul !

No lovelier spirit than thine
E'er burst from its mortal control

In the orbs of the blessed to shine.

On earth thou wert all but divine,

As thy soul shall immortally be ;
And our sorrow shall cease to repine

When we know that thy God is with thee.

Light be the turf of thy tomb 1

May its verdure like emeralds be !
There should not be the shadow of gloom

In aught that reminds us of thee.

Young flowers and an evergreen tree

May spring from the spot of thy rest ;
But no Cypress nor Yew let us see,

For why should we mourn for the blest ?

Those who do not believe in spirit-land in any think-
able form — and I fancy they are many moi»e than is gener-
ally supposed — when brought face to face with death,
mourn not for the peace and rest of those that are gone,
but for themselves — their own personal grief and loss and
misery — and feel a kind of humiliation that what they
themselves prized most, or the person who loved them
most, is gone from them. Such grief, like all our other
selfishness, should be fought and controlled as much as
we have strength for. The old notion of those who
prayed against sudden death was of a death unprepared,

JUNE 359

unsanctified by the Chiu'ch, that did not give the same
chance of eternal happiness to some one they loved which
was freely granted to the majority. This indeed was a
thought only to find rehef in wailing and gnashing of
teeth. Now we say : ' What was best for them was worst
for us, but what does that matter ? '

In speaking of Burne-Jones's work many years ago
Mr. Kuskin said : ' His work is simply the only art-work
at present produced in England which will be received by
the future as classic. I know that these will be immortal,
as the best things the mid-nineteenth century in England
can produce, in such true relations as it had through all
confusion retained with the paternal and everlasting art
of the world.' And do we not all feel this is tnie ?

June 24ith. — This is the great Florentine ' Festa,' of
which I had often heard and never seen. We were too
idle to go down to the ceremonies at the cathedral in the
morning, but in the afternoon there were Vespers at the
baptistery, and the sight was most characteristic and
curious. Every child that is born in Florence is still
baptised there, and the water is still salted as of old. There
were men, women, and children crowding through — both
of the large doors being opened wide to the sunny Piazza.
These openings were veiled during the service by a long,
black, thin curtain. In the middle, raised on an altar and
again raised on steps, was the beautiful jewelled Ben-
venuto Cellini John the Baptist shrine. The people went
up and touched it, and mothers after touching the shrine
then touched the babies in their arms, who held up their
tiny hands to receive the touch, and afterwards reverently
kissed their own fingers.

Strong peasant men were there, young and old. It
cannot be one of the least of the mysterious Florentine
bonds, this baptistery which brings back to the inhabitants
the recollection of every child that is born to them, more

36o MORE POT-POURRI

especially as the infant mortality must be prodigious. A
handsome mother and daughter knelt just before me on
the marble floor, types of to-day. The mother, old and
tired and hot, mumbled prayers, but not with devotion.
The cold hand of Time liad laid hold on her. If the old
are religious it is mentally, not passionately, and it takes
the form of ' calm repose and peace divine.' The
daughter, handsome though not very young, with coal-
black hair, said her prayers with closed eyelids and a
passionate pathos in her face, softening for a time her
somewhat masculine features — a perfect example of life's
disappointments, not yet utterly without hope.

Passing out into the glorious evening sunshine, we
went inside the large bare Duomo, beautiful to me from
its size, its majesty, its cool shades, illuminated by the
pouring in of the bright summer western sun, which
formed rays of light across the darkness. A full
choral Vesper was not yet quite ended, and the boys
threw back their heads and flung out their high notes
echoing into the dome. It was not very reverent or
beautiful, but it sounded well, as it mounted in wave upon
wave of sound into the echoing cavities of the gi'eat vault.
Many people think the inside of the Duomo ugly, and of
course one can see how it was the origin of much ugliness
that came afterwards ; but it has a grand beauty of its own,
and the jewelled glass is the exact sort of old glass I
admire — most vague in design, but strong in colour, and
glowing with a richness beyond the finest enamel.

Ijater in the evening we went on to a balcony on the
Lung' Arno, to see the fireworks let off from the opposite
hill of San Miniato. I had not seen good fireworks for
many years. They may be as good at the Crystal Palace,
and no doubt are, but never can the whole scene be any-
thing like as lovely as those fireworks on this night of San
Giovanni, with the background of the San Miniato hill, and

JUNE 361

the river in front a mirror of reflections. Every street
poured its crowd in all directions on to the Lung' Arno.
We had excellent places, and my companion, in a burst of
enthusiasm, seized my arm and said : ' I don't care, it is
simply the most beautiful thing in Art or Nature I have
ever seen.' Higli over all hung the young moon in the
clear lapis lazuli sky. The crowd poured along in a
ceaseless stream, but it was impossible to imagine any-
thing more quiet and orderly. From the absence of
strangers, the streets were so empty in the daytime one
wondered where the people could possibly all come from
now.

June 2^th. — I was faithful to my tastes, and though I
had little time I went to the Botanical Garden in the
town. It had nothing in it very remarkable ; all the
greenhouse plants were out in the open, and many of our
Northern plants were growing somewhat shabbily in pots as
botanical curiosities, in the way we grow Southern things
at home. The beautiful Catalpa syringcBfoUa was in full
flower here, and in all other good Florentine gardens. The
same with TrachelosiJermum jasminoides, which hung over
all the walls in the greatest profusion, scenting the air for
yards round. I am sure this plant is generally too much
coddled at home, and would do better if sunk out during
the summer and well watered ; it is a greenhouse plant
well worth growing. Asclepias incarnata and Asclepias
tuberosa were very sweet ; both these and Solamtin glaitcum
are quite worthy of a place in a fair-sized greenhouse.
Bupelia juncea, from Mexico, struck me as a pretty
greenhouse plant, with red flowers and weedy growth.
Iris pseudacoms was growing in a huge sunk pot, half
earth, half water.

There was a large collection of Hydrangeas — plants
so easy to increase that I think our greenhouses ought to
contain greater varieties. These four struck me as good :

362 MORE POT-POURRI

Hydrangea quercifolia, H. macroccphala, H. liortensis,
and H. chineiisis.

Variegated Maple is grown a good deal at Florence
and, when skilfully used and much pruned, it can be
made a considerable feature in any large garden — mixed
with dark evergreens, such as Hollies, Privets, Irish
Yews, etc., as it has almost the whiteness of flowers at a
distance. Cassia australis struck me as being a hand-
some greenhouse evergreen.

The garden was full of sunk tubs for watering, with
pieces of stone and small plants round the edge. Convol-
vulus vmuritanicus is a plant to grow at home in consider-
able abundance ; it comes easily from seed, and was lovely
in this garden in half-shade under shrubs. Mine has lived
out now three winters, its roots protected by a small shrub.
It is also very pretty grown in baskets in the greenhouse.

I was disappointed at seeing no Lilies growing in
gardens in Florence, though plenty of the Lilium
candidum were sold in the market. How excellent is
Mr. Stephen Phillips's line on a Lily garden : ' A tragic
odour like emotion rose.' That is a complete description
in words of the scent of some flowers, such as I had long
sought for, but, I think, never found before.

Apparently nothing in my first book really offended
the reviewers, and perhaps even the public, so much as
my non-appreciation of Virginia Creeper and Ampelopsis
veitchii. The remarks of one critic are typical of many
others : ' Very gently and respectfully we would say " Avoid
the dictatorial attitude," and we would point our mean-
ing by an ancient horticultural saying of the Midlands :
" Different people have different opinions — some like
apples, and some like inions." Mrs. Earle, it seems to us,
might well consider that occasionally others may, without
being guilty of sin against art, admire that which revolts
her sense of the beautiful. Frankly, her denunciation of

JUNE 363

Ampeloi^sis veitchii hurt our feelings. But the dicta-
torial tone, the inability to recognise two sides to a
question, is characteristic of even the greatest gardeners.'

What I did not sufiBciently explain is that it is not a
plant that I condemn in itself, but what I do condemn is
the placing of it in wrong situations, or allowing it to
destroy architectural beauty. I have under my own bed-
room window an ugly piece of slate roofing which this
autumn was covered with a mixture of Virginia Creeper
and Ampelopsis — the latter still green, the former one
mass of ruby and gold. Nothing could be more beautiful.
But then it is growing where hardly anything else would
grow, which is different to sacrificing a good south or
west wall for this one week of beauty in the year.

My objection to Ampelopsis veitchii was certainly
increased while in Florence, as it grew with the greatest
profusion in every direction, and as a picturesque object
(say, for sketching) the beautiful old Porta Eomana was
entirely destroyed and put out of tone, both with sky and
earth, by being almost entirely covered with this terrible
brilliantly green Japanese Ivy.

Jtme 27th. — Just before I left I went to see the
Eiccardi Palace in the Via Cavour. The chapel I
thought, as I suppose everyone does, one of the most in-
teresting gems in Florence ; it is so wonderfully fresh in
colour. The frescoes are by Benozzo Gozzoli. We are
told his mind was less exalted than Fra Angelico's. That
may easily be. His pictures are quite mundane, but the
costumes and the landscape backgrounds are thoroughly
interesting, and the luxurious grandeur in these wonder-
fully preserved frescoes give one a thrilling idea of the
times. I was especially interested in the garden back-
grounds. The Eoses were quite cultivated Eoses and very
large. The Cypresses were faithfully painted as I have
seen nowhere else ; some were quite natural, others again

364 MORE POT-POURRI

were cut in rounds and shapes, probably the earUest re-
presentation of topiary work in the world. The flower
beds were cut out in the grass with hedges such as one
sees to-day round any modern hotel. The extraordinary
preservation of the frescoes is owing to their having been
in the dark. Now the owners have made a large window,
and a Philistine proprietor years ago cut a door through
the principal fresco. The portraits of the Medicis on
horseback, and the splendid clothes, figure, and horse of
the Eastern Emperor, impressed me with the feeling it
was quite the finest thing of the kind I had seen.

I suppose everyone climbs up to the top of the old
Palazzo Vecchio and sees that old Medicean room, once
the library, where the huge white doors of the book-
cases are panelled with the most beautiful old maps. If
I remember rightly, America is represented by the island
of Cuba ! The colour of them is splendid. Even modern
maps would make a beautiful decoration for a white room,
I think. German modern maps are exceedingly well
coloured, and some representing seas and currents have a
mystery and poetry quite their own.

The comparatively new public road on the San
Miniato hill, which Mr. Hare calls ' an enchanting drive,'
struck me as extremely well done, very well planted, and
all the plants well blocked together. In a few more years,
when it has lost its ' new ' look, it will be very beautiful even
from a gardener's point of view. The variety of Oleanders
— from snow-white to darkest red — were the best I have
ever seen.

The interior of San Miniato is one of the most curious,
old, and impressive churches in all Florence ; but the
strange burial-ground, dug apparently into the rock, is to
my mind pathetically ugly. The utter bad taste of it is not
on so large a scale as the famous cemetery at Genoa,
which to the very utmost carries out Mr. Buskin's words

JUNE 365

on modern Italian sculpture : ' Trying to be grand by
bigness and pathetic by expense.'

Who that has ever been there does not share that
pining for the beauty and sunshine of the South ? It is
common to so many natures, and almost universally
expressed by the poets. The return need of the South for
the strengthening influence of the North I have rarely
read in prose or poetry. Mrs. Browning seems to have
realised that there is such a need :

• Now give us lands where the Olives grow,

Cried the North to the South,
' Where the sun with a golden mouth can blow
Blue bubbles of grapes down a vineyard-row !
Cried the North to the South.

' Now give us men from the sunless plain,'

Cried the South to the North,
' By need of work in the snow and the rain
Made strong, and brave by familiar pain

Cried the South to the North.

' Give lucider hills and intenser seas,'

Cried the North to the South,
' Since ever by symbols and bright degrees
Art, child-like, climbs to the dear Lord's knees,
Said the North to the South.

• Give strenuous souls for belief and prayer,'

Said the South to the North,
' That stand in the dark on the lowest stair.
While affirming of God, " He is certainly there,' '
Said the South to the North.

• Yet oh ! for the skies that are softer and higher,'

Sighed the North to the South ;

• For.the flowers that blaze, and the trees that aspire,
And the insects made of a song or a fire,'

Sighed the North to the South.

' And oh I for a seer to discover the same,'

Sighed the South to the North ;
' For a Poet's tongue of baptismal flame.
To call the tree or the flower by its name,'

Sighed the South to the North.

366 MORE POT-POURRI

JULY

A night journey— Dawn in the train — Passing Chamb6ri — A water-
cure near Geneva — Amiel and his ' Journal Intime ' — The New
Museum at Geneva— M. Correvon's garden— An afternoon at
Bale — Boecklin again — Cronberg and the ' Palmengarten ' —
Planting shrubs to secure an especial effect — The cultivation of
Alpine Strawberries — Receipts.

Jidy 1st. — I left Florence on one of the last days of
June, with oh ! such a sad heart and a feeling I should
never see it again. I am so conscious, as I said before, of
the wisdom of spending the rest of my life at home and
foregoing the pleasures of travel, as with my nature long
absences unfortunately diminish the pleasure and interest
I take in my own concerns, and regret at what I leave
behind comes between me and my happiness when I am
away. The weather had been wet, and directly the sun
was obscured the temperature was, if anything, rather too
cool. I do love a night railway journey, because of the
chance it gives one of seeing that most wondrously lovely
effect of Nature which we so seldom do see — this growth
of the famous 'more hght,' Goethe's last words — the
triumphal march of the coming on of day. I determined to
enjoy it in spite of the presence of seven Italians, one
more than the can*iage was intended to hold, who got in at
Genoa at four o'clock in the morning and never ceased
talking amongst themselves.

It is not only the beauty of the growing light, but the
mysterious human awakening, the early smoke that coils
from some cottage chimney, the opening window, the man

JULY 367

who goes out to his work along the road — every little
incident seems to be full both of the poetry and pathos of
life. In a tiny volume lately published of remarkable
verse by A. E., ' Earth Breath and other Poems,' the poem
called ' Morning ' expresses in part my feeling :

We had the sense of twilight round us ;

The orange dawn lights fluttered by ;
And thrilling through the spell that bound us

We heard the world's awakening cry.

We felt the dim appeal of sorrow

Rolled outward from its quiet breath,
To waken to the burdened morrow.

The toil for life, the tears for death.

And out of all old pain and longing

The truer love woke mth the light.
We saw the evil shadows thronging,

And went as warriors to the fight.

The last line is to me an especially true note.
Indifference, blindness, despondency, all these I hate ; but
to meet life with courage, both for oneself and others, that
must be the real aim. But courage is rather strength
than happiness.

Professor Blackie said somewhere, ' There is nothing
fills me with more sorrow occasionally than to see how
foolishly some people throw away their lives. It is a
noble thing to live ; at least, a splendid chance of playing
a significant game — a game which we may never have
the chance to play again, and which is surely worth while
to try to play skilfully ; to bestow at least as much pains
upon it as many a one does on billiards or lawn tennis.
But these pains are certainly not always given, and so the
game of life is lost, and the grand chance of forming a
manly character is gone, for no man can play a game well
who leaves his moves to chance, and so instead of fruitful

368 MORE POT POURRI

victories, brilliant blunders are all the upshot of what
many a record of distinguished lives has to px-esent.' All
this from a night journey. It was broad daylight as we
came down the beautiful flowery slopes of the Cenis in a
luxurious French corridor carriage, so superior in every
way to the Italian one we had just left.

The English used to be accused of being the great
eaters of Europe when I was young. I do not think that is
the case now. In our carriage was a middle-aged couple —
I should imagine, brother and sister — and evidently, as is
so often the case with other couples, the gray mare was the
better horse. She travelled with curious deliberation ; first
she wrapped up both the hats in beautiful bright Italian silk
handkerchiefs to preserve them from dust. Her black hair,
I suppose she thought, could be cleaned without expense.
She frizzled up her curls and wiped her dark, fat, ugly face.
She then produced a huge powder-puff and powdered her
face well all over. The man bore all this patiently ; he
was thin and bald, and much more retined-looking than
she was. He placed a black silk cap on his head. Then
she opened a large dog-basket filled with a most dainty
luncheon. Sandwiches folded up in a beautifully clean,
damp napkin began the meal. Then were eaten large
slices of meat and bread, mugs full of rich milk, cheese
(of which she must have eaten eight or ten ounces), and all
this with a resigned calm, as if she were performing a
sacred duty which she owed, not to herself, but to society.
The meal wound up with beautiful ripe Apricots — grown,
I am sure, on their own Lombardy estate — and a home-
made plum cake like an English one. The remains, which
were carefully packed up, would have fed a carriageful,
and, I confess, made me feel quite greedy, my humble
bread and cherries having nearly come to an end. When
they had eaten their fill, superior peppermint lozenges
were produced by the lady and shared by her companion ;

JULY 369

not one, but six or seven were slowly consumed in the
same resigned, sad way. This was to assist digestion, I
presume. Calm sleep then supervened to both, and their
labours were over. In the seat opposite me was a man
in the dress of an ecclesiastic, with a face that might have
belonged to Eousseau's famous Savoyard vicar — a calm,
intellectual face, that would have looked well carved in
the mellow, amber-coloured marble of a Florentine tomb.
My travelling companions — externally, at any rate — were
strong contrasts !

I never can pass through this valley of Chamberi,
with its beautiful mountains all around, without a
strange thrill at the thought that here Eousseau lived and
botanised for so many happy years in his youth, or
calmly worked in the gar.den of his early love, Mme.
de Warens. Her house is still shown. Some years ago
I spent a day in Chamberi, but only saw this house from
the top of the castle tower, my companions preferring
other sights to the romantic pilgrimage I wished to make
to the abode where lived those two, who little dreamt they
were weaving one of the strangest romances that was ever
publicly confessed.

I saw at that time in the museum a curious example
of how in certain stages of civilisation the same customs
prevail. They have there a large collection of curiosities
taken from the remains of Lake villages ; amongst other
things, beautiful pins and brooches, like those found in
Scotland and Ireland. My attention was attracted to a
half moon-shaped piece of wood scooped out and delicately
carved and ornamented. I asked the custodian what it
was. He pointed to a small photograph placed beside it,
which represented a Japanese woman lying on the floor
with a piece of similar wood under her little head.
Perhaps without this photograph from the Far East the

B B

370 MORE POT-POURRI

use of this primitive pillow from the Lake villages might
have remained an unexplained curiosity.

I spent a few days in the neighbourhood of Geneva to
see some friends in one of the water-cure establishments
so common now on the Continent — part hotel, part cure —
very different from those primitive water-cures started in
the early half of this century by Preissnitz at Graafenberg.
I picked up on an old bookstall some years ago a curious
little pamphlet byBulwerLytton, called ' Confessions of a
Water Patient.' He described how he had found his faith
in the system strengthen, but he shrank from the terrors
of a long journey to Silesia, ' the rugged region in which
the probable lodging was a labourer's cottage, where the
sulky hypochondriac would murmur and growl over a
public table spread with no tempting condiments.' It is
the modern luxury of hotel life which, I think, now
militates so much against all these cures. The patients
have two large hotel dinners of doubtfully wholesome
food, and lie about all day on luxurious chairs. This is
very different from the return to primitive life, an essential
part of the cure in the old system, and which in modern
days has been better practised by I'Abb^ Kneipp than by any
other that I have heard of. Now luxury and self-indulgence
hold the poor modern, civilised patients in their grip
wherever they go, and often they return no better than they
went, in spite of douches and baths innumerable.

I must confess I found it rather trying coming from
Florence to a hydropathic establishment in Switzerland.
Illnesses, and especially what for want of a better name ai'e
called nerve-illnesses, are from their very obscurity quite
extraordinarily depressing, and bring prominently forward
the eternal injustice of Nature. Looking out of my window
at the gravelled yard and the heavy grove of trees gave me
the feeling that I might be in a private lunatic asylum, or
even in a prison, though I have never lived in either. The

JULY 371

thought may have been specially presented to my mind
from the remarkable poem vvhich appeared last year,
' The Ballad of Eeading Gaol,' for, looking up out of my
window, I too could see over the opposite roof that little
square of blue which suggested these two verses :

I never saw a man who looked

With such a wistful eye
Upon that little tent of blue

Which prisoners call the sky,
And at every wandering cloud that trailed

Its ravelled fleeces by.

He did not wring his hands, as do

Those witless men who dare
To try to rear the changeling Hope

In the cave of Black Despair :
He only looked upon the sun,

And drank the morning air.

Looking down in the early morning I saw the patients
in various quaint costumes hurrying to the morning
douches. One, a middle-aged man, could not walk unless
he pushed a large brown basket-work perambulator before
him. He did not lean on it, and was very cheerful, but
apparently it steadied his nerves, and with it his legs
obeyed his wishes and he walked perfectly. Many people
were, of course, quite well — merely accompanying the
invalids. All these bathing-places strike me as being
deadly dull and tiresome for those who are well, but
foreigners seem to be much more patient about spending
their holidays in health resorts than we are, for they look
upon absolute idleness as the correct thing, and are con-
tent to spend their waking hours in talking. This can
be noticed any day at seaside places in Prance. To my
mind, the perfect holiday for people in health is change
of scene and occupation and interest ; certainly not what
is called ' rest,' which means sitting out all day long,

B B 2

372 MORE POT-POURRI

doing absolutely nothing but chattering to people you
have never seen before and will never see again. Without
the object of being a companion to those we love I can
imagine no greater trial.

When I could stand the feeling of being surrounded
by invalids no longer, I used to get outside the place and
walk by the deep-cut cliffs, rather than banks, of the
roaring, i-ushing river. The land was losing all its wild-
ness, and was being built over ; but nothing can ever
alter those steep-cut sides, which in old days might have
been the scene of the following poem :

By the hoof of the mid goat uptossed
From the cliff where she lay in the sun

Fell the stone
To the tarn where the daylight is lost —
So she fell from the light of the sun,

And alone.

Now the fall was ordained from the first
With the goat and the cliff and the tarn.

But the stone
Knows only her life is accursed
As she sinks in the depths of the tarn,

And alone.

Oh ! Thou who hast builded the world,
Oh ! Thou who hast lighted the sun.
Oh ! Thou who hast darkened the tarn,

Judge Thou
The sin of the stone that was hurled
By the goat from the light of the sun
As she sinks in the mire of the tarn
Even now — even now — even now !

Beautiful, bright Geneva struck me as hard and ugly
after the mellow softness of Florence. I had hoped to
have seen many interesting places in the neighbourhood,
the liomes of those who are familiar to us as our own
relatives. Perney I have never seen, nor Coppet, nor the

JULY 373

house on the south side of the lake where Byron lived,
close to the one taken by the Shelleys and Clair that
memorable summer after Byron's separation from his wife
and before the birth of AUegra. Is it not all told in one of
the best, most complete, and most interesting biographies of
our day, Dowden's ' Life of Shelley ' ? George Eliot spent
A happy time at Geneva as a girl, and I would gladly
have seen 18 Kue des Chamoines, where she lived and
rested and enjoyed herself with kind friends. And last
of all, there is the quiet corner where Amiel worked and
lived and wrote. Some time after his death a very
interesting review (by Lucas Malet) of Mrs. Humphry
Ward's translation of Amiel's ' Journal Intime ' appeared
in the ' Fortnightly Eeview ' for May or June 1896. She
alludes several times to the short biogi'aphy of Professor
Amiel by Mile. Berthe Vadier, which was published in
Paris, and thus describes the place where he lived : ' His
windows overlooked a well-filled flower garden ; the walls
of it wer-e draped with Ivy and Virginia Creeper, above
which rises the ancient college of Calvin, while through
a side opening he could see the trees on the Promenade
Saint- Antoine, and the Eussian church, its gilded cupolas
backed by the purple hillside of the Grand Salfeve.'
Amiel's biographer says : ' II 6tait tou jours beau.'
Lucas Malet adds : ' The dome of his head is very
fine, reminding one in height and purity of curve of the
head of Shakespoare, or of the m.odern wi'iter who in
looks so curiously resembles him — Dante Eossetti. But
with the brow all likeness to the great or lesser poet
ceases : the eyes and lower part of the face lacking the
glorious audacity and robustness of the first — we accept
the witness of the Stratford bust and picture, rather than
that of the fancy portrait in Westminster Abbey — equally
with the sensuous heaviness that so mars the beauty of
the second. For Amiel's face and head belong to a type

374 MORE POT-POURRI

not infrequent in French Switzerland, combining a certain
largeness of gi'ound plan with an almost pinched delicacy
of detail. Refinement rather than strength is its character-
istic : a head in porcelain i-ather than a head in granite.'
I copy this excellent description, as it exactly fits a large
number of student men of our own day. Lucas Malet
goes on to say : ' And truly — though perhaps at the risk
of seeming a little fantastic — we may say that in Amiel's
face there is more than a hint of that singular temper, the
predominance of which in his printed utterances, whether
in prose or verse, prevents their rising into the first rank
of excellence. Both are a trifle artificial ; marked by
something of over-civilisation and over-intellectuality.
He wants body, so to speak. He is utterly deficient in
what Mr. Henry James has so delightfully called " the
saving grace of coarseness." In his case there is too
complete a severing of those cords which bind us to the
lower creation. Not only ape and tiger, but song-bird
and sea-wind have died in him, as they must always run
the chance of dying in highly educated persons — of dying
so effectually indeed that such persons forget the very
alphabet of that mysterious, primitive language to speak
in which is not only the instinct of external Nature but
the highest achievement of art.' Do we not all know
people whom this description fits as admirably and com-
pletely as it doubtless did the Geneva professor, though
they may but partly share the intellectual gifts which made
his journals so interesting a portrait, not only of himself,
but of the type of human being whom he represents —
always aspiring and never satisfied, always working and
producing comparatively little result ?

During my stay I was not able to see any of these
houses, as I had wished, and only once did I stand in the
town on the ever wonderful bridge where the Rhone, as
blue as melted sapphires, tears through the arches. In spite

JULY 375

of endless scientific investigations, no explanation has
ever been arrived at to account for the wonderful colour
of the Ehone water. A few miles below the town, as we
all know, the Arve rushes down from the valley of Cha-
mounix, muddy in tone and charged with solid matter,
and it colours for miles the blue waters of the Ehone. At
length the Arve gains the mastery, and the Ehone, once
polluted, does not recover its purity before reaching the
sea. So remarkable a freak of Nature, however often one
has heard of it, strikes one afresh \\ath its obvious allegory.

Instead of all the things I wished to see in Geneva,
the one and only thing I did see was the new museum with
its newly planted grounds, a short drive from the town,
and called (goodness knows why) Ariana. The building
is commodious and light, and well suited for its object.
It is a pleasure to visit a museum with all the windows
wide open ; they are generally such airless, stuffy places.
But one cannot help being se'^'ere on modern buildings on
one's return from Italy. Local museums always have an
interest, and one generally finds something one could
have seen nowhere else. In this case it was a most
instructive and comprehensive collection of old china,
very well arranged, named, and dated. Several specimens
and manufactories were quite new to me — which is not
astonishing, as I know so little about china. A tea service
with butterflies and beetles on a white ground, catalogued
' Nyon 1780 to 1800,' struck me as exceedingly pretty.
Also some Charlottenburg of 1790 was rough in shape,
but beautifully painted, clear and clean. The only really
ugly china was that of about the middle of this century.

There were some curious old pictm-es, interesting
rather chronologically and historically than from any
artistic reason. A picture of the ' Eoi de Eome,' at about
twelve years old, stated to be by Gerard, was curious, and if
authentic would be a joy to a Napoleonic collector. Otto

376 MORE POT-POURRI

Marcellis and Auger Meyer, two insect and leaf painters
of the end of the last century, interested me, as their
oil-paintings resembled a curious water-colour I have, on
a black ground, done by the well-known flower painter,
Mme. Mariani.

I spent two charming afternoons with the famous
Alpine gardener. Monsieur H. Correvon. Though at this
time of year his garden near Geneva was almost a dry
desert, yet it was full of interest to the true gardener.
M. Correvon said that gardening, as we understand it,
had made but small way on the continent of Europe, and
that almost all of his clients were English. Such obser-
vations as I have been able to make quite confirm this
assertion. A talk with him is alone well worth any trouble,
and no garden-lover should fail to visit a man who has
done so much to keep together and cultivate the mountain
flora of Europe. I still hope I may go some spring on
purpose to see his Alpine garden, which is high up on the
edge of the snows of the great St. Bernard, a huge rockery
cultivated under natural conditions. I cannot imagine
anything more interesting to plant-lovers. M. Correvon
is the author of many charming little books on Alpine
and herbaceous flowers — ' Fleurs Colorizes de Poche dans
les Montagnes de la Suisse,' ' Les Orchid^es Rustiques '
(very enlightening to the ignorant on the numbers of these
plants), and ' Le Jardin de I'Herboriste,' carrying on to our
day the theory of the health-giving virtues of medicinal
plants, and often quoting I'Abb^ Kneipp. M. Correvon is
a poet too, and can express as well as feel, which is not
given to all of us. This is what he says on Linnseus's
humble flower :

Sur les fiancs de nos monts il est une fleurette

Au suave parfum
Qui fuit r^clat du jour, d6robant sa clochette

Aux yeux de I'importun.

JULY 377

Sa patrle est au loin, sous un ciel plus s6v^re,

Pr^s des glaces du Nord,
Et nos torrents ont vu la charmante dtrang^re

Croitre aussi sur leur bord.

Ses jolis rameaux verts s'dtalent sur la mousse

De nos vallons alpins,
Formant, pr^s des vieux troncs sous lesquels elle pousse,

Le plus beau des jardins.

II semble qu'un reflet d'aurore bor^ale,

A survivre obstin6,
S'attarde et se melange a la teinte d'opale

De la fleur de Linn6.

I have tried in many places for years to grow this
plant ; it does not die exactly, but it pines and looks sad,
and has never once flowered with me.

In some gardens round Geneva I saw several fine speci-
mens of Hemerocallis fulva. The kind sold by nurserymen
generally is the one figured in the ' English Flower
Garden,' and slightly double. This probably makes them
rather shy flowerers, and in England they are usually seen
in mixed flower borders. The flowers of those I saw in
Switzerland were quite single, probably a strong-growing
type. They were planted in small, rather sunk beds
in gravel or grass, in quite full sun, and copiously
watered. They were one mass of flower in July, and
really most effective, handsome plants — quite as effective
as the Cape Agapanthus, so much commoner with us.
They would look showy on lawns, and would, I think, do
well in tubs, if they got sun and water enough.

The lovely yellow Day-lily, which flowers earlier, has
done well with me in full sun, never moved at all, but
mulched and watered in dry weather at the flowering- time.

There are several so-called new varieties of Hemero-
callis, and all seem worth growing when they can be
made really to succeed ; but though apparently coarse-

378 MORE POT-POURRI

growing plants they must be fed, and in a shrubbery in
this soil they would hardly make healthy leaves.

The shrubberies round about the villas in the
neighbourhood of Geneva were quite as badly pruned —
often all on one side, and as much choked up — as ours
in England, or more so. All that the inhabitants seem to
care for is what makes dense shade, which of course they
need more than we do. A large Privet, called Ligustrum
sinense, was flowering very well, and is effective and worth
growing in villa gardens, in spite of its rather disagree-
able smell. It is a good flowerer in July, a rare quality
among shrubs.

July 8th. — I carried out my wish and remained a
night at Bale, resisting the greater convenience of the
station hotel for the old, famous, and handsomely re-
built post-house of ' The Three Kings,' with its balconies
over the rushing, splendid Ehine. To the ignorant this
river looks as if its water-power were stupendous ; as a
fact it cannot even be used to make the electric light for
the town, the level of the river varies so immensely.

Time was short and the weather wet, so T only saw
the museum or picture gallery, which was what I had
come to see. Bale to me meant two things — Erasmus
and Boecklin. It was at Bale that Erasmus lived and
died. Froude's lectures on ' The Life and Letters of
Erasmus ' had so recently brought that memorable time
vividly before me ; and they enable us to look ' through
the eyes of Erasmus at all events as they rose, with the
future course of things concealed from him. This is the
way to understand history. "We know what happened,
and we judge the actors on the stage by the light of it.
They did not know.' Holbein's portrait of Erasmus is
intensely interesting, and much more beautiful than
the one at Hampton Court, by the same painter, of
this thin-lipped, intellectual, sensitive ' Trimmer ' of the

JULY 379

Middle Ages. Froude says : ' In early life death had
seemed an ugly object to Erasmus. When his time
came he received it with tranquillity. He died quietly
at Bale on July 12, 1536, and was buried in state in the
cathedral.' The last words of Froude's last lecture are :
' I have endeavoured to put before you the character
and thoughts of an extraordinary man at the most
exciting period of modern history. It is a period of which
the story is still disfigured by passion and prejudice. I
believe you will best see what it really was if you will
look at it through the eyes of Erasmus.' It is not always
so easy to see through the eyes of wisdom, especially for
those who are passionate and prejudiced.

With regard to the typical pictures of Boecklin bought
by his native town, I must confess my first impression
was one of disappointment, in spite of their great power.
His large figure-pictures of mermaids and mermen,
fighting centaurs, etc., though in a way striking and re-
markable, are to me positively ugly, both in colour and
form, their only redeeming point being the beautiful
cloud-effects. In skies he seems never to fail. But there
is one small picture of exquisite beauty, which reaches
the height of the Todten-Insel, called ' The Sacred Grove '
— a deep, dark Ilex wood, just like those I had been
lately seeing near Florence. On the right a sunlit plain or
valley was only indicated, and the light seemed to beat
upwards as in Nature. Along the dark wood came a white-
robed procession of worshippers. On the left was a tiny
stone altar, on which burnt the sacred fire, the smoke rising
straight up into the absolutely still evening air. It was a
beautiful picture — a thorough example of Mr. Euskin's
description, in one of his Oxford lectures, of landscape
painting. He says : ' Landscape painting is the thoughtful
and passionate representation of the physical conditions
appointed for human existence. It imitates the aspects

38o MORE POT-POURRI

and records the phenomena of the visible things which are
dangerous or beneficial to men ; and displays the human
methods of dealing with these, and of enjoying them
or suffering from them, which are either exemplary or
deserving of sympathetic contemplation.'

On my return home I found a criticism of M. Arnold
Boecklin's work in the ' Eevue des Deux Mondes ' for
November 1897, by a fellow-countryman of his,
M. Edouard Eod. He describes how admiring crowds
came from all parts of Switzerland and the adjoining
countries, as if for a pilgrimage, to see the loan collec-
tion of Arnold Boecklin's paintings, brought together that
year and exhibited on the occasion of his having attained
the age of threescore and ten. Many strangers came,
somewhat doubtful as to the admiration to be bestowed
on a painter almost entirely unknown out of Germany
and German Switzerland. But the display seems to have
convinced all that the work showed wonderful power and
originality, executed in a novel manner. He was born
rich and became poor, and for years his art seems to have
had a hard and uphill fight with the world that did not
appreciate him, and poverty that dogged his steps from
Kome back to Bale. At last he went to Munich, where
the distinguished novelist, Paul Heyse, seems to have
held out to him a friendly and helping hand. Must one
believe that success is necessary to an artist ? The fact
is that Boecklin never really became himself till his
individuality was recognised. His best works all belong
to this latest period, and his admirers hope for him an
illustrious old age. M. Edouard Rod adds : ' In looking
at his later works I thought what a beautiful thing is
old age when it remains healthy, brave, and laborious. I
thought of those luminous evenings that sometimes are
the end of glorious summer days.' Boecklin's work will
be all the more interesting in the days that are to come,

JULY 381

because it is singularly devoid of French influence. In a
closing sentence of an admirable article on the Millais
Exhibition Mr. Claude Phillips says : ' A vast wave,
starting from France as a centre, is now more or less
rapidly spreading itself over the whole expanse of the
civilised globe, enveloping even us, who with a wise
obstinacy most strenuously interposed our barriers of race
and position as a defence. If it continues to advance,
steady and resistless as heretofore, will there not, before
the next century has spent half its course, be practically
but one art ? ' But as time goes on will not individuality
always assert itself, and may we not hope for Boecklins
in the future who will struggle and be free of all schools,
even the French?

July l%h. — After Bale I came back once more to
Cronberg. Nothing is so interesting, next to one's own
garden, as the gardens one knows well, belonging to one's
friends, especially when they have very different situa-
tions and soil. At Cronberg the soil is very strong and
tenacious, and bakes into a hard crust, about as different
to my Bagshot sand as can be imagined. In all I say or
recommend, it is most important to remember that in
stiff, heavy soils everything that grows well with me
would do badly and require a perfectly different cultivation.
The amateur should always recognise that when things do
badly it is probably because of some mistake in cultivation,
and that it is always worth while to try some other
method.

I went for the first time to the famous ' Palmengarten '
at Frankfort, which in its way is really beautiful, and a
very well-kept, interesting public garden — half pleasure
garden, half botanical. The greenhouses are clean and
orderly, and arranged in much better taste than they
would have been at home. There is much more attempt
at grouping foliage plants. Mosses, Ferns, etc., than one

382 MORE POT-POURRI

generally sees. The same with the outdoor planting ;
though artificial and formal, it was done with considerable
thought and originality, the beds being thoroughly carpeted
to keep away weeds, which in that style of gardening is
the only possible plan. The colour-contrasts were good ; a
brighter, hotter sun than ours, together with much watering,
perfects this kind of garden. I found planting of effective
gi'oups in the grass was a distinct feature in gardens
about Cronberg, and better done than I have ever seen in
England, save in very exceptional cases. It is an art
that can rarely be understood by gardeners, as I think it
requires a certain amount of real art-training to be able
to imagine effects both of form and colour. A well-
planted White Variegated Maple ought to be in every
garden, but it should not be allowed to get large and
coarse. A contrast should be planted near it in the shape
of broad-spreading leaves of some strong-growing, dark-
foliaged plant.

A much more delicate mixture is a small red-leaved
Japanese Maple and the Spircsa Ulmaria, the common
British Meadow-sweet. In strong soils this is a lovely
combination on grass. In this kind of planting, it is
most important to remember that if two spiral or two
bushy things are planted together they interfere with the
grace of form which is aimed at. In the just-mentioned
plants the small red Maple would stand out strong from
the grass, and would represent massiveness of form and
colour. The well-gi'own specimens of the Spiraea — sure to
do well, as they are wild plants — represent the grace of
spiral growth and light, soft, white or cream colour. I
find Eucalyptus Gtinnii the hardiest of all the gum-ti-ees,
and most especially pretty in colour and form for this
kind of gardening ; and it is also good for picking, as it
livas well in water. These contrasts may be carried out
in endless variety even in small gardens.

JULY 383

When in Germany I was much struck by a green-
house full of the healthiest tree and winter-flowering
Carnations I have ever seen. The gardener told me that
the secret of the entire absence of injured leaves and
spots from rust was that from July onwards, whether they
are in pots or planted out, he syringed them once a week
with the following mixture, which is also good for many
other plants that are often blighted, especially Hollyhocks
and Madonna Lilies :

Mixture for killing' Carnation Disease.— (1) Two

pounds of vitriol (copper) ; (2) four pounds of lime, fresh
slaked ; (3) twenty-seven gallons of water ; (4) two pounds
of sugar. (1) (2) and (3) should be mixed together till no
longer blue, but clear. Then mix the sugar with the rest.
Syi'inge with an insecticide every week in the early after-
noon. The syringing should be done quickly and finely.
The ordinary garden syringe with a fine rose does quite well.

Here is the real Bordeaux mixture, slightly different
from the last receipt, used throughout the whole of
Prance against the phylloxera on the Vines ; it is also a
cure for the Potato disease :

Bordeaux Mixture.— Dissolve three-quarters of a
pound of carbonate of copper in a little warm water ; place
it in a vessel that will hold six gallons of water. Slake half
a pound of freshly burnt lime and mix it with the water
so that it is about the thickness of cream. Strain it
through coarse canvas into the solution of copper. Then
fill up the vessel with water.

With these two receipts it seems to me possible to try
endless experiments on plants in any way affected by
disease or rust. I shall certainly try it on Humea eUgans
when the plants begin to go off. For a few years I gave up
growing this charming annual, the disease always making
its appearance. I cannot bear being beaten by a blight.

Everywhere on the Continent I find abundant supplies

384 MOREfjPOT-POURRI

of what used to be called Wild Strawberries, the cultiva-
tion of which is receiving the greatest attention. The
soil at Cronberg, being strong, is very good for growing
Strawberries. When I arrived last year the main crop
was just over, but the cultivated Alpines appeared in
large quantities at every meal. These improved Alpine
Strawberries last all through the summer and late on
into the autumn. I never can understand why this class
of Strawberry is so much neglected in all EngUsh gardens.
They are rather troublesome to pick, and have to be done
with clean hands, as they come to table without their
stalks.

In the ' Horticultural Journal ' for January 1899,
there is a most interesting article by the great improver of
the whole family of Alpine Strawberries — M. Vilmorin —
which will do away with any excuse of not understanding
their cultivation. But I will not quote from it, as anyone
can get the number of the ' Journal ' who is sufficiently
interested in the subject to wish for the last word. Up
to the present I have never been successful in producing
fruit in any sufficient quantity to make the growing of
these Strawberries seem worth while, but I mean to try
with improved knowledge to see if it cannot be done even
on this sandy soil. A neighbour of mine has been most
successful ; but a vein of clay runs through his garden,
which is a helpful point, not to mention his greater
knowledge and experience on the subject, having pre-
viously grown them in France. He kindly wrote out for
me the system which he practises in the growing of this
most useful and healthful little fruit, called the ' Improved
Alpine Strawberry ' : ' To obtain these large and abundant,
it is necessary to grow them on young plants (certainly
not more than three years old) and plants originally
grown from seed. The fruit degenerates rapidly, if grown
on runners from an old plant. Select the best seed. I

JULY 385

grew mine from Vilmorin's No. 17,239 — fraisier des
quatres saisons " Berger " — 0.60 centimes per packet. This
is cheaper than yourself selecting, maturing, and preparing
the seeds, which probably would mature less thoroughly
here than under the hot summer sun in France. Sow in
March in a shallow box or pan under glass, well wateredi
in soil as follows : one half of thoroughly well-rotted leaf-
mould, one quarter of sand, one quarter of light loam.
Cover with a glass, as usual, until they begin to grow.
Very moderate heat. Prepare in a well-sheltered border
exposed to the sun a strip of soil two and a half feet wide.,
Mix in plenty of well-rotted manure from an old hot-bed
with the light loam of the open border. Plant the young
seedlings in a row do^vn the middle of this strip about
five inches apart. Water them well, and shade them for
a few days till their roots have taken good hold of the
ground. Then they will grow rapidly and produce large
leaves and strong runners, which must be laid out across
the piece of ground on either side of the plants. Any
runners beyond this first break should be cut off. The
runners and the plant are left to grow together till about
September, when the off-sets will have rooted and grown,
and the strip of soil will be covered with rich leaves and
strong, healthy, young plants. In winter, or early next
March, prepare the bed in which they are intended to
fruit : light loam with fair quantity of old leaf-mould or
rotted old hot-bed manure. There should not be more
than four rows in one bed wifthout a small path, in order
to facilitate the cropping and the cutting-off of runners
later on. The rows should be fifteen to eighteen inches
apart, and in these rows plant, in March, the rooted
runners of the seedlings, with as good balls as you can
get. They will begin to bear about July, and will go on
bearing until the frost comes in October or November, if
they have been kept well watered in hot weather, and the

c c

386 MORE POT-POURRI

runners trimmed off. In November cut off any remain-
ing runners, mulch them well, and they will stand all
through the winter. The second year they will bear,
from May to November, good large fruit about an inch
long and half an inch across. They should be gathered
with clean hands and allowed to drop off their stalks into
the basket. If they do not drop to-day, they will next day
or the day after, as they should be quite ripe. They will
stand plenty of sunshine if they are watered in propor-
tion to the heat of the weather. The fruit-bearing stems,
in the best kinds, are strong and stand up above the
leaves, so that the bloom coming on may be in full
light and warmth. The leaves should never flag. Treat
the bed the same way in the next winter, mulching, etc.
This is the result : first year, sowing and producing the
plants ; second year, a good half-crop, July to November ;
third year, a spring crop and autumn crop. The fourth
year the autumn crop will not be so large ; but if they are
sown every year, as they should be, a subsequent sowing
will be bearing its first autumn crop. It is possible to
try a late summer sowing to crop the following autumn ;
the runners must be taken off in the same way. Although
the plants bear any amount of frost, a short light frost
during blooming-time will turn the yellow centres of the
flowers black, which means no fruit there. It is well,
therefore, to be able to protect the beds by tiffany or
bracken fixed between two laths. It is well, also, to have
some natural shelter against the north and iiorth-east
winds.' This last sentence is a most useful hint for any
Strawberries, and I shall certainly adopt it, as my first
crop is constantly destroyed by these spring frosts.

While in Germany I saw beautiful beds of these
Alpine Strawberries bearing profusely. The gardener
told me that the way he managed them was to strike the
runners off the young plants early in August and plant

JULY 387

them for the winter under a wall, water well tiU rooted,
mulch for the winter, and leave in the same place till
April. Prepare a bed then in full sunshine with plenty
of good cow-manure. Take up the young plants from
under the wall ; plant them in the bed a foot apart,
alternating the next row; mulch again, and water copiously
while the plants are flowering. Pick off all runners
except those required for propagation.

The only real difference between this and the former
receipt is that the first one prescribes the constant sow-
ing and taking runners from the young plants, whereas
the German gardener, apparently, took his runners from
older plants. This difference would be quite accounted
for by the difference between a soil naturally suited to
Strawberries and one that is not.

Last year I heard of an American way of gi'owing
Strawberries, a man in New York having made a large
fortune by inventing the following method : A petroleum
barrel is made clean by burning it out. Holes, about
two inches wide, are drilled into it in alternate rows from
base to top at intervals of about six inches in all directions.
The barrel is then raised on bricks or stones, ample holes
having been bored in the bottom of the cask for drainage.
The bottom is filled with crocks and broken pots, and
then a layer up to the height of the first holes is filled in
%vith good mould. The Strawberry runners, well rooted,
are planted by drawing the crown of the plant through the
hole and spreading out the roots. Then fill up with soil
till you reach the next layer, and so on up to the top.
The top is not filled to the very rim, so as to admit of
rain soaking down, and to hold the watering and liquid-
manure soaking which it requires in the spring. A small
drain-pipe should be let in down the middle of the barrel
to ensure the water and liquid manure reaching the
lower plants in sufi&cient quantity. I am bound to own

c c 2

388 MORE POT-POURRI

that my gardenei" says the cask did not ripen well last
year ; but I was not here, so I cannot say what was the
reason. I suspect it was that the moisture did not
penetrate sufficiently into the barrel. I have planted
two more tubs this autumn in the same way with
' Viscountess ' and ' Eoyal Sovereign,' and shall await
results. It is just possible there is not sun enough in
this country to ripen them grown in this way, though
I do not believe it. The advantages, if successful, would
be great economy of ground, the fact that you can water
without fear of drawing up the roots, that no straw or
cocoanut fibre is required to keep the fruit clean ; and I
imagine, grown in that way, the birds would not touch
the fruit.

I saw two pretty decorations for a luncheon-table in
Germany. One was : four baskets painted white with
high handles and sprays of any small mixed flowers
that do not fade quickly tied to the handles, the baskets
well piled up with common summer fruit— Strawberries,
Currants, Easpberries, Cherries, Gooseberries — each in a
separate basket, and a small vase with the same mixed
flowers in the centre.

The other — a pretty, daylight table decoration — was a
vase in the middle, filled with blue Cornflowers (which of
course grow wild in Germany), standing out on a ground-
work of Maidenhair. There were small vases round with
wild yellow three-fingered Trefoil, or any other yellow
wild flower such as Buttercups. Between the dishes of
fruit were laid on the table sprays of Maidenhair, Corn-
flower, and yellow flowers together.

Eeceipts

Timbale Napolitaine. — To be served either in a
silver casserole or in an open French high pie-crust,

JULY 389

shaped like a flower-pot, and filled while baking with dry
peas to keep it in shape. Boil a small quantity of medium-
sized macaroni ; drain it well. Take two sweetbi'eads,
scald and trim well, parboil, and cut into regular pieces
about half an inch square. Make a good brown sauce
(not too dark), to which add two or three spoonfuls of
concentrated tomato p^iree, some good fresh mushrooms
cut in dice or strips, some truffles or morels, and tiny
little q^ienelles of chicken breast (if you have any cold
chicken to use up). Put the sweetbreads into this thick
sauce. Mix all well together, let it stew gently for a few
minutes, then finish your macaroni in the usual way
with cheese, only using far less butter than for plain
macaroni. Now fill the silver casserole or the pie-crust
by putting alternate layers of macaroni and of the sbew.
Finish at the top with a little layer of sauce and truffles,
and serve very hot.

The remains of this Timbale, if the sauce has been
kept thick and concentrated enough from the first, can be
made into excellent croquettes or rissoles by being cut up
quite small, with hardly any of the sauce mixed with
it. Shape as croquettes, roll in egg and breadcrumbs
and fry.

Poulet a rindienne.— Boil a large fowl in thin
chicken or veal stock with two or three onions. When
done, take these out, strain the stock (which ought to look
quite pale and clear), cut the fowl in pieces, cover with
leaves of tarragon, add one or two to the stock, pour over
the fowl hot, and serve. Boil a large cupful of Patna or
Itahan rice, strain, and dry. Make apart, while the fowl
is cooking, a curry sauce with onion, butter, apple, stock,
and curry powder (as described in my former book), no
flour. When the rice is ready to serve, stir enough of
this sauce into it to colour it thoroughly without making
it sloppy or greasy. I saw this once at a French luncheon

390 MORE POT-POURRI

party, and it was called Poulet a VIndienne, though of
course it is not Indian in our sense at all. I have
often done it successfully, but never had a receipt
for it.

Croutes of Ham and Beans.— Take four ounces of

lean ham and grate or chop very fine. Put it into a stew-
pan witli a little cayenne pepper and a spoonful of sherry ;
then dish it upon small fried croHtes of bread. Dish
round these a pur6e of broad beans or white haricot
beans. Serve hot.

Lentils. — Put a breakfastcup of Egyptian lentils
into a saucepan, cover with about an inch and a half
of water, boil very slowly for an hour. Heat half a
tumbler of the best oHve oil in a small saucepan.
Cut up very small half an onion, and fry it till yellow
in the oil. Pour the whole on to the lentils, and let
them boil another half-hour. Wash and pick a good
handful of Italian rice. Dry on a cloth, and mix with
the lentils when the rice is cooked. Add a little salt
and pepper, and serve.

French beans or scarlet runners well boiled in salt
and water, slightly drained, and then mixed at once (all
hot) with olive oil and very little vinegar, and eaten as a
salad, are much better than when allowed to get quite
cold. I think this is the same with all cold vegetables —
beetroot, asparagus, beans, etc. Our weather so seldom
admits of quite cold things being palatable. These
receipts, however, are useless unless the olive oil is of the
best. I always buy my oil and vinegar from Mrs. Eoss,
Poggio Gherardo, Via Settignanese, Florence.

A Chocolate Pudding". — Take five ounces of fresh
butter ; four ounces of chocolate, grated ; four ounces of
pounded sugar ; one ounce of flour. Mix these in a
small pan with a cup and a half of milk. Boil till quite
thick, and then pour into a dish with five yolks of eggs

JULY 391

and some scraped peel of a lemon. Stir for half an hour.
Beat up well the whites of the five eggs, and add them
slowly to the rest. Smear with butter a conical tin
mould, sprinkle with cinnamon ; pour in the mixture.
Boil it for two hours in water. A cream sauce flavoured
with vanilla should be served with it or poured round it.
Norweg'ian Fruit Jelly. — Take two pounds of red
currants and two pounds of raspberries (raw) rubbed
through a cloth to extract the juice. Measure the juice in
a good clean wine-bottle and pour it out. Put in the rest
of the juice, and fill up the bottle with cold water so as to
make two wine-bottles of liquid in all. Put this liquid in
a large brass saucepan, and add half a stick of vanilla
and three-quarters of a pound of lump sugar. Put the
saucepan on the fire. Mix five ounces of the best cornflour
and two ounces of Groult's French starch flour {farine
d'amidon) with half a bottle of cold water. When quite
smooth, pour it gradually, stirring all the time, into the
boiling fruit juice. Let the whole boil until it thickens.
Einse out a china mould or basin with cold water, pour
in the mixture, and put it for some hours in a cool place
or on the ice. Turn it out and serve with cream.

Cherries and Semolina.— Boil four pounds of good

cherries in a quart of water till quite soft, then pass
through a hair sieve. Put the juice back on the fire with
a piece of vanilla and half a pound of lump sugar. Let
it boil for twenty minutes. Take a packet of French
semolina ; drop in a sufficient quantity to thicken the
juice, stirring all the time ; when this has boiled up,
proceed as in the former receipt. Ehubarb might be tried
in this way.

Much the same sweet can be made in winter in the
following way : A pint and a half of red wine, and a pint
and a half of bottled fruit syrup. These must be mixed
together and brought to the boil. Mix four spoonfuls of

392 MORE POT-POURRI

cornflour with a little cold syrup kept back for the
purpose, and stir this into the boiling liquid. It is most
impox'tant to keep stirring all the time. It must be
boiled for fifteen or twenty minutes.

Currants — red, white, and black — are excellent left on
their stalks, well washed, and then dipped into the white
of a very fresh raw egg, rolled in finely pounded sugar,
and put for one minute into the oven to dry.

393

AUGUST

A Horticultural Show in August— The old Chelsea Physic Garden —
Tovms out of season — Flat-hunting in London — Overcrowding
flats — Marble better than tiles— Curtains and blinds — A long
note on girls and young women.

August 9th. — For the first time in my life I went to a
Horticultural Society Show at the Drill Hall, Westminster,
in August. The interest centred chiefly in the new hardy
Water Lilies which everyone with small ponds or lakes
ought to try and cultivate, I think. There were a few
new Lilies that I had never seen before ; but what
particularly attracted my attention was an exceedingly
good strain of my favourite Campanula pyramidalis,
exhibited by the Syon House gardener, and flowered
under glass. He afterwards gave me an interesting
account of how he cultivates them, which I quote :

' I am glad you liked the Campanulas, but I am sorry
they were not quite as good as some I have shown in
previous years, as we forced some of the plants, and they
do not like much heat. There is no special way of
cultivating the plants. Those you saw were sown early
in April '97 in pans in a cold frame, and pricked off end
of May into boxes, potted up six weeks later into forty-
eight pots, singly. Up to this they had been gi'own in a
cold frame, but from July till October they were stood
outside on ashes, but well watered. In winter we place
rough boards round these, or stand in cold frames. Too
much moisture is worse than frost, and very little water

394 MORE POT-POURRI

is given in mid-winter. Early in March we place them
in seven- or eight-inch pots, and stand in the open or on
ashes to keep out the worms, potting in a good soil with
a little manure, but as firm as possible, and they then
flower the end of July or early in August.

' The flowers are purer in colour if they are placed
under glass when opening. We do not grow any plants
over sixteen or seventeen months. I would advise sow-
ing in March for flowering in following August twelve-
month. Ours is a very fine strain — the Syon House
variety — and a compact grower. I do not plant out at
all for conservatory decoration. By planting out and
lifting in spring you would get larger plants.'

I am quite sure these flowers can never be seen in any-
thing like perfection except grown under glass when the
flower is appearing.

Not the least interesting sight was the variety in
shades of blue — some very soft and delicate-looking,
almost gray ; some a good china-blue. There were many
more of the white ones, and I find them rather easier to
grow.

Another way of growing the C. pyraviidalis, especially
any good colour you want to preserve, is to cut up the
roots and re-pot small pieces. I do not think the plants
will be as strong as those grown from seed, but it is less
trouble.

I was pleased the other day to read in the papers that
the old Chelsea Physic Garden has been saved from being
built over by the London Parochial Charities. The
garden was presented by Sir Hans Sloane to the Society
of Apothecaries, on condition that fifty new varieties of
plants should be giown in it and annually furnished to
the Royal Society till the number amounted to two
thousand. These gardens and the Botanic Gardens at
Oxford are the oldest of the kind in England. The land

AUGUST 395

at Chelsea was acquired by the Apothecaries as far back
as 1674. Evelyn visited the Chelsea Gardens in 1685,
and mentions that he saw there a Tulip-tree and a Tea
shrub. Here too, it has been said, one of the first
attempts was made to supply plants with artificial heat,
the greenhouse having been heated by means of embers
placed in a hole in the ground. Poor plants ! they must
have been rather smoke-dried, I fear. It was here, too,
that Philip Miller, the ' prince of gardeners ' — so styled
by Linnaeus — spent nearly fifty years. He managed the
gardens from 1722 to 1771, during which period they
attained a great reputation throughout Europe. Miller was
the author of the much-admired ' Gardener's Chronicle.'

August 14^/i. — Towns are never so pleasant as when
out of season. Florence in June, and London in August,
how immensely emptiness increases their charm !

Flat-hunting in London is more bewildering and
difficult even than house-hunting, so I was indeed lucky
to find one with perfect views, very high up, with a lift,
and just what I wanted in every way. I always have
thought the garret was the nicest part of a London
house. It has the best air and generally some sort
of view. A high flat has all these advantages, and the
lift does away with the fatigue of the stairs. A French
landlady once said, when we had panted up her five
storeys to her airy apartment and complained a little of
the pull up : ' Le cinquifeme n'est an cinqui^me que pour
les monstres de la rue. C'est au premier pour les Anges ! '
One does feel nearer the sky, and the gulls fly by the
windows in stormy weather. The cloud-effects can be
endlessly studied, and often smoke rather adds to than
detracts from the beauty of sunsets, as Mr. Euskin puts
it in that beautiful chapter on the truth of colour in
the first volume of ' Modern Painters ' : ' When Nature
herself takes a colouring fit, and does something extra-

396 MORE POT-POURRI

ordinary — something really to exhibit her power — she has
a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but
incompai-ably the noblest manifestations of her capability
of colour are in these sunsets among the high clouds. I
speak especially of the moments before the sun sinks,
when his light turns pure rose-colour, and when this light
falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloud-forms of
inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapour which
would in common daylight be pure snow-white, and which
give therefore fair field to the tone of light. There is then
no limit to the multitude, and no check to the intensity of
the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the
horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of colour and
fire ; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple
and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson and purple
and scarlet, and colours for which there are no words in
language and no ideas in the mind — things which can only
be conceived while they are visible — the intense hollow
blue of upper sky melting through it all, showing here
deep and pure and lightless ; there modulated by the
filmy, formless body of the transparent vapour, till it is
lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold.' All this, and
indeed much more, can be seen now and again from the
top of a high London house by those who have eyes to
see and a heart to appreciate. There are other effects —
white clouds sailing on pui'e blue, storm-clouds rising and
dispersing, and (in autumn) the sun lying like a little gold
ball on the mist, the lights glimmering through the fog in
the streets below, which are in darkness, whilst we dress
and breakfast without ever having to touch the switch
which produces the magic light. One more evening
picture is the new moon shining in at the windows, high
up and above a long, graduated space of evening sky and
a far mysterious purple vista, half town-lights, coming
through the darkness as in one of Whistler's harmonies,

AUGUST 397

painted as he alone can paint such effects. The distance is
cut off by the black roofs and gables of the houses opposite.

Hitherto I have always moved from smaller houses to
larger, which is comparatively easy. Changing from a
large house to a small flat is the most difficult thing I
have yet had to do. All the flats I have ever seen are, to
my mind, spoilt by being so much overcrowded, and yet
in many cases it is for the preservation of property that
the flat or smaller house is taken at all. To help
the non-crowding of these small rooms I got rid of as
many superfluities as possible. I reduced the bulkiness
and heaviness of curtains, and, where I could, made
a broad hearth with no fenders at all. I think tiles and
painted wood for fireplaces have been overdone of late.
I hope we shall return to more marble and stone. A
green Irish Connemara marble makes a beautiful hearth,
and this and other marbles could be adapted in many
ways where tiles have been used.

I find that many people have been puzzled by my
advice to have inner curtains and no blinds. "When they
are there, of course it is cheaper to keep the blinds. One
friend wrote that she could not make up her mind to have no
blinds, as she thought the little curtains attached to the
sash looked so untidy when pulled aside, like a petticoat
hung up. I do not think this at all, and have lately found
two stuffs which are most useful for curtains in the place
of blinds. One is green bunting, which does not fade,
and is very cheap, but narrow. It can be got in several
colours from Cayler & Pope, 113 High Street, Marylebone,
and I dare say at many other places. It is very pretty in
white. The green looks well from the outside of the
house, as does the red twill I recommended before. White
cotton-twill sheeting also makes very pretty inner curtains*
They are specially pretty with outer curtains of white
muslin. This in a small room makes a very pretty effect,

398 MORE POT-POURRI

and there is nothing to fade or to detract from the beauty
of plants, etc., inside the room. My friend who was
afraid to use the small curtains said the only use of blinds
is in case of death. It is for that very reason I should
like blinds done away with. DraAving down blinds in
cases of death seems such a foolish fashion, when in time
of sorrow one wants the help of all the sunshine that can
be had. I must own sash windows are difficult to
manage with curtains. I myself do not like them cut in
two ; but even then they are not so ugly as smart blinds
edged with embroidery or lace.

Many ask if white paint, especially on staircases, does
not prove unserviceable. I think white paint knocks off
less than any other, and there is no wear and tear on a
staircase except on the carpet in the middle. It is very
desirable to have a piece over at both ends of the stair-
carpet, so that when it gets worn it can be shifted either
up or down. This is a touch of economy beginning with
expense, as it requires a little more carpet. I have never
heard it suggested by the shopman who sells or lays the
carpet. To return to paint, it is essential that white
paint should be good, which depends entirely on using
the very best white lead. This is perfectly well known in
the trade, but it naturally costs more than the inferior
qualities, and so is seldom used. I never use varnish
except in London, as even the best varnish always turns
the paint yellow after a little time. I am obliged to own
that, though very cheap in the first instance, my favourite
white-washed walls do seem extravagant, as they are not
pretty unless constantly renewed and kept spotlessly
white, and that is what the holder of the purse-strings
will rarely agree to. White-washed walls soiled by smoke
look very unsatisfactory. A paper will look cleaner after
sixteen or seventeen years of wear than white-wash does
after two or three.

AUGUST 399

August 29th. — Several of my young friends complained
that the chapter headed ' Daughters ' in my first book,
though it sympathised with the woes of childhood, was
addressed rather to mothers than to daughters. They
say : ' We want a chapter about ourselves, on our own
difficulties and trials, on love and marriage, and the
proper conduct of life between seventeen and twenty-five.'
So now, partly from memory of my own experience (for
I was a girl once), and partly from observing others, I am
going to talk on these subjects as well as I can, only
referring as before to the well-to-do classes, the only ones
about which I know anything. "Where I find that my
own thoughts have been expressed by others, I shall
deliberately quote ; and as these quotations will be from
the writings of both men and women, some mothers may
not think them suitable for the reading of very young
people.

So far as I have been able to judge, the first difficulty
which most commonly presents itself to a grown-up
girl is her position with regard to her mother, no matter
how excellent that mother may be, and even when the
girl remembers the devotion she bore to her up to the
age of (say) fifteen or sixteen. When a girl is about this
age a barrier seems often to arise between them, usually
caused by some want of confidence on the girl's part.
The difficulty, however, is only aggravated if the mother
resents or is hurt by this reticence. George Eliot refers
to this subject with Titanesque touches. She says : ' We
are bound to reticence most of all by that reverence for
the highest efforts of our common nature which commands
us to bury its lowest fatalities, its invincible remnant of
the brute, its most agonising struggles with temptation,
in unbroken silence.' But, on the other hand, the same
author thus describes the downward career of one of her
best-drawn characters : ' Tito had an innate love of

400 MORE POT-POURRI

reticence — let us say, a talent for it — which acted as other
impulses do, without any conscious motive, and, like all
people to whom concealment is easy, he would now and
then conceal something which had as little the nature
of a secret as the fact that he had seen a flight of crows.'
Some natures are born so secretive and shy that it is a
real difficulty to them to speak out or ask advice, so that
they cannot learn in any way except from that exceedingly
bitter source — personal experience. I would advise the
young to fight as much as they can against concealment.
There is of course one subject which by its very nature
can only live in privacy. We all go through the stage
sooner or later of understanding what love means, and
we all think at the time there is only one thing in the
world of importance — that our hearts should not be
unveiled. But with genuine and open natures this
passes, and they end very often by open confession later
on of that which torture would not have drawn from
them at the time. Why reticence, to my mind, is so bad
is that it so quickly grows into deception, and the smallest
events develop into something quite different from what
they really were.

Yet no one can recognise more than I do the necessity
of some kinds of hypocrisy ; it is ' the respect that Vice
pays to Virtue,' and a form both of truth and strength.
' The Englishman kisses and does not tell, the Frenchman
kisses and tells, and the Italian tells and does not kiss ! ' —
so went the old saying. Admitting the facts, the con-
cealment of the Englishman is the best. When one is
young, one thinks just the contrary, and people are very
apt to say : ' If I have a passion, why should I hide it
under a bushel ? So long as there is no concealment there
is no harm.' This kind of argument may take people
into very deep water. A parent of reserved nature rather
encourages concealment in the children, and indeed thinks

AUGUST 401

it 'beautiful,' forgetting that the children may inherit from
the other side of the family a need for sympathy and the
expression of affection, and that these are as absolutely
necessary to some natures as food for the body. In my
experience I can most honestly say that the people who
have done best in life are those whose temperament has en-
abled them to talk out their difficulties with friends or rela-
tives, and who have learned to ask advice. Advice should be
taken to develop one's own judgment — and, as I said before,
need never be followed. It is useful to understand how
matters strike other people who are not personally con-
cerned. The non-understanding of this is often the cause
of a bad influence being exercised by one sex over the
other. It is more easy to pardon faults than to forgive
those who assume virtues they do not possess.

The mere forming of one's trouble into words makes it
seem lighter to bear. "We have all sometimes, if not often,
known the extreme worry experienced on waking because
of some trivial thing we have done or left undone, which
disappears entirely or assumes its proper proportions after
our morning bath. Talking out to a friend often plays
the part of the bath.

I can trace a change in my whole life from the
kindness of a Jevnsh old maid to me when I was a
precocious little monster of ten years old. We were at
Leghorn during a fearful earthquake, and the hotel where
we were staying, though not actually thrown down, was
so shaken and injured as to be considered unsafe to Uve
in. This good lady took us all in, and was kindness itself
to us. My heart went out to her with a genuine out-
pouring of love and gratitude, and when we left, having
observed my many little childish selfishnesses, she wrote
me the following letter :

' My dearest Theresa, — As I feel quite certain

D D

402 MORE POT-POURRI

you really love me, you will listen with attention to
the few remarks I have to make, and at the same
time convince me of your affection by reading occasion-
ally these lines in remembrance of me. Now, dearest,
I must tell you that patience is one of the greatest
requisites, not only for our own happiness, but for
everyone about us. Be careful to keep that in mind.
At meals (be you ever so hungry) do not show impatience ;
look round and observe whether those dearer than your-
self have all they require, before you think of yourself.
This will prevent your being selfish, which is of all things
the most odious. Think first of your dearest mother, for
rarely in health and never in suffering does she give one
thought on herself. Therefore you, my darling, have bub
to follow her bright example, and you will be an ornament
to society, a pattern of good-breeding, and an example to
your infant sisters, who will look up to and listen to your
affectionate advice. Eemember that love towards all who
instruct you is absolutely necessary, and patience and
good-feeling for the servants will make them both love
and respect you. This is my affectionate advice to you,
my dearest Theresa ; and whenever you feel inclined to
be impatient or selfish you will read this and remember
me.'

To my mind this letter is an absolute gem as regards the
understanding of child-nature. There is no mention of
anything that could possibly make the little being of ten
feel her youth or the writer's age. There is no word of
religion. Love terrestrial is the moving power through-
out. The motive for life suggested in it is not exactly
happiness, which none can command, but the regulating
of one's life, with ambition as an object. The incor-
poration of Eastern ideas into the West is responsible for
much of that spirit which attributes all evils to the will of

AUGUST 403

God, as trials to be accepted with resignation rather
than difficulties to be fought against and overcome, and
if possible provided against beforehand. ' Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof ' is a saying that has, I think,
been twisted into many senses never intended.

Advice, however, may be offered too young and bear
no fruit. I once heard a kind grandmother preaching un-
selfishness to a little boy of four or five : ' No one loves
selfish people ; you won't be happy if you are selfish.'
And he, the rosy-faced little rascal, looked up and said
earnestly : ' Oh ! but, gran, that is not quite true ; for I
am so selfish and so happy ! '

Many mothers prefer to remain in ignorance rather
than find out that the tastes and views of their daughters
are different from their own. If, as is sometimes thought,
this difference is greater now than it used to be, I cling
to my opinion that it is largely due to sending girls
away from home for educational purposes. Freedom
and a good education have many advantages, but the
corresponding disadvantages should be faced when the
plan is originally decided upon.

Some years ago there came out a book, ' Le Journal
de Marie Bashkirtseff,' which made a considerable sensa-
tion at the time, and raised — so far as I could judge — a
good deal of anger and irritation amongst English mothers
of the day. It was accused of being strained, exaggerated,
and morbid ; and so perhaps it is. One accusation, I
believe, was true — that the heroine made herself two years
younger than she really was, i.e. she begins the journal
nominally at the age of twelve, whereas she was really
fourteen. In spite of its faults I believe this book will
remain for all time a most useful introduction to the
knowledge of that strange being — a young girl, say, from
sixteen to twenty-one. Its exaggeration is that of a
microscope, which reveals Nature without distorting it.

dd2

404 MORE POT-POURRI

This constitutes its utility for all mothers who have girls
gi'owing up around them.

A girl should bear in mind that it is quite possible she
is a cause of considerable disappointment to her mother,
and this possibility should be thought of humbly and
affectionately rather than with resentment. For though,
perhaps, it is due to no fault of her own, the disappoint-
ment is none the less real to her mother. She should do
her utmost to make herself as pleasant in her home as
she can. "What elders expect from the young is a fair
amount of willingly given assistance and unselfish
cheerfulness. Few things, I think, contribute more to
happiness in the home than a certain power of conversa-
tion ; and, if it does not come naturally to them, girls
would do well to try and acquire it. Any moderately
intelligent woman can learn ' to talk ' ; and to be absolutely
silent in society is, not modesty, but a form of selfishness,
for it casts a gloom over everyone present. The true
greatness of individuals lies in their own hearts, and con-
versation is as much a question of kindness as of cleverness.
Mr. George Meredith, in ' Beauchamp's Career,' describes
delightfully the charm of conversation in a girl. Of course
all cannot have this, but all can try for it : ' Een6e's gift
of speech counted unnumbered strings, which she played on
with a grace that clothed the skill and was her natural en-
dowment— an art perfected by the education of the world.
"Who cannot talk ! But who can ? Discover the writers
in a day when all are wi'iting. It is as rare an art as
poetry, and in the mouths of women as enrapturing —
richer than their voices in music' "With young girls
silence often becomes a habit from not being trained to
join in the conversation of their elders — a fault in many
English homes. But if a girl realises this is a mistake,
she can get over it after she is grown up if she chooses.
If, on the contrary, she is silent merely from being

AUGUST 405

socially bored, she had better learn that a very simple
remedy for boredom in society is to try and amuse others.
There is sure to be someone uglier or duller or older than
she is, to whom she can devote herself. One of the chief
uses of society is the constant self-discipline it imposes.
Depend upon it, as George Eliot says, v^e should all gain
unspeakably if we could learn to see some of the poetry
and pathos, the tragedy and the comedy, lying in the
experience of a human soul that looks out through dull
gray eyes and that speaks in a voice of quite ordinary
tones. Such a thing is almost impossible to some girls,
whose great amusement in life is to chatter. This has
its charm to many ; but girls of this temperament should,
on the contrary, try to cultivate the art of listening, to draw
forth information from others, and to understand their atti-
tude without forming too hasty judgments. ' To communi-
cate our feelings and sentiments is natural. To take up
what is communicated just as it is communicated is culture.'
A power to sympathise with others is one to be much
cultivated, ever remembering it has to be paid for.

For he who lives more lives than one,
More deaths than one must die.

Happiness and cheerfulness were not at all cultivated
by serious-minded good people in my youth, who were
much affected by the teaching, even if not under the
influence, of the Quakers and Wesley. To be sad was
almost considered a virtue. The High Church movement
began the change, as I remember it, against the gloom of
the Low Church teaching. The practical sense of the
present day is now fighting the morbid tendencies, which
have taken a hold on so many, reflected from the writings
of Ibsen and Maeterlinck. Those not naturally of a happy
temperament should cultivate happiness from within, not
artificially assume it.

A lecture on ' Happiness,' given by Miss Lucy Soulsby

4o6 MORE POT-POURRI

in 1898 (published by Longmans, Green & Co.), is an ex-
cellent example of the teaching to which I refer, and
■would, I think, be helpful to many a girl.

A very common gi'ievance to-day between mothers
and daughters is that the girls while still young refuse to
go out into society at all, feeling how tiresome and
unprofitable it is. This is all very well if the girl has
mapped out her fate, and knows exactly what sort of a life
she is going to lead ; but if she is merely drifting, it is only
a form of selfishness, and rather a foolish one. Until
life is really settled, the more varied and open to change
it can be kept the better. After marriage I am sure the
more people stay at home the better for ten or fifteen years.
The state I have referred to of more or less antagonism
between mother and daughter ought not to cause the
amount of distress that it often does. Time, the great
healer, constantly rights things again, and as a rule a
girl never turns with more true love to her mother than
just after her marriage. But my advice to girls under
these circumstances is to be conciliatory and hide from
others the irritation which often they cannot help feeling.
This I should recommend, even if from no higher motive
than that the casual observer should not judge them too
harshly. It is a rooted idea in the minds of many men
that a l)ad daughter makes a bad wife. Was not lago's
strongest argument in the poisoning of Othello's mind
against poor Desdemona ' She did deceive her father
marrying you ' ? Not long ago I heard a young man
say : ' I mean to marry for a mother-in-law — that is
to say, I will never marry a girl who does not love her
mother, nor would I marry a girl with a mother whom I
thought unworthy of her love.'

The French, of course, exact an outward expression
of devotion from both sons and daughters unknown in
this country, and I doubt whether our literature could

AUGUST 407

produce a parallel passage to these opening lines of
Florian's poem of ' Kuth ' :

Le plus saint des devoirs, celui qu'en trait de flamme
La nature a grave dans le fond de notre ame,
Cast de cherir I'objet qui nous donna le jour.
Qu'il est doux a remplir ce precepte d'amour !
Voyez ce faible enfant que le tr^pas menace ;
II ne sent plus ses maux quand sa mere I'embrasse.
Dans Page des erreurs ce jeune homme fougueux
N'a qu'elle pour ami d^s qu'il est malheureux ;
Ce vieillard qui va perdre un reste de lumi^re
Eetrouve encore des pleurs en parlant de sa m^re.

Last summer, while waiting at a hot railway station
and pondering in my mind how I could bring together a
few notes that might help to solve some of the difficulties
in girls' lives, I caught sight of a little yellow publication
on the bookstall, called ' The Modern Marriage Market.'
It will be remembered that this consisted of four articles
by ladies, reprinted from magazines. I bought it at once,
thinking that these ladies would probably say what I
wanted to say better than I could do it. It was interest-
ing to find that they severally took what, roughly speaking,
might be called the four sides of the question, though the
last article held the philosophic view that, as with most
affairs of life, there is much to be said on all sides. Miss
Marie Corelli holds up the little blind god Love as the
only one worthy to regulate our lives and destinies.
Lady Jeune is surprisingly satisfied with things as they
are. Mrs. Steel prefers even Eastern to Western customs
rather than ignore the importance of the future generation.
Lady Malmesbury takes, as I have already said, a broader
and more moderate view as regards the 2}'^os and co7is of
the various points at issue. Most people would agree
that the matter is one on which it is almost impossible
to generalise, as so much depends on the enlightened
bringing-up of the girl herself. The whole question has

4o8 MORE POT-POURRI

been treated with stronger and more philosophic con-
sideration in an essay called ' Marriage,' which I
mentioned before, in Sir Henry Taylor's ' Notes from Life.'
His essay has the additional advantage of being addressed
to both men and women, which is certainly to be desired.
He begins with a quotation from Webster's play, in
which the Duchess of Malfy asks : ' What do you think of
marriage ? ' and Antonio answers :

' I take it as those that deny purgatory ;
It locally contains or heaven or hell ;
There is no third place in it.'

Sir Henry Taylor goes on to say that when he was
young he did not agree with this, but that increase of
years made him think Antonio's view the correct one.
It seems to me that the last fifty years have wrought a
considerable change in these matters. Nowadays members
of society, so far as I am acquainted with them, consider
it very inconsistent with their own dignity to admit that
marriage has turned out ' hell ' for them, and see that a
more philosophical attitude of mind enables them to
expect less and really find a great deal of happiness on
the lines of the quotation at the conclusion of Lady
Malmesbury's article : ' Two are better than one ; because
they have a good reward for their labour. For if they
fall, the one will lift up his fellow ; but woe to him that is
alone when he faileth, for he hath not another to help him
up.' In my youth I used to think that the gain in
marriage was almost entirely on the woman's side ; but as
I grow older I am inclined to think the advantages and
the disadvantages to men and women are nearly equal.

The crux of the whole position as regards the girl seems
to me to be hinted by Lady Jeune when she implies that the
mother should take the matter into her own hands — if
not of making, at any rate of unmaking, marriages. And

AUGUST 409

from this point of view I think I have something to
suggest.

The questions that are constantly put to me on this
subject by girls more or less young prove to me that a
great part of the difficulty arises from the injudicious
ignorance in which they are allowed to grow up. Let us
begin at the beginning. A young girl of eighteen or nine-
teen once said to me : ' What is the harm of kissing ? '
And it is not altogether an easy question to answer if the
girl herself has no feeling about it. When I was twelve
years old my mother deliberately explained to me that for
girls to kiss boys and men was childish and infra dig. ;
that grown-up women thought most gravely of kissing,
and reserved it for those they loved very much, and who
had asked them to marry them. This gradually puts the
matter on a sounder basis. We have to be much older to
understand that ' kisses are like grains of gold and silver
found upon the ground, of no value in themselves, but
showing that a mine is near.' On the other hand, some
girls may think in perfect innocence that a kiss means
a great deal more than it really does, especially as it is
generally taken, not given ; and I have even heard of a girl
of seventeen who thought she was so lowered by having
been kissed by a man that she was bound to marry him
to save herself from disgrace. So one girl takes it ; an-
other may think, having once begun, there is no going back,
and the onward course is the only possible one. To
another, one accidental kiss njay be only a great help and
protection, teaching her by fear to understand and distrust
herself. This state of ignorance ought never to be in a girl
who has reached a marriageable age. If the stopping of
kissing is desirable at twelve, it is equally important that
at fifteen or sixteen the mother or an elder sister or some
kind friend should explain the facts of Nature sufficiently
to prevent for ever the possibility of such distorted notions

4IO MORE POT-POURRI

as to the facts of life. There are hundreds of ways of
expanding and enlarging a girl's mind so as to increase
rather than diminish the modesty which is her greatest
safeguard, and certainly not the least of her attractions.
Indeed, it is a favourite theory of mine that the instincts
of life are apt to grow before their protector — modesty —
which is more the result of cultivation and civilisation
than particularly pertaining to what is natural. All
prohibitions wound liberty and increase desire. We
none of us can defend ourselves from a danger as
to the very existence of which we are ignorant. If a
girl is trained to understand that we are part of that great
whole which is called Nature, and that in fact our common
development is shared by every flower that blooms, she
is neither surprised nor shocked when further knowledge
gathers round her as life expands. This, I believe,
will serve as a very wholesome check against an over-
preponderance being given to the romantic attitude so much
advocated by Miss Marie Corelli. She describes marriage
as the ' exalted passion which fills the souls ' of a man and
woman, ' and moves them to become one in flesh as well
as one in spirit.' Mrs. Steel says, and I must say I agree
with her, that this so-called ' exalted passion ' is quite as
often likely to lead to evil as to good.

Whether girls realise it or not, certainly an immense
number of them associate marriage with the very healthy
desire of having children of their own. With a little
further cultivation they vnll come to think of the man
they wish to maiTy as the father of these unborn children ;
and most women— even girls — can early discriminate
between the man they enjoy dancing with and the man
they would like to be some day head of their house and
father of their children. This develops what I hold to
be of such gi'eat importance : that the girl herself should
feel respect, or at any rate approval, of the man she thinks

AUGUST 411

of marrying. There should be many solid reasons for
entering into so important a partnership beyond the fact
of love, even if that be ever so real. At the same time I
do not mean to imply that the man's moral standard in
the past should necessarily have been the same as the
vs^oman's. The man who understands women extracts
far more love from them — and so, in the end, makes them
happier — than the man who knows little about them. I
hold it to be a great mistake for a man to have that kind
of fear of the girl he is engaged to or of his wife which
leads him to think it is desirable to deceive her. That
seems the great danger of the tone of the present day, a
woman expecting too much of men.

One of the chief difficulties in talking or writing of
love is that the word may be interpreted in so many ways.
To generalise on love is almost as difficult as to define it ;
it means such different things to different people. Girls
who read novels and poetry are apt to think that the fancy
they feel for the first man they meet is the great passion
which they will never get over ; whereas, broadly speak-
ing, strong feeling most often belongs to inconstant natures.
As I think of it, real love never exists until it is tried by
adversity ; but I am the last to deny that the real thing —
however you define it — gives dignity and nobility to life,
and makes it worth living. ' C'est bien a I'amour qu'il en
faut venir a toute 6poque, en toutes circonstances, en tout
pays, tant qu'on veut chercher a comprendre pourquoi Ton
vit sans vouloir le demander a Dieu,'

Thomas Moore puts it :

When first the Fount of life was flowing,

Heavy and dark and cold it ran.
Every gloomy instant growing

Bitterer to the lips of Man ;
Till Love came by one lucky minute.

Light of heart and fair of brow,
And flung his sweetening cordial in it,

Proudly saying, ' Taste it now.'

412 MORE POT-POURRI

Mr. Austin has a pretty definition of love :

'Tis a fifth season, a sixth sense, a light,
A warmth beyond the cunning of the sun.

Another element ; fire, water, air.
Nor burn, nor quench, nor feed it, for it lives

Steeped in its self-provided atmosphere.

Doubt and fear were linked with it in very early days,
for Plotinus says of love : ' It is worth the labour to con-
sider well of Love, whether it be a god, or a devil, or a
passion of the mind, or partly god, partly devil, partly
passion.' Dr. South puts it : ' Love is the great instrument
and engine of Nature, the bond and cement of society, the
spring and spirit of the universe. It is of that active, restless
nature that it must of necessity exert itself ; and like the fire,
to which it is often compared, it is not a free agent to choose
whether it will heat or no, but it streams forth by natural
results and unavoidable emanations, so that it will fasten
upon an inferior, unsuitable object rather than none at all.
The soul may sooner leave off to subsist than to love ; and,
like the vine, it withers and dies if it has nothing to
embrace.' Here are some lines by a Frenchwoman who
feels the sadness of love : —

Car la douleur, h61as 1 est I'ombre de I'amour
Et le suit, pas a pas, et la nuit et le jour ;
Elle est nieme a tel point sa compagne fidele,
Que I'amour a la fin ne pent vivre sans elle.
Or s'il en est ainsi, qui pourrait me blamer
Qu'ayant peur de souffrir je n'ose pas aimer ?

This kind of cowardice, however, lasts a very short
time, and the father's advice to his child in George
Eliot's poem comes much nearer to what we most of us
practise :

' Where blooms, 0 my father, a thornless Rose ? '

' That can I not tell thee, my child ;
Not one on the bosom of earth e'er grows

But wounds whom its charms have beguiled.'

AUGUST 413

' Would I'd a Rose on my bosom to lie !

But I shrink from the piercing thorn.
I long, but I dare not, its point defy ;

I long, and I gaze forlorn.'

' Not so, 0 my child — round the stem again

Thy resolute fingers entwine ;
Forego not the joy for its sister — pain.

Let the Rose, the sweet Rose, be thine.'

Here is one more example of the many forms love
takes — perhaps the noblest and the best : renunciation, no
matter why or wherefor, but for duty's sake. It is one of
Mrs. Browning's ' Sonnets from the Portuguese ' :
Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore,
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore —
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine

With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine

Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

Tennyson's two lines everlastingly contain the true

test :

Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with

might —
Smote the chord of Self, that — trembling — pass'd in music out

of sight.

And now, to wind up the definitions of love, I will
quote from two clever modern novels. Lucas Malet in
' The Wages of Sin ' attempts to describe the little god,
who, we are told, still has something of the sea from
which his mother, Venus, rose :

Love is quiet and subtle and fearless ; yet he comes

414 MORE POT-POURRI

softly and silently, stealing up without observation ; and at
first we laugh at his pretty face, which is the face of a
merry earthly child — but his hands, when we take them,
gi-asp like hands of iron, and his strength is the strength
of a giant, and his heart is as the heart of a tyrant. And
he gives us to drink of a cup in which sweet is mingled
with bitter ; and the sweet too often is soon forgotten,
while the taste of the bitter remains. And we hardly
know whether to bless him or curse him, for he has
changed all things ; and we cannot tell whether to weep
for the old world we have lost, or shout for joy at the new
world we have found. Such is love for the great majority ;
a matter terrestrial rather than celestial, and of doubtful
happiness after all.'

Mr. Mallock in one of his clever novels takes the
matter further in a way that may console those who
suffer from what appears such a wasted experience : ' A
serious passion is a great educator. But its work only
begins when the pain it causes has left us. Strong
present feeling narrows our sympathies ; strong past
feeling enlarges them. Thus a woman of the world
always should have been, but should not be, in love.
She should always have had a grief ; she should never
have a grievance.'

How true it is, even with the commonplace, glorified
at the moment by their suffering : ' On a tant d'^me pour
souffrir at si peu d'esprit pour le dire ' !

While on this subject, for the sake of those who have
not the pleasure of knowing Mr. Wilfred Blunt's poems
I quote three of his sonnets. First, because I think them
beautiful ; and secondly, because they strike a note, very
well recognised by those who have a knowledge of human
nature, of the danger of too great suppression in youth.
And I hold the sonnets up as a looking-glass to some, and
those by no means the worst, that they may recognise

AUGUST 415

what perhaps will be the trials and temptations of their
own future. These poems describe very truthfully the
phases many women go through, in a more or less degree,
according to their kind — women who, to all appearances,
are just like everyone else, who lead their quiet dutiful
lives in all sincerity and honour. During my lifetime
the fact has been much more recognised that the tempta-
tions and trials of women are not really so very different
from those of men, though in our civilised life they come
to them in a different way and often at a different
age. This fact was, I believe, well understood in the old
world, though covered over and distorted during the
Middle Ages. Here are the sonnets, so rightly called the
' Three Ages of Woman ' :

I.

Love, in thy youth, a stranger knelt to thee,

With cheeks all red and golden locks all curled
And cried, ' Sweet child, if thou wilt worship me,

Thou shalt possess the kingdoms of the world.'
But you looked down and said, ' I know you not.

Nor want I other kingdom than my soul.'
Till Love in shame, convicted of his plot.

Left you and turned him to some other goal
And this discomfiture which you had seen

Long served you for your homily and boast.
While, of your beauty and yourself the queen,

You lived a monument of vain love crossed.
With scarce a thought of that which might have been

To scare you with the ghost of pleasures lost.

II.

Your youth flowed on, a river chaste and fair,

Till thirty years were written to your name.
A wife, a mother, these the titles were

Which conquered for you the world's fairest fame.
In all things you were wise but in this one.

That of your wisdom you yourself did doubt.
Youth spent like age, no joy beneath the sun,

Your glass of beauty vainly running out.

4x6 MORE POT-POURRI

Then suddenly again, ere well you knew,

Love looked upon you tenderly, yet sad.
' Are these wise follies, then, enough for you ? '

He said ; ' love's wisdom were itself less mad.'
And you : ' What wouldst thou of me ? ' ' My bare due,

In token of what joys may yet be had.'

III.

Again Love left you. With appealing eyes

You watched him go, and lips apart to speak.
He left you, and once more the sun did rise

And the sun set, and week trod close on week
And month on month, till you had reached the goal

Of forty years, and life's full waters grew
To bitterness and flooded all your soul.

Making you loathe old things and pine for new.
And you into the wilderness had fled,

And in your desolation loud did cry,
' Oh for a hand to turn these stones to bread ! '

Then in your ear Love whispered scornfully,
' Thou too, poor fool — thou, even thou,' he said,

' Shalt taste thy little honey ere thou die.'

As grown-ups have such difficulty in understanding
children, so do men and women find it hard to under-
stand each other. Many a young husband, often ' one of
the best,' deeply wounds and pains his wife quite unin-
tentionally. It is a mistake to be too sensitive ; we must
take people as they are. To most men it will always be
as Coventry Patmore so prettily says :

A woman is a foreign land.

Of which, though there he settled young,

A man will ne'er quite understand
The customs, politics, and tongue.

Owen Meredith translates the same thought in the
reverse way, and with a more personal note, thus :

Dearest, our love is perfect, as love goes !

Your kisses fill my frame and fire my blood ;
And nothing fails the sweetness each bestows

Except the joy of being understood.

AUGUST 41;

If for one single moment, once alone,
And in no more than one thing only, this

Moreover only the most trivial one,

You could but understand me — Ah, the bliss I

One of the ideas I find most common in women, and
not only young ones, is that in starting a Platonic affection
with a man, sometimes at a certain sacrifice to themselves,
they believe they do it for his sake, and that they are raising
his moral nature. I am very doubtful whether the
influence that comes through that kind of love between
men and women, which in these days is called ' friendship,'
ever works very much for good, as the influence savours
of that old-fashioned education I have already condemned,
which tries to make persons what we wish them to be,
in contradistinction to making them understand that
their only possible growth or improvement must come
through their own self-development. Self-deception
comes in when the woman persuades herself that she is
helping the man to do that which he could not do alone.
This means that at best she is only a temporary prop,
which never yet strengthened anybody. The man who
sees the position, and wishes to continue the ' friendship,'
always uses the argument that the matter rests with the
woman, but that if she gives him up thipgs will be worse
with him than they ever were before. In a publication
I have already mentioned, called ' The London Year-
Book,' there is a long poem on social life with the title
' Flagellum Stultorum ' (The Flogging of Fools). In it I
find a passage which once more lays bare the absurdity
and false sentiment of such a position :

. . . Woman's saddest mental dower
Is not to know the limits of her power.
And thus 'tis chief of woman's wild intents
To know men's motives and their sentiments.
Believe me, gentle sex, there's not a man,
However mean his intellectual scan,

E E

4i8 MORE POT-POURRI

But comprehends us better far than do

The wisest, keenest, cleverest of you.

The street-boy understands, upon my life,

The Lord High Chanc'llor, better than his wife.

So, when a woman turns her wits again,

And hopes to modify the ways of men,

I look to see, when faith and practice meet,

Her tears bedew the pathway to defeat.

Samuel Johnson, who married a widow twenty years
older than himself, and quarrelled with her on his way to
church, as he said he was not to be made the slave of
caprice, and was resolved to begin as he meant to end,
also said in after-life : ' Praise from a wife comes home
to a man's heart.' I am sure this is equally the case
with the wife. I have known many happy couples, but
never one that did not beam with joy at real praise and
appreciation from husband to wife, or wife to husband. Of
course, however, all flattery must be given with discretion.

Every girl after marriage should expect to be not
understood, and to remember this is part of the mysterious
scheme of life which probably on the whole tends to
good ; at any rate, it sharpens the interest of life. How
far do we not go to find ' an undiscovered country ' ?
Besides, if it is a trial it is lightened by remembering it is
the same for all. Lucas Malet seems to think it is
universal :

' Do two human beings, especially of the opposite sex,
ever fully understand one another ? Have any two ever
done so, since the world began ? History and personal
observation alike answer in the negative, I fear ; for, alas !
the finest and liveliest imagination stops short of complete
comprehension of the thoughts, aims, predilections of even
the nearest and best loved. In truth, is not each one of us
after all under sentence of something very like perpetual
solitary confinement in the prison-house of our own
individuality ? '

AUGUST 419

One of the many pranks love plays us is that, when
women love, one of their chief joys is to pour out their whole
souls — past, present, and to come — thinking that, because
the man enjoys it and shows sympathy, he understands ; but
he does not a bit, and quickly forgets all she has told him.
One reason why the early months of marriage are so often
the least happy is that the two individuals expect each to
understand the other. Mr. Lecky somewhere puts it that
the art of a politician in a great measure is that of skilful
compromise, and that someone whose name I forget * was
ever ready with the offer of a golden bridge or via media
in order to reconcile effectually differences of opinion.'
Does not this wisdom equally extend to married, and
indeed to all family life ? If one of the two is always
offering this golden bridge, I do not see how things can
go very far wrong. I have known many married people
of all ages — some older, some contemporary, and some
younger — and my astonishment is that on the whole so
few marriages have been real failures. What gives the
impression of failure to the young is that they often
judge of the happiness or unhappiness of married life from
the generation of their parents. When people have been
married for eighteen or twenty years the conditions of
their lives are entirely different from what they w^ere in
earlier years. Even if mutual devotion is still there,
the display of it is subdued, and children instinctively
assume that neither their parents nor their parents'
friends were ever in love with each other. Also it is true
that this middle life is frequently the most trying time in
the marriage tie. Early love is over, time has developed
the differences of the two individuals, and they have not
yet attained to the more reasonable calm that often
supervenes in later years. And yet this half-way time is
just what is presented to the critical eyes of the young
as they are growing up.

B e2

^20 MORE POT-POURRI

There is a love which never tries to call itself by any
other name, and which in time may grow into a very real
and noble friendship. This is perhaps the most perfect
development of happiness in marriage that can occur, but
no doubt it is rare.

Mr. Michael Field in a little poem of great delicacy
shows how Cupid may sometimes heal the wound he has
himself inflicted :

Ah, Eros does not always smite

With cruel, shining dart.
Whose bitter point with sudden might

Eends the unhappy heart —
Not thus for ever purple-stained

And sore with steely touch,
Else were its living fountain drained

Too oft and overmuch.
O'er it sometimes the boy will deign

Sweep the shaft's feathered end ;
And friendship rises, without pain.

Where the white plumes descend.

Mrs. Holland in her charming letters remarks on a
Baying of Mr. George Meredith's in ' The Egoist ' : ' The
scene in which, while his mother's death is imminent, he
pictures his own, and wants to make Clara swear, is
extraordinarily good, and that word of hers — " I can only
be of value to you, Willoughby, by being myself " — contains,
to my mind, the very gospel of marriage. So many marriages
are more or less spoilt by the man wanting the woman to be
his echo — not his friend.' Perfect friendship between men
and women can only come, I think, after love — not before it.

Jowett felt the extreme difficulty of friendship between
men and women, and said : ' Hegel was right in con-
demning the union of souls without bodies. Such schemes
of imaginary pleasure are wholly unsatisfactory. The
characters of human beings are not elevated enough for
them. The religious ideal, the philosophical ideal, is far

AUGUST 421

better than the ideal of female friendship. If any
pleasure is to be gained from this, it must be strictly
regulated — never allowed to pass into love or excitement
— of a noble, manly sort, with something of protecting
care in it.'

Jowett also speaks of the sadder side of friendships,
which we have all experienced. Though friendship is often
represented as love eternal, it is not so at all, and needs
as much, if not more maintaining than love of another
kind.

He says : ' I do not know whether friendships wear
out, like clothes— not if they are kept in repair, and are
not too violent. Then they last, and are a great comfort
in this weary world.'

As I am known to be a strong advocate of marriage,
girls often say to me : ' Do you mean that we are to
marry somebody who wants to marry us, whether we
really like them or not ? ' To this there seems to me
only one answer : ' If you are perfectly certain that you
like one man better than anybody else, you must get over
that before you can marry another. While this strong
feeling lasts, and to my belief it will last only so long as,
at the back of everything, there is some hope, I would
advise you not to marry anyone else — in fact, under the
circumstances, to think of it would be revolting.' Of
course this is the same for men and women. When this
feeling has died down to a memory, almost the most real
and yet the most unreal fact in one's whole life, then I
think a girl should try and make her future by keeping
herself for the best type of man who may wish to marry
her, not expecting to be ever again — at any rate, in her
youth — blindly in love.

A common sapng, and one upon which I have seen
many people hang their lives, is Tout vient d qui sait
attcndre. This is the version current in England. The

42a MORE POT-POURRI

correct French proverb is Tout vicnt a point d qui sail
attendre, which, however, does not alter the sense. I
have always considered it one of the most untrue sayings
with an appearance of wisdom that there is. The only
thing that surely comes to those who wait in this manner
is death. Stating this opinion of mine the other day,
someone else maintained that they took it in another
sense, and that the crux of its meaning lay not in the
word attendre, but in the word sait (' Everything comes to
those who know hoio to wait '). Skill in waiting, how to
utilise to a given end all events that occur — such waiting
brings about the coming of desired things. This was
perhaps the original meaning of the saying ; it is certainly
not the accepted popular interpretation of to-day.

One of the virtues that I think is over-praised at all
ages, in women especially, is constancy. Constancy is
splendid and much to be admired where two people are
constant ; but where it is one-sided, and neither wanted
nor appreciated by the other sex, I think it is rather of
the same order as the non-changing of opinions in Blake's
comparison in 'Heaven and Hell ' : ' The man who never
changes his opinion is like standing water, and breeds
reptiles of the mind.'

Mr. Henry James says, with a strength that is almost
crushing to us women, who cling with such persistency
to our delusions : ' Illusions are sweet to the dreamer,
but not so to the observer, who has a horror of a fool's
paradise.*

Shelley gives us strength by saying : ' The past is
death's, the future is thine own. Take it while it is still
yours, and fix your mind, not on what you may have
done long ago to hurt, but on what you can now do to
help.'

Jowett, like most teachers of the young, placed a great,
it may be an excessive, value on success. It distressed

AUGUST 423

him to see his pupils making a mess of life. He wished
them to take their part in the work of their generation
with energy and effect. And yet one of his pupils writes
' that it was Jowett, as much as anyone, who taught me
that work, not success, made life worth living.' I quote
this here in my chapter to young women, though it is
intended for men, because it applies equally to women,
and has a cheerful ring. "Women's work is seldom
crowned with success, but it is always there in some shape
or another, ready for them to take up ; and if they do so
the result, if there is none other, will at least be the
strengthening and improving of their o^vn lives, not by
escaping their trials, but by learning to bear them better.

Goethe says : ' Everything that happens to us leaves
some trace behind ; everything contributes imperceptibly
to make us what we are. Yet it is often dangerous to
take a strict account of it. For either we grow proud and
negligent, or downcast and dispirited ; and both are equally
injurious in their consequences. The surest plan is just
to do the nearest task that lies before us.'

I do not believe the state of mind which improves a
woman's character ever comes without some intellectual
effort. Most women of a certain type generally fly to
music and desultory reading. Both these may be turned
to serious use. Both may be only another form of the
excitement which brings on reaction. Drawing and art
were the saving of me. The creative work and the endless
intellectual ramifications independent of — in fact, active
against— a society life made drawing most useful to me.
It does not much matter what the occupation is, so long
as it is a mental gymnastic — something which stretches
and strengthens the mind, and consequently, I think, the
character — something which takes us away from the
accusation which George Eliot puts as follows : ' We
women are always in danger of living too exclusively in

424 MORE POT-POURRI

the affections. And though oui* affections are perhaps
the best gifts we have, we ought also to have our share
of the more independent hfe — some joy in things for their
own sake. It is piteous to see the helplessness of some
sweet women when their affections are disappointed —
because all their teaching has been, that they can only
delight in study of any kind for the sake of a personal
love. They have never contemplated an independent
delight in ideas as an experience which they could con-
fess without being laughed at.' Many will smile at my
thinking it necessary in these days to make this quotation ;
but women's natures remain the same — yesterday, to-day,
and for ever — and in certain phases of family life, and
surrounded by the difficulties they entail, George Eliot's
caution may be as much wanted by some young women
as it was, more universally, forty years ago. Of course
this is an entirely different thing from cramming children
in early youth.

There was nothing Jowett spoke of with so much
bitterness as useless learning. ' How I hate learning ! '
he exclaimed. ' How sad it is to see a man who is learned
and nothing else, incapable of making any use of his
knowledge ! ' If this is true of men, is it not doubly true
of women ? ' Is learning of any use ? ' he asks himself
in one of his notebooks ; and the answer is : ' Men are
often or always unable to use it. It keeps men quiet, it
clogs their efforts, it is creditable, it gi-atifies curiosity ;
but, for progi'ess to mental improvement, learning without
thought or imagination is worse than useless.'

Goethe says : ' To the man of superficial cleverness
almost everything takes a ridiculous aspect ; to the man
of thought almost nothing is really ridiculous.'

I quote Jowett's strong condemnation of useless
learning, as it should put us on our mettle to learn in such
a way as is most likely to be useful to fill the vacuum in

AUGUST 425

our individual lives. But we must remember that Jowett
lived in an atmosphere where learning for learning's sake
surrounded him, and the choice for him lay between well-
directed and mis-directed learning. I cling, however, to
the idea that even somewhat useless learning is better than
none, as the mere effort to learn does good.

Mothers who like keeping their girls at home, and who
see them content in a round of empty gaiety and excite-
ment, often say : ' I am in no hurry for my girls to
marry ; they are happy and merry at home.' As men's
bachelor lives often unlit them for marriage, so girls'
lives are just as apt to do the same. They have to
fit themselves for either marriage or old-maidism, and
this is not done by prolonging unduly the life described
in one line by La Fontaine : La cigale ayant chante tout
V6te, etc. I remember my mother telling me that she
had rather pitied a sad-looking elderly girl at a Newcastle
ball. Her partner remarked : ' Yes, no wonder ; poor girl !
she is just recovering from her seven-and-twentieth dis-
appointment.' This of course is an exaggeration, but it
is characteristic of what may happen. After a certain
amount of rushing about, a girl should herself reaUse that
she can no more live on social excitements without
deterioration than her body can thrive on sal-volatile.
These remarks must always apply only to the large
average. Women who are very attractive to men, as I
said in my first book, have the ball at their feet, and, as
regards the other sex, can do as they like.

One of the best, noblest, and most useful old maids
I have ever known once said to me : ' Why was I not
warned, why did no one remind me that to most women
the chances do not come often, and that if we do not take
them while we are young and have something to give,
they do not come again, or not at any rate in the way
that, being older, we can accept ? '

426 MORE POT-POURRI

When women turn to practical work, their high hopes
are even more frequently disappointed than those of men
— so many things weight their career, and the sense of
failure is so frequently all that they reap.

Have you thought, in your moments of triumph,

Oh you that are high in the tree,
Of the days and the nights that are bitter —

So bitter to others and me ?
When the efforts to do what is clever

Result in a failure so sad,
And the clouds of despondency gather

And dim all the hopes that we had ?

Have you thought when the world was applauding

Your greatness, whatever it be.
Of the tears that in silence were falling —

Yes, falling from others and me ?
When the hardest and latest endeavours

Appeared to be only in vain.
And we've curtained our eyes in the night-time

Indiff 'rent to waking again ?

Those who just miss their lives are those I pity. It
seems to me that, of all bad teaching, the worst is to live
only in the present and try in no way to look to the
future.

Great sorrow or trouble, or loss of money or sickness,
seem mercifully to preserve in some women certain
qualities of youth which always remain attractive to men,
even far on into middle Ufa. Such misfortunes embalm
the qualities which the more ordinary experiences and
pleasures of life destroy. Hence the unexpected and
deep love episodes at an age when young people imagine
such a thing is impossible. I remember quite well think-
ing at eighteen : ' What does it matter what women of
thirty do ? ' Has not the world been lately given an
example of this kind of love, for which it will eternally be
the richer, in the Browning love-letters ?

AUGUST 427

That clever old French wit Chamfort, when he was
reproached by a lady for not caring about women,
answered : ' Je puis dire sur elles ce que disait Madame
de C. sur les enfants : " J'ai dans ma tete un fils dont je
n'ai jamais pu accoucher " ; j'ai dans I'esprit une femme
comme il y en a peu, qui me preserve des femmes comme
il y en a beaucoup ; j'ai bien des obligations a cette femme-
la.' I believe this kind of feeling keeps many, especially
cautious men, bachelors. This is a mistake, even from
their own point of view, as these are the very men who
are apt to fall victims to strong fancies when it is least
wise for them to do so ; and when they are on the borders
of old age Nature often has her revenge.

I quote the Chamfort story to remind girls that good
and sensible men require certain qualities in a woman
whom they are thinking of marrying, and the reason why
ordinary women are wise to consider twice about refusing
to marry young is that perhaps that gift of youth is the
only real thing they will ever have to give a man. When
a dead level of mediocrity is reached, think how large is
a man's choice, in England especially ! What is there in
a woman of from thirty to thirty-five, who has knocked
about the world, flirted and amused herself, given and
taken all she could get, that should particularly make a
man desire to marry her ? Her freshness is gone, and her
want of wisdom is often sadly apparent.

We all know ' Punch's ' advice to a man about to marry :
' Don't.' My advice is exactly the contrary. I say : Do,
and don't wait till love of your bachelorhood becomes too
strong a custom. But except when very young, in which
case the wild oats will probably be sown in an undignified
way at the end of life, don't marry exclusively for what is
called love. Let the heart and the head go together.
For a woman I think it is wise and often right to marry
a man out of a sort of gratitude ; it rarely answers for a

428 MORE POT-POURRI

man to marry for this reason a woman who has loved him
not wisely but too well.

I do not for one entirely condemn the French customs
as regards marriage, though I believe they themselves are
modif}'ing them. When marriages are a question of
reason and arrangement, I think it is better that such
things should be managed by the elders than by the
young people ; and if Englishmen of sense, when they
make up their minds to marry, would take the help and
advice of older women in seeking a wife, instead of going
about with the hope that they may be fancy-stricken
through the eye, I think more suitable marriages would
be brought about, both as regards character and the very
natural wish that the woman should have a certain pro-
portion of money to help the joint menage.

If a man who has married with his best judgment
really cares to win the love of a girl after marriage, and
takes pains to do so, he is sure to succeed — it is so
natural for a good affectionate woman to love her husband
and the father of her children.

Of course if a girl, with no sense of duty, merely sells
herself to shine in the world, or for admiration and
notoriety, which she thinks she will get better married
than single, there is nothing to be said. Such things will
always be ; but a girl of that type is rare, and almost as
mischievous single as married. The type of women that
men often know most about was thus described to me by
a man. He gave it as his deliberate opinion of women
as he had found them : ' They are curious creatures ; in
religion they can believe fifty times as much as any man.
In love they only believe when they see and hear you ; as
soon as your back is turned they scream and cry out you
have abandoned them. Before you come they want you,
when you have gone you have betrayed them, and they
wonder that a man cannot bear that sort of thing for

AUGUST 429

ever. Do you call me practical for speaking in this way ?
Very well, I am practical — and tell you what I know.'

To go back to our original text, ' The Marriage
Market.' The writers of all four articles seem to me too
much under the impression that marriages are decided by
the parents. So far as my experience goes, in England
this is not the case. The girls take their lives in their
own hands, though often with very insufficient knowledge.
I have known girls who distrust to such a degree the
feelings they may have for a man who is rich that they
have actually refused him for fear they should be
influenced by worldly reasons, everyone about them
taking it for granted that they could never be so foolish
as not to marry him. Many girls think of marriage
solely as a means of escaping home duties, and assume
that the duties will be lighter after marriage than before.

I hear many people condemn the girl who ' marries
for money ' ; and Marie Corelli vituperates against the
women who ' sell themselves,' as she calls it. This seems
to me unfair. Marriage and even love do not alter a
nature ; and if a girl knows herself, and is quite well aware
that she cares most for the things that money alone can
give her, I think there is more of wickedness if she makes
the misery of the man she may like best by marrying him
if he is poor, than in accepting the rich man if she can
get him. I speak only of those whose standard of life is
a low one. "What is supremely idiotic, and distinctly the
fault of the mother, showing a general want of training, is
to imagine that when you marry a man for his money,
whom you neither love nor admire, you are to have as well
all the joys of life which no money can buy. The thing
is ridiculous. There are few who, like Danae, can have
god and gold together. Marrying for money or position
may be a high or a low line ; it is often the only vent for
a woman's ambition. But if she does it of her own free

430 MORE POT-POURRI

will, thoroughly understanding and facing what she
undertakes, in nine cases out of ten she will carry it
through and make the best of it. The person who ' has
gained the world ' is perhaps the one least likely to throw
it away. It is the sentimental, warm-hearted, impression-
able girl, who marries some man of the world not
knowing what she is doing, who turns to someone else
for consolation in bitterness of spirit when she finds out
her mistake.

The tone of the day, as it is often represented in
ephemeral literature, is that, so far as the moral life goes,
the sexes should be equal. This has given rise to a very
natural feeling amongst girls : that it is a matter of no
importance which loves most or even first, the man or the
woman. The stronger feeling on the woman's side is a
phase of the relations between men and women which
always has been and always will be ; but the open acknow-
ledgment of it is certainly much more common now than
forty years ago. Nothing changes Nature, and especially in
youth it is natural for the man to take the initiative. The
cultivation of pride in a woman is much to be desired, and
would never deter a man who was really in earnest in his
pursuit. In fact, we all value what is difficult of attain-
ment. I found this well expressed in an American
periodical which I took up by chance last year ; it was
called ' The Way of Man ' :

There was many a Rose in the glen to-day
As I wandered through,

And every bud that looked my way
"Was rich of hue.

Yet the one in my hand.
Do you understand ?

Not a whit more sweet, not quite so fair,
But it grew in the breach of the cliff up there.

A question I have frequently heard discussed by
people who perhaps would be the very last to be them-

AUGUST 431

selves in such a situation, is whether a woman with a
' past ' is bound to tell it to a man who has proposed to
her, and whom she wishes to accept. A large proportion of
these people who now go in for ' equalising ' the sexes say,
' No ; she is not bound to tell,' and they argue that a man
does not lay his past before a woman when he is engaged
to marry her. It may be very unjust, but I cannot see
that the cases are parallel. The woman fears that if she
tells her story to the man, he will not marry her. If this
is really the case, her acceptance of his offer is a species
of fraud. To begin a life of partnership under such cir-
cumstances means that the woman puts herself on the
level of a man who cheats his friend at cards or sells
him a bad horse. The reason why the position of the
woman differs from that of the man is due to that
unwritten law accepted amongst civilised nations. The
man who does not recognise this law will be unaffected by
the confession of her past ; the man who does recognise it
ought not to be deceived.

I think most girls of to-day understand that there is a
veiled side to many men's lives, and that a man's past has
to be accepted, not cavilled at, by a girl who understands
life when she marries a man who is not very young, and
who has knocked about the world. She would scarcely
wish him to tell her details of passing love affairs ; but I
would go so far, without any insult to him, as to
recommend that a girl who knows what she is doing
should solemnly, and in all tenderness and love, just
before marriage, put the question to the man she is
engaged to whether his particular past entails any serious
ties upon him. By this I mean that she should know
whether he has children whom he ought to educate and
look after, in order that she may not only face the fact,
but also help him to do his duty by them. No secret
should come between them, especially not one which, if

432 MORE POT-POURRI

ignored, might perhaps bring forth future trouble. If he
has no such ties, so much the better for everybody. If he
has, she who is about to marry him should share the
troubles and privations that they entail. So many
problems in this life are solved by courage. Facing such
a position does not make it, whereas ignoring it may
weave difficulties and misery.

Optimism I have always believed to be the right rule
of conduct both for men and nations. Yet there is truth
in what I have somewhere read that it must not be an
optimism without intelligence. It should not be that
kind of optimism which, to keep cheerful, must blot out
menace by looking another way, and obliterate coming
peril by turning the back. Neither in private nor in
public life should it be the spurious optimism which is
part dulness of perception, part moral weakness, part
intellectual timidity, part something worse — I mean,
refusal to recognise approaching danger because open
recognition would have to be followed by the won-y or
expense of prevention.

As I said before, it is so difficult to generalise — not
only because every individual case has a different aspect,
but also because every ten years makes an entirely
different platform for our conduct of life. This seems to
me to be not sufficiently acknowledged. Once more I
return to a bundle of letters, to find one v^Titten by a very
old friend of our family, which talks of the decline of life,
from a man's point of view, in a way that is individual
and yet applicable to many :

' I quite agree with you that it is very disagreeable to
grow old, and I have always thought that if I had been
Providence I would have made life begin with dotage and
decrepitude, and go on freshening and improving to a
primal death. But as I am a humble individual, and not
Providence, I make up my mind to things as they are.

AUGUST 433

Neither old women nor old men can hope to be loved
amorously or sentimentally, whatever other love they
may obtain. I confess that for long years the ruling
feeling of my life was a love of women, and a desire to be
loved by them, not exactly with a passionate love, bub
with a love having in it some touch of amorous sentiment.
It was for this that I chiefly valued my youth, my
intellect, my celebrity, and whatever else I possessed
that might help me to it. And it was through loving
women, " not wisely but too well," that I made myself
impopular both with men and women ; for I cared
nothing about men, and they saw it and resented it, and
yet women are in the hands of men, and he who would
be popular with women should take care first to get men's
good word. Even if I had taken count of this in time
perhaps I should not have taken heed to it, for I was
rather reckless and heedless in my youth, and more
disposed to trust to Fortune than to take means, and
perhaps I had also a sort of latent consciousness that
what I desired was not good for me, and thus was I, in
the absence of better safeguards.

From social snares with ease

Saved by that gracious gift, inaptitude to please.

' Youth is dead and gone at eight-and-twenty, and one
may mourn it for a year or two then ; but at thirty it is
time to rise and eat bread, and after fifty one no more
desires to be young than one desires to be the Archangel
Michael or Henry VIII. One does not desire it because
one cannot conceive it. The past is so long past that it
is past being a subject for regret ; and as to the future, one
has to look forward to losing one's eyes and ears and
brains and some of the powers of one's stomach, but one
has not the loss of youth to look forward to, and that is
one source of sadness removed — and to me it used to be,
thirty or forty years ago, a source of sadness ; for I was

F F

434 MORE POT-POURRI

very fond of my youth, and cared more for it than for
eyes, ears, brains, stomach, and all the rest. Now they
have a fair share of my regard, and I shall be sorry for
their decay. I think you make too much of my imagination
as a resource. It is true that from time to time I join a
party of phantoms, and find them pleasant to live with on
the whole, though they sometimes give me a good deal of
trouble, and at other times wear my nerves a little. But
my main resource is in my business. Acting to a purpose
with steadiness and regularity is the best support to the
spirits and the surest protection against sad thoughts.
Realities can contend with realities better than phantoms
can . . . For the rest, Sydney Smith's precept is " Take
short views of life." Henry Taylor expressed the same
thing :

Foresight is a melancholy gift

Which bares the bald and speeds the all-too-swift.

' To invest one's personal interests in the day that is
passing, and to project one's future interests into the
children that are growing up, is the true poHcy of self-love
in the decline of life, and as commendable a pohcy as it
is in the nature of self-love to adopt.'

I have recommended no books for gii-ls. The question
is much too big a one. But I cannot refrain from saying
that within the compass of one small book I know
nothing that comes up in wisdom and sagacity to Emer-
son's essays called ' The Conduct of Life ' and ' Society
and Solitude.' He says : ' Youth has an access of sensi-
bility before which every object glitters and attracts. We
leave one pursuit for another, and the young man's year
is a heap of beginnings. At the end of a twelvemonth he
has nothing to show for it, not one completed work. But
the time is not lost.' If this is true of young men, it is
doubly true of young women. Every experience is a
growth, and every growth tends towards completion of

AUGUST 435

life rightly understood. There should never be hopeless-
ness and despaii-, whatever happens. The future is always
ours, to conquer and make noble. No one can really
crush us. Trodden under foot, if we choose we may rise
again better, even nobler, than all the fortunate ones
around us. It all depends on ourselves. That is why
I admire Mr. George Moore's ' Esther Waters ' almost
above all modern novels, although Messrs. Smith & Son,
whose stalls are covered with translations of French
novels, refused to sell it.

In spite of age and experience, I feel that on all these
difficult subjects I have said very little that can be of use
to anybody. There is no receipt by which we can regulate
our lives. ' As our day is, so shall our strength be ' is a
fact to those who train their natures to meet with courage
the difficulties as they arise.

One of our old divines states that ' Our infancy is full
of folly ; youth, of disorder and toil ; age, of infirmity. Each
time hath his burden, and that which may justly work
our weariness ; yet infancy longeth after youth ; and youth
after more age ; and he that is very old, as he is a child for
simplicity, so he would be for years. I account old age
the best of the three, partly for that it has passed through
the folly and disorder of the others ; partly, for that the
inconveniences of this are but bodily, with a bettered estate
of the mind ; and partly, for that it is nearest to dissolu-
tion.' I wish I could agi'ee with Bishop Hall, but I do
not. I very often feel that quite the worst part of old age
is that it brings us so near to dissolution. My sympathies
all remain with the young, and I only feel at times
inclined to cry out with Thomas Mcore ;

Give me back, give me back the wild freshness of Morning ;
Her clouds and her tears are wcrth Evening's best light.

I fear everyone will think this is not at all as it

436 MORE POT-POURRI

•should be ; and I only feel it sometimes, and perhaps even
that won't last.

This is good-bye, dear reader. Collecting these notes
has given me pleasure and also cost me ti-ouble. I can-
not do better than close them by quoting what were
almost the last lines ever written by my kind friend and
brother-in-law, Owen Meredith. I owe him as large a
debt of gi'atitude as one human being can owe another.
It was due to his friendly advice and his kind encourage-
ment that my mind was saved from that sense of failui'e
and disappointment so common — to women, at any rate —
in middle life. He taught me how all ages have their
advantages, and gave me courage to go on learning even
to the end. He always seemed able to see the line of
the other shore with a brightness not granted to me :

My songs flit away on the wing :

They are fledged with a smile or a sigh :

And away with the songs that I sing
Flit my joys, and my sorrows, and I.

For time, as it is, cannot stay :

Nor again, as it was, can it be :
Disappearing and passing away

Are the world, and the ages, and we.

Gone, even before we can go.

Is our past, with its passions forgot,

The dry tears of its wept-away woe,
And its laughters that gladden us not.

The builder of heaven and of earth

Is our own fickle fugitive breath :
As it comes in the moment of birth,

So it goes in the moment of death.

As the years were before we began,

Shall the years be when we are no more :

And between them the years of a man

Are as waves the wind drives to the shore.

AUGUST 437

Back into the Infinite tend

The creations that out of it start :

Unto every beginning an end,

And whatever arrives shall depart.

But I and my songs, for a while,
As together away on the wing

We are borne with a sigh or a smile,
Have been given this message to sing-

The Now is an atom of sand.

And the Near is a perishing clod :

But Afar is as Faery Land,

And Beyond is the bosom of God.

INDEX

AnifTiLox vitifolmni, 177
Abutilons, 263
Acacia dealbata, 206
Acis atitnmnalis, 139
Aconites, 168, 261
Adonis autumnalis, 139

— vernalis, 264
Agapanthus, 37
Albany, Countess of, 314
Allenii, 264
Almond, 211, 304
Alonsoa Warscewlczi, 139
Alpines, 271

Alstrcemcria psittacina, 175
Alstroemerias, 305
Alyssum, 253

Amiel, Professor, his house at
Geneva and his portrait, 373,
374

Ampelopsis veitchii, 362, 363

AmygdahLS davidiana, 205, 211

Ayichusa capensis, 167

— italica, 167

— semper virens, 167
Andromedas, 265
Anemone fulgens grcecii, 284

— p^dsatilla, 261

Anemone, scarlet, tradition of,
304

Angelo, Michael, villa said to
have been designed by, 348

Annuals, list of, 139, 167 ; sow-
ing, 256

Apple- trees, 157

Apples, nourishing properties of,
157, 158, 268

Apricots, puric of, 307
Araucaria, 95

Artichokes, Jerusalem, 131
Arums, 181
Arve, river, 375
Asclepias incarnata, 361

— tioberosa, 361
Ashburnham collection, the,

162
Asparagus, 58, 180, 258; wild,

272 ; salad, 307
Aspidistras, 169
Aspidiuvi, 205
Association for the Prevention of

Tuberculosis, 80
Aster amellus, 91

— grandiftora, 91
Auriculas, 289, 290

Austin, Mr. Alfred, definition of

love by, 412
Azalea indica alba, 207
Azaleas, 176-178, 207, 253

Babies, management of, 231 sqq.
Bagehot, Walter, on luxury,

231
Bale, its associations with

Erasmus, 378, 379 ; pictures by

Boecklin at, 379
Balloon-plants, 174
Banana, the, superstition about,

304
Bashkirtseff, Marie, 321, 403
Baskets, Japanese, 263
Beans, haricot, to cook, 150

44©

MORE POT-POURRI

Beds, raised, 347

Beech-trees, avenue of, 49, 50 ;
128

Beef, boiled, 99

Begonias, IGl, 180

Berenson, on modern art, 354,
355

Besler, Basil, 93

Bible, the Tissot, 1G2

Birds, feeding, in winter, 144,
145 ; eating buds, 204 ; the
harm and the good they do,
282

Blackbeetles, to destroy, 215

Blackie, Professor, on squandered
lives, 367

Blake, William, allusion to,
422

Bleeding, for fever, 223

Blight on carnations, <fec., mix-
ture for destroying, 383

Blinds, substitutes for, 397 ;
drawing them down in cases of
death, 398

Blunt, Mr. Wilfred, sonnets on
love by, 414-416

Boecklin, Arnold, picture by, 71-
73 ; his pictures at Bale, 378-
380; M. Edouard Bod's criti-
cism of, 380

Books on cookery, 9, 40, 59, C4,
215, 298, 307

Books on gardening, botany, d'C. :
Mrs. Loudon's ' Amateur Gar-
dener,' 4 ; Curtis's ' Botanical
Magazine,' 24, 26 ; Mrs.
Brightwen's ' Glimpses into
Plant Life,' 25 ; Kobinson's
' English Flower Garden,' 26,
163 ; Sutton's ' Culture of
Vegetables and Flowers,' 28 ;
Wright's ' Profitable Fruit-
growing,' 28, 29 ; Loudon's
' Ladies' Flower Garden,' 31,
89; 'The Gentlewoman,' 45,
69, 98 ; Milner's ' Country
Pleasures,' 52-55 ; Maund's
'Botanic Garden' and the
' Botanist,' 85, 164, 270 ; John-
Bon's ' Gardener's Dictionary,'
90, 163; Besler's ' Hortus

Eystettensis,' 93 ; Wallace's
' Notes on Lilies and their Cul-
ture,' 94 ; Loudon's ' Arboretum
et Fruticetum,' 129 ; the ' lie-
tired Gardener,' 129 ; Wright's
' Profitable Fruit-growing,' 130,
13] ; Sydenham's' Plow I came
to grow Bulbs,' 48, 133 ; Vil-
morin's ' Vegetable Garden,'
149 ; Smee's ' My Garden,'
153; Brightwen's 'Guide to
the Study of P>otany,' 202;
Ellacombe's ' Gloucestershire
Garden,' 203 ; Lindley's ' Rosa-
rum Monopraphia,' 204 ; Miss
Jekyll's ' Wood and Garden,'
208,209; M. Correvon's books
on floriculture, 376

Books on health and the cansa-
tion of disease, 218, 219, 221

Books on natural history, 52, 300

Boots, brown, polishing, 214

Borage, Italian, 344

Bordeaux mixture for blight, 383

Botticelli, illustrations of Dante
by, 162; Pater on, 313; two
pictures in the Pitti gallery
by, 352, 353 ; his qualities as
an artist, 354, 355

Bottles, corking, 61

Bouvardia, 132

Boyhood, reminiscences of, 118-
i27

Boys, training of, 12 ; indepen-
dence in, 13

Bran-water, 286

Bread-sauce, receipts for, 40, 41

Brightwen, Mrs., ' Glimpses into
Plant Life ' by, 25 ; ' Guide to
the Study of iiotany ' by, 202

Brompton Hospital, 79

Browallia data, 167

Browne, Sir Thomas (quoted),
200

Browning love-letters, the, 426

Browning, Mrs., verses on the
reciprocal needs between
North and South Europe, 365 ;
on love, 413

Bulbs, cultivation of, 47-49, 133

Bullace, the, 132

INDEX

441

Buonafede, Cardinal Lionardo,

tomb of, 340
Burbidge, Mr., lecture by, 286
Burne-Jones, picture of Pan and

Psyche by, 260, 275 ; his death,

358 ; Mr. Ruskin's opinion of

his work, 359
Butterflies, 34, 35, 167 ; book on,

281
Byron, Lord, his travelling coach

on the Continent, 70 ; Moore's

' Life ' of, 70 ; verses by, 358 ;

at Geneva, 373

Cabbage, red, 96 ; green, 159,

287 ; cooking, 300
Cactuses, 283-285
Calendula pluvialis, 270, 271
Calochorti, 174
Camellias, 28, 127, 253, 345
Campanula pyramidalis, 24, 305,

393, 394
Campanula tribe, 305
Canard a la Kouennaise, 65
Cape, the, plants from, charac-
teristics of, 37
Carlisle, Lady, letters of, 112
Carnations, 263, 347, 383
Carpcnteria Californica, 177
Carpet on stairs, 398
Carpets, sweeping, 199
Caryopteris macranOie, 26
Casseroles, 61
Cassia australis, 362
— corymbosa, 36
Castellane, Comtesse de, verses

by, 83
Casts, plaster, 275
Catalpa syringcefolia, 361
Catananche cmrulea, 167
Caterpillar, 'Pale Tussock,' 56, 57
Cedar-wood as a deodoriser, 287
Celandine, 210
Celeriac, 57, 66
Cerasus, 211

Cerasus pseudo-cerasns, 285
Cereus, night -flowering, 285
Chamberi, 369
Chamfort (quoted), 427
Character, formation of, 16
Charles 1. and Henrietta Maria,

painting in the Pitti gallery of,
355

' Charmilles,' 128

Chasse, receipt for, 213

Chelsea Physic Garden, 394, 395

Cherries and semolina, receipt
for, 391

Cherry-trees, 211

Chervil soup, 63

Chestnuts au jus, 66

Chestnuts, sweet Spanish, 3^

Chickens, cooking, 8, 41, 62, C6,
150, 212, 297, 389 ; grammar
of the woi'd, 9 ; liver of, 151

Chicory, 135

Children: home-training, 12-20,
244 sqq.; present- giving, 141,
142 ; anecdotes, 142, 245, 250 ;
management, 231 sqq. ; edu-
cation, 242 sqq., 246 sqq.

Chionodoxas, 264

Chives, 180

Choisya iernata, 171

Christmas, decorations at, 141

Chrysanthemums, 91, 127, 132,
138, 285

Churches, decorating, 141

Chyinonanthus fragrans, 29

Cimicifugaracemosa, 139

Cineraria cruenta, 279

eineraria, double, 270

Clematis cirrhosa, 153

Cloud-effects, Mr. Buskin on,
395, 396

Coblentz, 82

Cod, how to dress, 99, 100

Coleridge, poems of, 110

CoUops, minced, 99

Commelina cailestis, 167, 174

Conservatory, difference between
a greenhouse and a, 90; 91,
206, 279

Constancy, the virtue of, over-
praised, 422

Conversation, the gift of, 404
Convolvuhis mauritanictis, 362

Cookery, books on, 9, 40, 59, 64,

215, 298, 307
Cooking in Germany, 61
Corelli, Miss Marie, her views on
marriage, 407, 410

442

MORE POT POURRI

Cornflowers, 1C7
Cornhill Magazine, 8
Coronilla, 'J5, 207
Cotoncastcr microphylla, 56
Cots, children's, 233
Cottage-window gardening, 283
Cotyledons, 47
Cowper (quoted), 88
Cremation, 209, 270
Crimson llambler, 345
Crino-dendron hookcri, 176
Crinum nioorci, 90, 202
Crinums, 90, 202
Criticisms on the author's first

book, 2-20
Crockery, pouring boiling water

into, 200
Crocus speciosiis, 57
— tommasinianus, 261
Crocuses, 201, 264
Cronberg, a visit to, 70, 71,

381
Croutes of ham and beans, 391
Crow, Mrs., the ghost-seer anec-
dote of, 230
Crown Imperials, 303 ; legend

about, 303
Cucumbers, preserving, 42, 43
Currants, 129, 392
Curry, 43
Curtains as substitutes for blinds,

397, 398
Curtis's ' Botanical Magazine,'

24,26
Cyclamens, 166, 205
Cyperus laxxis, 170
Cypresses, 330, 332, 333, 303
Cypripediums, 95

DinatciA polifolia, 178

Daffodils, lOB, 200

Dahlias, winter-preservation of,

47
Daisies, Michaelmas, 87,91,285;

Paris, 95
Damsons, pickled, 44
Damson-trees, 132
Dandelion, 211
Dante, Botticelli's illustrations

of, 162

Daphne blagayana, 161,255,264

— cncortint, 255

— ituiica, 152, 153
Datura, 90

Daughters, see Girls, Love,

Marriage, &c.
Day-lily, 377
Dead, the, regrets of the living

for, 110, 117
Deamer, Mrs., poem by, 243
December, shortest days of, 136,

137
Delphiniums, 94
Dendrohium mobile, 206
Deodorisers for the house, 287
Desfontaitiea spinosa, 154
Deutsche Perle, 253
Dictamjius fraxinella, 139
Dielytra spectabilis, 28
Diet, confessions about, 216 sqq.
Dimorphotheca eclonis, 270
Dinner tables, 275, 270
Doctors, their instructions to

nurses, 10 ; their treatment of

rheumatic and other cases,

218 sqq.
Dog-wood, 156
Doyle, ' Dickie,' 74
Dracocephalum argumense, 174
Dublin, Botanical Garden and

' Kew ' of, 161
Ducks, cooking, 65

Eastlake, Lady, 7

Echeveria glauca, 47

— in.ctallica crispa, 46

Echeverias, 46 ; derivation of the
word, 86

Education of girls, 17-20

Education of young children,
242 sgq.

Eels, dressing, 64

Eggs, preserving, 297, 298

Elgin, Lord, 125

Eliot, George, 308, 313, 343, 357 ;
at Geneva, 373 ; on reticence,
399, 400, 405 ; on the sadnes^s
of love, 412, 413 ; on intel-
lectual effort in women, 425,
426

INDEX

443

Emerson, quotation from the

Essays of, 43-4
Endive, cooking, 44, 64, 65 ;

g^o^ving, 135
Engadine, the, episode at a ball

in, 212
Epiphyllum truncatum, 171
Erasmus, at Bale, 378, 379 ;

Froude's lectures on, 378, 379 ;

Holbein's portrait of, 378
Escallonia pterocladon, 160
Eucalyptus citriodora, 171
— gunnii, 382
Eucryphia pinnatifolia, 211
Eugenia ugni, 178
Eulalia Japonica, 59
Eupatorium pmrpureum, 139
Euphorbia splcndcns, 86
Excitements of society, 425

Falkekstein, establishment for
the open-air treatment of
phthisis at, 78, 79

Ferns, 56, 90, 140, 205, 304

Ficus repens, 171

Field, Mr. Michael (quoted), 420

Figs, 35, 128

Fire-bricks, blackleading, 199

Fireflies in Italy, 331

Fire-screen, a llossetti, 274, 275

Fish, application of boracic acid
to, 64 ; how to dress, 99 ;
receipts for cooking, 213, 265

Fish, fresh-water, to dress, 63, 64

Flammarion, Camille, 133

Flat-hunting in London, 395, 397

Flies, receipt for tne destruction
of, 199

Florence : Boboli Gardens, 128 ;
literature, 308, 311, 313, 314-
320, 338; the author's ex-
periences, 328 sqq. ; Galileo's
tower, 329 ; a view from a
■window, 330 ; cypresses, 330,
332; fireflies, 331 ; lemon-trees,
332 ; the ' Cascine,' 333 ; lime-
trees, 334; the Duomo, 334,
360 ; destruction of old
buildings, 335 ; convent of San
Marco, 337; Mr. Howells's

'Tuscan Cities,' 338; Certosa
monastery, 339, 340 ; tomb
of Cardinal Euonafede, 340 ;
festival of Corpus Christi, 340-
343 ; church of Santa Margh-
arita, 340, 341 ; costumes and
habits of the people, 343;
Monte Sennaria, 344 ; villa
gardens, 344, 345 ; villa said to
have been designed by Michael
Angelo, 348 ; Villa Gamberaia,
348 ; the aziola or night-
owl, 349; AryScheffer's picture
of ' Paolo and Francesca,' 350 ;
Burmese goldfish, 351 ; pic-
tures by Botticelli in the Pitti
Gallery, 352, 353 ; fondness
for the early Florentine
masters, 354 ; cabinet of
Cardinal Leopoldo dei Medici,
356 ; ' Eomola,' 356, 357 ;
the great ' Festa,' 359 ; fire-
works, 360 ; Botanical Garden,
361,362 ; Elccardi Palace, 363 ;
old Medicean room, 364 ; San
Miniato, 364 ; the longing of
the South for the influence of
the North, 365

Flower-glasses, 170

Flower-tables, 95

Food in relation to health, 216
sqq.

Foot-race in Berlin, 229, 230

Forcemeat, 97

Forcing-boxes, 165

Forcnia asiatica, 170

Forsythia intermedia, 265

— sttspetisa, 279

France, dressing fresh-water fish
in, 64

Frankfort, visits to, 73-78, 381 ;
Jewish cemeterj' at, 73 ; second-
hand bookseller of, 92 ; the
' Palmengarten' at, 381

Franking letters, 119

Freesias, 200

Friendship between men and
women, 417, 420

Fritz Quihou, 177

Frost, protection against, 140,
263

444

^lORE POT-POURRI

Fronde, J. A., his ' Life and
Letters of Erasmus,' 378, 379

Fruits, bottled, 2'J9

Fruit-trees, treatment of, 28, 29,
129-132, 134; for hedgerows,
50

Fungi, 209

Funkia sieboldi, 28

Furniture, buying, 200 ; polish-
ing, 214

Gai.f.ga officinalis, 305

Galileo, 329 ; his blindness, and
the place of his exile at
Florence, 329, 330

Galton, Sir F., 11

Game, way to improve frozen, 181

Gandavensis gladioli, 32

Garden, kitchen, 28, 29 ; in
Suffolk, 30

Gardening, as a healthy occupa-
tion, 105 ; its pleasures for the
aged, 280

Garnja elUptica, 153

Gas, acetylene, for house-lighting,
144

Giiteau Savarin, 68, 69

Gazanias, 90

Geneva, 372 ; its associations
with Byron, Shelley, George
Eliot, and Professor Amiel,
373 ; the Ariana Museum at,
375 ; garden of M. Correvon
near, 370 ; gardens round, 377

Genista j^rivcox, 205

Genistas, 178

' Gentlewoman,' the (1864), 45,
59-02, 98

Geraniums, sweet-scented, 30,
100, 172 ; winter preservation
of, 47 ; ' New Life,' 132 ;
hardening, 203

Gerarde (quoted), 32

Germany, cooking in, 01, 98 ; a '
visit to, 09-83 ; heating rooms j
in, 70, 71 ; over-heated rail- I
way carriages in, 82

Girls : training, 12 ; indepen- I
dence, 13, 14; education, 17- '
20 ; reading, 19, 20 ; relations !

with mothers, 399, 401, 403
sqq. ; dangers of reticence, 3it9,

400 ; their need of sympathy,

401 sqq. ; training in conversa-
tion, 404, 405 ; the cultivation
of happiness, 405 ; kissing,
409 ; first thoughts of marriage,
410 ; their varied views of
love, 411 ; platonic affection
with men, 417 ; not understood
after marriage, 418 ; the ques-
tion of love in accepting a
husband, 421; 'skill in wait-
ing,' 422; constancy, 422;
intellectual effort, 423, 424 ;
the desire for admiration and
notoriety, 428 ; ' marrying for
money,' 429 ; the growth of
experience, and the hopeful-
ness of the future, 434, 435 ;
the difficulty of laying down
rules for conduct, 435

Gladstone, Mr., on travelling,

322 ; his Italian translation of

Cowper's hymn, ' Hark, my

soul,' 320
Gloire de Lorrahie, 161, 205
Gloria Mundi, 177
Goethe (quoted), 13, 423, 424;

his house at Frankfort, 74, 75 ;

sayings of, 75 ; as an artist,

75, 70 ; Tischbein's picture of,

70, 77 ; on letters, 105
Goldfish, Burmese, 351
' Good King Henry,' 293
Gooseberries, 129
Gorse, for rooms, 300
Governesses, 17
Grasses, Japanese, 59
Green, John Richard, work on

Italy by, 318
Greenhouse, plants for, 87-92,

105, 109-171, 202, 383 ;

arrangement of, 89, 90, 132 ;

glass of, 133, 134 ; heating, 105
Greville, Charles, his memoir of

the author's father, 112-114
Grouse, sauce for, 43 ; cooking,

62
Growing old, 432-434, 435
Grumbling of children, 12, 13

INDEX

445

' Guardian,' the, 29
Gypsophila prostrata, 139, 167

Hall, Bishop, 435

Hallam, Arthur, Mr. Gladstone's

account of, 321, 322
Hamamelis japonica, 211
Hampton Court, covered walk at,

128
Hanbury, Commendatore, 260
Happiness, the cultivation of, 405
Hare, Augustus J. C, his books

on Italy, 308, 323, 355, 364
Health, 9, 10 ; hints on, 216 sqq.
Hearths, marble, preferable to

tiled, 397
Heaths, 128, 178
Heine, 74
Heliotrope, 90, 179
Hellebores, 161
Hemerocallis fulva, 377
Henry Jacobi Pelargonium, 90
Hepaticas, 48, 49
Herb-seasoning, 45
Herbert, William (quoted), 86
Heredity, 11
Hernandez, physician to Philip

n., 31

Hesperi-i tristis, 288

Hess, Dr. Karl, 79

Holbein, portrait of Erasmus by,
878

.Holboellia latifolia, 262

Holland, Mrs., quotation from
letters by, 420

Holly, for decorating, 143, 144 ;
Southey's lines on, 300

Hollyhocks, mixture for destroy-
ing blight on, 383

Home, absence from, 21 ; con-
versation in the, 404

Home-life, 12, 13, 399 sqq.

Honey, 267

Honeysuckle, 128

Hops, 293

Hornbeam, the, 128 ; weeping,
129

» Hortus Eystettensis,' title of
old book on flowers, 93

« Hotch-potch,' 4

House, the, good management in,

197-199
Howells, W. D., on Florence, 338
Hugo, Victor (quoted), 33
Humboldt, Baron, on the amount

of sleep necessary, 193
Humca elegans, 383
Hyacinths, 43, 13.3, 161,206, 252
Hydrangeas, 36, 37, 361, 362
Hypocrisy, necessity of some

kinds of, 400

Ibeeis sempervirens, 108
Ice-plant, 88, 89
Imantophyllums, 95, 207, 212
Independence in boys and girls,

13, 15, 16
Indiarubber plants, 169
Individuality in art, 380, 381
Insects, in gardens, 33, 34 ; dread

of, 51
Ireland in January, 153 ; soil and

trees of, 154-157 ; troubles of,

155 ; co-operative movement

in, 160
Iris foetidissima, 59, 164, 172

— kcsmpferi, 173, 255

— pseudacorus, 361

— reticulata, 205

— stylosa, 207

— Susiana, 201, 202

Irises, 59, 161, 207, 255 ; bloom-
ing time of, 255

Italy, art in, 310 sqq. ; travelling
in, 322, 324, 325 ; survival of
paganism in, 342 {See also
Florence)

Ivy, for rockeries, 56 ; 138 ; grow-
ing on trees, 155 ; Japanese, 363

Ixias, 175

Jajies, Mr. Henry, on illusions,

422
Jameson, Mrs., 92 ; works on

Italian art by, 311 sqq.
Jams, 299
Jasmine, yellow, 90
Jasminum nudiflorum, 138, 153,

160

446

MORE POT-POURRI

Jckyll, Miss, book on gardening
by, 208

Jelly, blackberry, 45 ; Norwegian
fruit, 391

Jesse, Edward, book on Natural
History by, 52

Jeune, Lady, her views on mar-
riage, 407, 408

Jews, hatred on the Continent of,
73, 74; cemetery at Frankfort
for, 73, 74 ; meat eaten by, 79

Johnson, Dr., quarrelling with
his bride on the way to church,
418

Jowett, Dr., on friendship be-
tween men and women, 420,
421 ; on success in life, 422,
423 ; on useless learning, 424,
425

Jugs, tin, rusting of, 199

Kale, ' thousand-headed,' 181
Kaulfussia aviclloides, 139
Kerria japonica, 133
Khayyam, Omar, 7
Kindergarten system, 244
Kingfisher, the, 22
Kissing, 409

Kitchen-garden, 28, 29 ; seeds
for, 163-165

Label, rockery, 265

Lachenalia aurea, 206

Lachenalias, 206

Lake villages, curiosities from,
369

Lamb, Lady Caroline, 70

Lamp-wicks, their smoking pre-
vented, 214

Larders, coverings for, 198

Larkspurs, 347

Laurestinus, 166

Lavender, 58

Lawler, Mr. WilHam, 160

Learning, useless, 424, 425

Lecky, Mr. (quoted), 419

Leeks, 180

Lemon-trees, leaves of, 286, 287 ;
Bcent in Italy from, 332

Lemons, usefulness of, 267
Lentils, 149, 390
Letter-writing, good, 105
Letters of the author's parents,

103, 106-112 ; of Mary Woll-

stonecraft, 104 ; franking, 119
Lettuces, 266, 267
Lewes, G. H., on Goethe as an

artist, 75, 76
Libonia floribunda, 252
Lighting country houses, 144
Ligustrum sineyise, 378
Lilacina grandiflora, 173
Lilacs, 96, 181, 211, 252
Lilies, 94, 175, 212, 362 ; water,

393
Lilium candidum, 362

— giganteum, 173

— speciostim, 212

— testaccum, 175

Lily, belladonna, 24 ; Japanese,
24, 25 ; Chinese, 133 ; Day, 377
Lime-trees of Florence, 334
Linaria aurco-purpurea, 167

— bipartita, 167

— repeats alba, 173

— reticulata, 167

Linn8eus, 159 ; flower of, 376,
377

Literature, educational, 17, 19

Liver of chickens, 151

London : shops at Christmas-
time, 140 ; destruction of old
buildings, 336 ; flat-hunting in,
395

Loneliness, 100, 147

Lonicera fragrantissima, 161

Loudon, Mrs., the ' Amateur
Gardener ' by, 4 ; her ' Ladies'
Flower Garden,' 31, 89 ; her
' Arboretum etFruticetum,' 129

Louis XIII., copyright given by,
93

Love, Professor Max Miiller on,
102, 103 ; girls' views of, 411 ;
poets' thoughts on, 411-413,
415, 416; Platonic, 417 ; mis-
takes of, 419 ; its development
into perfect friendship, 420 ; its
growth after marriage, 428

Love-in-the-mist, 167

INDEX

447

Love-letters of Edward Villiers,
103, 106-112; of the Brown-
ings, 426
Lungwort, 279
Luther, house where he stayed,

at Frankfort, 75
Luxury, Bagehot on, 231
Lygopetalum mackayi, 132
Lyndoch, Lord, portrait of, 136

Machiavelli, Mr. J. Morley's
lecture on, 319, 320

Magnolia grandiflora, 36

Maidenhair, 90

Main, river, 69

Malet, Lucas, on love, 413, 414 ;
418

Mallock, Mr., on love, 414

Malmesbury, Lady, her views on
marriage, 407, 408

Maiidorla, almond-shaped glory,
92

Mangold wurzel, 293

Manners, 12, 13

Manuring, 159, 160

Maples, Jai^anese, 93, 382 ;
variegated, 362, 382

Marigold, alleged origin of the
name of, 304

Marketing, GO

Marlowe (quoted), 53

Marriage : of the old with the
young, 84 ; four articles on
the subject by Miss Marie
Corelli, Lady Jeune, Mrs.
Steel, and Lady Malmesbury,
407 sqq^., 430 ; misunderstand-
ings between husband and
wife, 416, 418, 419; develop-
ment of a noble friendship
after marriage, 420 ; the
question of love in accepting a
husband, 421 ; the chances of
marriage for a woman after
thirty, 427 ; ' Punch's ' advice
427 : marriage out of gratitude
427 ; French customs, 428
love after marriage, 428
' marrying for money,' 429
taking the initiative, 430

confidential disclosures of past

events, 431
Marvels of Peru, 47
Matthiola bicortiis, 288
Maund, B., author of the

' Botanic Garden ' and the

' Botanist,' 85, 164, 270
Meadow-sweet, 382
Medici, Leopoldo dei, cabinet of,

356
Meredith, Mr. George (quoted),

404
Meredith, Owen (quoted), 39,

127, 416, 436
Mesembrianthemums, 88
Michaelmas Daisies, 87, 91
Michauxia campanuloides, 24,

173
— tchinatcliewii, 24
Milk, skimmed, excellence of,

159 ; sterilised, 237 ; boiling,

237 sqq.
Miller, Philip, the ' prince of

gardeners,' 395
Milner, G., book on ' Country

Pleasures ' by, 52-55
Milton, works of, 108, 109; his

visit to Galileo, 329; his

allusions to Galileo in ' Para-
dise Lost,' 329 ; poem by Mr.

Stephen Phillips to, 329
Mimosa, 206
Mincemeat, 98
Mistletoe, 138
Mistresses and servants, relations

between, 184-196
Mixtures for destroying blight,

383
' Modern Marriage Market, The,'

407
Montbretias, 59, 172
Moonlight, walking by, 145
Moore, Thomas, lines on Love

by, 411 ; 435
Morffias, 262
Morel, the, 209
Morelli, Giovanni, ' Italian

Pamters ' by, 78
Morley, Mr. John, lecture on

Machiavelli, 319, 320
Moro, Ludovico 11, 3c

448

MORE POT-POURRI

Mothers, traininR and self-
cultivation of, 242 S(}q. ; their
relations with daughters, 399
sqq., 425

Mountain Ash, 128

IMulberries, 35, 36

Miiller, Professor Max (quoted),
102, 103, 193, 298

Mushrooms, growing, 134, 135,
179; cooking, 2GG

Mustard and cress, 263

Muther, Richard, ' History of
Modern Tainting ' by, 72

Mutton cutlets a la Eusse, 182,
183

Napoleon III. at the VvHa

Gamberaia, 348
Narcissus, 47, 48, 133
Natural history, its attractions

for young people, 51, 52 ; books

on, 201, 281, 300
Nelson, Lord, 145
Ncmcsia strimiosa, 22, 23, 58,

1G7, 302
Nephrodium membranifolium,

205
Nesbit, E., child's song by, 251

' New Education,' the, 241 sqq.
Newman, Cardinal, on the

mystical meaning of a garden,

348
Nicotiana affinis, 288, 301
Night- flowering plants, 288
Night-owl, or aziola, 349
Nurses, sick, 10, 236 ; children's,

236
Nursing children, hints on, 233

S22-

O'Connor, Mr. T. P., 115
Odontogloss 117)1 alexandrce, 206

— picturatum, 95

— liossii viajor, 254
O^notliera odorata, 288
Oil, olive, 390

Old, growing, 432-434, 435
Old age, 146, 147, 432, 433

Oleanders, 280, 281, 348, 3G4
Oliphant, Mrs., ' The Makers of

Florence ' by, 316
Ollapodrida, 4
Omphalodcs hicilicp, 167
Onions, as a tonic, 267 ; sowing,

294 ; cooking, 299
Optimism, 432
Orchids, 95, 132, 206, 254
Origanum dictamnus, 26

— hyhridum, 26
Orniihogalum pyramidalc, 305
Orobnnche pruinosa, 332
Ouida, her allusions to Galileo's

tower, 329, 330; on fireflies,
331 ; her description of the
church of Santa Margharita,
Florence, 340, 341
Oxalis acetosella, 109

— bowici, 86

— floribunda, 57
Oxalis, white, 169

Oxford, Botanic Gardens at,
394

P^KOxiA coralliiia, 172, 173
Paint, cleaning, 214; for stairs,

398
Painters, Italian, works on, 73,

310 sqq.
Paintings, by Arnold Boecklin,

71-73 ; in the Staedel Art

Institute, 76-78
Pall Mall Gazette, article on

child-training in, 247-251
Pancretium fraqrans, 29
Pancretiums, 29, 90
Parents, duties of, 12-20
Paris, schools in, 120, 123-125
Parochetus communis, 167
Parsnips, cooking, 182
Partridges, cooking, 62
Passion-flower, 90 ; its symbolical

meaning, 304
Pater, Walter, 313, 317, 342
Patmore, Coventry, lines on the

difficulty of understanding

women by, 416
Peach-trees, 135
Peas, sweet, 36, 167, 256 ; green,

INDEX

449

168, 209 ; everlasting, 285 ;
' mange-tout,' 301

Pelargonium, 132 ; Prince of
Orange, 166, 172, 301

Pergolas, 128

Periwinkle, 56

Pernettyas, 56

Phacelia campaniilaria, 167

Pheasant, stuffed with wood-
cocks, 97, 98

Phillips, Mr. Claude, quotation
from his article on the Millais
exhibition, 381

Phillips, Mr. Stephen, poem to
Milton blind by, 329 ; 362

Phloxes, 23, 24, 285

Phomiiiim tenax, 139

Phthisis, open-air treatment of,
78,79

Phylloxera, mixture for destroy-
ing, 383

' Pickwick,' 119

Piedmontese, the, chief food of,
260, 261

Pigeons, cooking, 62

Pinks, ' Mrs. Simpkin,' 87

Pimcs azistriaca, 49

Pittosporum tobira, 279

Plain-speaking, 12, 13

Plants, wild, 164

Platyceriums, 90

Platycodons, 174

Plumbago capensis, 27, 36, 90

— rosea, 59

Poems quoted or alluded to :
' Bethia Hardacre's ' ' I pray
to fail,' 7 ; Watson's ' Nay, bid
me not my cares to leave,' 21 ;
Burns's ' To a Louse,' 21 ;
Victor Hugo's ' La pauvre
fleur,' &c., 33 ; Owen Mere-
dith's ' Lucile,' 39 ; ' How
much is lest ' &c., 50 ; Mar-
lowe's ' Passionate Shepherd,'
63 ; ' Slight, to be crush'd with
a tap,' &c., 55 ; Sydney
Smith's ' Salad,' 67 ; lines by
Lady Caroline Lamb on Byron,
70; lines by 'Bethia Hard-
acre,' 71 ; ' Vous et Moi,' by
Comtesse de Castellane, 83 ;

Cowper on a greenhouse, 88 ;
' It is not sad to turn the face
towards home,' 100; from
' lonica,' 100, 101 ; sonnet by
Mr. Aubrey de Vere, 102 ; ' If
I had known,' by Christian
Reed, 116 ; Owen Meredith's
allusion to the rose of October,
127 ; ' The old friends,' 146 ;
' Laugh, and the world laughs
with you,' 148 ; song of 'Bethia
Hardacre's,' 148 ; translation
from the German, 153 ; ' Often
I wish that I might be ' &c.,
156 ; Mr. W. Lawler's lines
on Ireland, ICO ; ' Snowdrop
Time,' 169 ; ' Sympathy,' 196 ;
on ' Solitude,' 206 ; sonnet by
Thomson, 209 ; Wordsworth
on the Celandine, 210 ; epitaph,
219 ; ' The Angel that presided
o'er my birth,' 242 ; Mrs.
Deamer's poem on a child's
experience, 243 ; child's song
by E. Nesbit, 251 ; ' Betliia
Hardacre's ' ' Flower Chain,'
258 ; lines on flowers closing
at night, 271; Mr. Stephen
Phillips's lines on a rain-
shower, 278 ; S. Whiting's
' Invitation,' 282 ; Southey's
allusion to the holly-tree, 300 ;
Mr. Gladstone's Italian trans-
lation of Cowper's ' Hark, my
soul,' 326 ; Mr. Stephen
Phillips's poem to Milton blind,
329; De Musset's 'J'ai perdu
ma force et ma vie,' 334 ;
Watson's allusion to church
spires, 330 ; Shelley's ' Aziola,'
349 ; sonnei by ' M. B.' on
Paolo and Francesca, 350 ;
verses by Byron applicable t
the death of Burne-Jones, 358 ;
Mrs. Browning's verses on
the reciprocal needs between
North and South Europe, 365 ;
lines by M. Correvon, 376 ;
Florian'spoem on 'Ruth,' 407 ;
lines from a play by Webster,
403 ; lines by Moora on Ijve,

G Q

4SO

MORE POT-POURRI

411 ; definition of love by Mr.
Austin, 412 ; lines on the
sadness of love, by a French-
woman, 412 ; verses by George
Eliot, 412, 413 ; sonnet by Mrs.
Browning, 413 ; Tennyson's
lines on the test of love, 413 ;
sonnets by Mr. Wilfred Blunt,
415 ; lines by Coventry Pat-
more, 41G ; verses by Owen
Meredith, 416,417; 'Flagellum
Stultorum ' quoted, 417 ; Mr.
Michael Field's lines on love,
420 ; lines on disappointed
hopes, 426; 'The Way of
Man,' 430 ; quotation from
Thomas Moore, 435 ; some of
the last verses written by Owen
Meredith, 43G

Poinsettia pulcherrima, 133

Polenta, 260, 261

Polish, for furniture, 214 ; for
brown boots, 214

Pollenation, 25

Polijgo7iatum multiflorum, 207,
279

Polygonum Icichtlini, 27

— molle, 27

— sachalincnse, 27
Polygonums, 26

Poplar, balsam-bearing, 274
Poppies, 167, 255, 304 ; packing,

305
Poppy, Oriental, 94
Potatoes, warming-up, 98 ; 131 ;

nourishing properties of, 159 ;

cooking, 182, 307 ; various

kinds of, 294
• Pot-pourri,'' meaning of, 3, 4
Poulet k I'Indienne, 390, 391

— a la Marengo, 66

— ^ la Valencienne, 212
Poultry, diseases of, 295 ; man-
agement of, 296, 297

Present-giving at anniversaries,

140-143
Primrose, Cape, 291
Primula farinosa, 279
Privet, golden, 93 ; common, 96 ;

Ligustrum sinense, 378
Precessions, 343

Pruning, 29, 184

Prunus pissardi, 57, 169, 204,

209, 279
Psalm LXVIII., illustration of a

passage in, 30
Pudding, fried (German), C8 ;

chocolate, 390
Pulmonaria, 253
Pumpkins, receipt for cooking,

42 ; French, 149 ; soup of,

149
Pur6e, of vegetables, 43 ; of

carrots, 65, 60
Purslane, cooking, 44, 45, 294
Pyrola, 265
Pijrusjaponica, 204

Quick, E. H., ' Essays on Educa-
tional Eeformers,' by, 242

RAn^WAY-TRAVELLING, 321, 322,

366 ; companions in, 368
Rain-shower, a, poem by Mr. S.

PhilUps on, 278
Rambler, crimson, 87
Raphael, his portrait of himself,

78
Rea, Miss Hope, 92
Reading for girls, the question of,

19, 20
Receipts, 39-45, 59-69, 96-100,

181-183, 212-215, 265-268,

306-307, 388-392
Rembrandt, head of, painted by

himself, 355
Reminiscences of boyhood, 118-

127
Reticence in girls, dangers of,

401, 402
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, ' Dis-
courses ' by, 308-310
Rheumatism, cures for, 218 sqq.
Rhine, the, past and present

appearance of, 69 ; Turner's

sketches of, 83
Rhododendron, 28
Rhododendron jasminifiorum,

171
Rhone, the, colour of, 374, 375

INDEX

451

Bhubarb, cooking, 266 ; leaves of,
293

Riccardi Palace, the, 363

Risotto a la Milanaise, 306

Pkiviera, the, gardens of, 259, 260

Robinson, W., his ' English
Flower Garden,' 26

Rochester, Dean of, 87

Rockeries, 26, 27, 55, 56

Rod, M. Edouard, his criticism
of Boeckhn, 380

Rome, violets in the English
cemetery at, 258

Rosemary, 57, 287

Roses, mulching, 47 ; ' Ma Capu-
cine,' 87 ; Lamarque, 87 ;
Niphefos, 90, 153 ; lists of,
139, 203 ; climbing, 254

Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 7, 274

Roundell, Mrs., cookery book by,
9, 64, 215

Rousseau, and his house at
Chamberi, 369

Royal Horticultural Society, 286

Rue, 179

Btcpelia J2incea, 361

Rush, or Italian broom, 344

Ruskin, Mr., on the work of
Burne-Jones, 359 ; on modern
Italian sculpture, 365 ; his
description of landscape paint-
ing, 379, 380 ; on cloud effects,
395, 396

Russell, Lord John, his definition
of a proverb, 75

Salad, grouse, 43, 44 ; celeriac,

66 ; Sydney Smith's recipe for,

67 ; winter, 96, 149, 180, 266 ;
Barbe-de-Capucin, 135 ; dan-
delion, 211

Salpiglossis, 167

Salsifies, 57

Samphire, 29

Santohna, 179

Sauce, bread, 40, 41 ; for grouse,

43
Savonarola at San Marco, 337
Saxifraga burseriana, 271
— oppositifolia, 271

Saxifraga sancta, 271

Scheffer, Ary, his picture of
' Paolo and Francesca,' 350

Schizopetalum walkeri, 288

School-life, influence of, 13, 16

Schools in Paris, 120, 123-125

Schopenhauer, 2

Scillas, 168, 208

Scott, Lives of the Novelists
by. 111

Sea, the, description of, 53-55

Sea-kale, 180

Sedan chairs, 119

Sedtcm spectabile, 33

Seeds, for kitchen-garden, 163-
165; flower, 167, 290, 291,
292

Self-sacrifice, 14, 15

Selfishness of sorrow, 101

Servants, difficulty of getting,
185, 186; characters of, 186,
187 ; training of, 188 ; Registry
Offices for, 188, 189 ; difficulties
of their position, 190, 191 ;
their prejudices and customs,
192 ; children's, 194 ; sympathy
with, 194, 195 ; effect of Board
Schools on, 195, 196

Seville, description of a garden
in, 346

Shelley, his poem on the Aziola,
349 ; his house at Geneva,
373 ; quoted, 422

Shops of London at Christmas
time, 140

Shrubs, 160, 161, 166, 176, 204,
211, 265, 279

Slaughterhouses, public, 79, 80

Sleep, excessive amount of, 193

Sloane, Sir Hans, and the Chel-
sea Physic Garden, 394

Smelling, the art of, 237, 288

Smilax, 90

Smith, Sir J. E. (quoted), 85

Smith, Sydney, his poetical
recipe for salad, 67 ; on over-
eating, 225 ; quoted, 434
Snowdrops, 169 ; poem on, 169
Society, excitements of, 425
Solanum glaucion, 3J1
— jasviinoides, 28

452

MORE POT-POURRI

Sorrel, soup of, C3 ; two kinds of,

294 ; pur6e of, 307
Sorrow, seliishness of, 101 ; self-
consciousness of, 115 ; its
salutary effect upon character,
42(3
Soucliet, water, receipt for, 213
Soup, consomm^, 8; chervil, 03
sorrel, G3 ; pumpkin, 149 ;
vegetable marrow, 149
Spaghetti, to cook, 306
Sparaxis pulcherrinia, 173
Spaimatia africana, 170
' Spectator,' the, 7, 12, 30
Sphagnum, 58

Spiders and their webs, 51, 52
Spinach, 293, 294 ; cooking, 307
Spiraa confusa, 211, 252

— thiinbergi, 279

— ulmaria, 382

Spring, flowers of, poem on, 258
Staedel Art Institute, 76-78
Stael, Madame de, 110
Stains, fruit, to remove, 214
Stairs, carpet for, 398 ; paint for,

398
Staphylea colchica, 252
Statlce latlfolia, 172
Stauntonia latifolia, 2G2
Staveley, E. ¥., book on spiders

by, 52
Steel, Mrs., her views on

marriage, 407, 410
Stevenson, E. L., a saying of his

on the training of boys, 12
Stokesia cyanea, 91
Stonecrop, 33
Stoves, heating, for rooms, 70,

71 ; for greenhouses, 165
Strawberries, Alpine, 384-387 ;

American way of growing, 387,

388
Style, literary, 2
atylosa alba, 161

— speciosa, 161

Success in life, Dr. Jowett on,

422, 423
Suffolk, a garden in, 36, 37
Swainsonia, 174, 306
Sweet-peas, 167, 255
Swift, and his headaches, 267

Symonds, John Addington, 310,

317
Sympathy, poem on, 196

Tahle decor.\tion, 95, 160, 180,

388
Tables for large or small dinner-
parties, 275, 276
Tarragon, 149, 180
Tart, open apple, 183
Taunus mountains, 70, 71
Taxtcs fastigiata, 154
Taylor, Sir Henry, his views on

marriage, 408 ; quoted, 434
Tea-drinking, 227, 228
Tea-leaves for sweeping carpets,

199
Tea-roses, ' Ma Capucine,' 87 ;

127 ; hst of, 139 ; 211
Tccophylaa cyano, 264
Teeth-cleaning of children, 244
Tennyson, Lord, lines on the

test of love by, 413
Thompson, Mr. (of Ipswich),

seeds sold by, 103
Thorne, Sir Eichard Thome, on

raw milk, 237 sqq^.
Thrushes, 22, 94
Tigridias, 31, 32, 173
Tiles, decorated, 281
Timbale Napolitaine, 388, 389
Tischbein, picture of Goethe by,

76,77
Tolstoi, his description of his

mother's death-bed, 115, 116
Tomatoes, said to cause cancer,

267 ; as an aperient, 267
Tosti, song by, 83
Tours, 120-123
Trnclielospermum jasminoides,

361
Tradescantias, 170
Traditions of flowers, 303, 304
Trees in Ireland, 155
Tricyrtia hirta, 24, 25
TropCBolum speciosum, 58, 209
Tuberculosis, Association for the

Prevention of, 80 ; its infectious

character, 80,81,82; from raw

milk, 237 sgj.

INDEX

453

Tubs for garden purposes, 277

Tulipa greigi, 175

— kaiifmanniana, 175

Tulips, 48, 301, 302

Turbot a la Portugaise, 265

Turkeys, cooking, 03, 150, 151

Turner, J. M. W., sketches of

the Ehine by, 83
Tussilago Coltsfoot, 254, 255
Tnssilago fragrans, 164, 179
Tyndall, Professor, on the infec-
tiousness of consumption, 81

Utensils, cooking, 61

Vaccination, 81, 235
Vallota purjyurea, 25, 26
Vajicouveria hexandra, 174
Varnish for plaster casts, 275
Vegetable-marrow, receipt for

cooking, 41, 42 ; soup, 149
Vegetarianism, 216 sqq.
Verbenas, 171, 172, 252, 301
Vere, Mr. Aubrey de (quoted),

102
Villages, lake, curiosities from,

369
Villiers, Edward, love-letters,

marriage, death, and character

of, 103, 105-114
Vilmorin, M., 384
Vine, claret-coloured, 29 ; phyl-
loxera on, 383
Viola odarata, 257, 258, 347
Violets, Neapohtan, 96 ; Czar,

347
Virginia creeper, 362, 363
Volaille, to roast a, 150

Wallace, Dr., author of a book

on lilies, 94
Wallflowers, 253, 304
Walls, garden, ilower-boxes for,

38
— whitewashed, 398
Walther, Dr., 79
War, spirit of, 30
Ware, Messrs., catalogue of, 259
Water-mills, 285, 2S6
Watercress, cultivation of, 57,

180, 282, 283
Watering of gardens, 38
Watson, Mr, William (quoted),

21, 336
Watsonia marginnta, 173
Wedding-presents, 143
Wellington, Duke of, portrait of,

136
Wesley, John, 153
Westminster Gazette, article on

tulips in, 301
\Miitewash on walls, 393
Willow, the, 156

Witloof, or Large Brussels Chi-
cory, 135
Wollstonecraft, Mary, her letters

to Imlay, 104
Women, see Marriage, Love,

Girls, d-c.
Woodcocks, 97
Wordsworth, poetry of, 110 ;

quoted, 210

Yew, the, 154

Zauschseria Califomica, 23
Ziicclie, 165, 327

PRIS'TKD BT

SrOTlISWOODIi A.ND CO., XKrt-STIUiKT 8ijCAilS

LO.VDO.X

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

EIGHTEENTH EDITION. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6rf.

Pot=Pourri from a Surrey
Garden.

IVitb an Appendix by LADY CONSTANCE LYTTON.

Dean HOLE, in an article upon the work in the Nineteenth Century, says : —
'There is not time for further enjoyment of this sweet, spicy "Poi-Pourri" ; no space for
fnrrlier extracts from this clever and comprehensive book ; only for two more earnest
words to the reader — Buy it.'

The SPECTATOR.— ' Space fails to show the excellence in every department of
Mr^. Earle's practical advice ; but no woman who loves her house, her garden, and her
children should fail to read this book.'

The GUARDIAN. — ' It is impossible to read a page of this book without being
{Struck by its vigorous freshnes-, its helpfulness, and its human kindliness.'

The NATIONAL REVIEW.—' Will be the delight of all who take an intelligent
interest in their garden, their kitchen, or their children, for it is brimming over with frank
and shrewd and genial information.'

The PALL MALL GAZETTE.— 'A charming volume, full of useful hints on
gardening, cooking, and domestic economy in general, written with all the grace of .a
renned and cultured gentlewoman. . . . Theappenaix on the Japanese method of arranging
flowers, by Lady Constance Lytton, is also worth reading.'

The TIMES. — ' Intelligent readers of almost any age, especially if they are con-
cerned in the management of a country household, will find these pages throughout both
suggestive and amusing.'

The WORLD. — ' Pot-Pourri indeed, fre«h, fragrant and wholesome. . . . The
garden chapters are truly delightful. Mrs. Earle'sknowiedgeof her subject is remarkable ;
she revels in every detail connected with her plants, and as she tells us of them month by
month, her narrative has the charm which comes of sympathetic insight and true love.'

PUNCH. — 'Mrs. Earle pleasantly talks of a multitude of things. . . , The Surrey
garden is comparatively small in area. It cannot take us all in to enjoy companionship
of its charming custodian. Happily, here is the book, through which ripples the low
voice of a gracious-mannered gentlewoman, who knows most things about house and
garden, and modestly shares with the stranger at her gate the garnered fruit of long
experience.'

The DAILY TELEGRAPH.—' There is an infinite quantity of useful information,
as well as a vast amount of common sense, in Mrs. C. W. Earle's collection of essays,
which deal exhaustively and enterta'ningly with horticulture, education, and cookery.'

The MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.— 'For the amateur gardener it is full of
excellent instruction. . . . Mrs. Earle has, in short, endowed the literature of the garden
with a wholesome and delightful book.'

The SCOTSMAN. — 'The ingredients are both seasonable and well seasoned, and
cunningly combined. . . . Of solid information there is a goodly supply ; and Mrs. Earle's
memory seems as rarely at fault as her taste.'

The LIVERPOOL DAILY POST.— 'A charming book, which perhaps may best
be described as womanly. . . . All garden lovers will do well to find a corner on their
slielves for her book.'

The GLOBE. — ' Full of interesting notes on flowers, fruits, and vegetables, wit'.i
hTe and there some culinary notes which suggest the expert. A few additional chapters
treat discursively of various domestic matters.'

The BRITISH REVIEW.—' Gardening is the backbone of the book ; but even in
the first twelve chapters, each of which takes its name from a month, there are many
useful hints thrown in for the cook and the housewife. Later on, Mrs. Earle attacks the
more complex problems of our sons and daughters, and adds chapters on furnishing and
the sic'*-room.'

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place*

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZABETH

BAkRKTT HARRETT. Third Impression. With 2 Portraits and 2 Facsimile

Lfttcrs. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 21s.
SPF.CTA TOR. — ' We venture to think thnt no such remarkable and unbroken series
of intimate letters between two remarkable people h.is ever been piven to the world. . . .
There is something extraordinarily touching in the gradual unfolding of the romance in
which two poets play the parts of hero and heroine.'

THE ETCHINGHAM LETTERS. By Mrs. Fuller Maitlano,

Aulhorof Pages from the Day-I!ook of Bethia Hardacre,' &c., and Sir Frkuekick

I'oLi.oCK, Bart. Skconu Imhrkssion. Crown 8\o. 6^.
LITERATURE. — 'The charm of the book lies mainly in that slowly elaborated
presentment of character in which no method can rival the epistolary. . . . Every page
in the book is pervaded by a charm which one values in proportion to its incieasing
rarity— the charm of scholarship.'

THE WAR IN CUBA. The Experiences of an Englishman with the

United States Army. By John Black Atkins, M.A. With 4 Maps and a

Frontispiece. Crown Svo. 6s.

DAI LV CH RONICLE. — 'A most vivid and entertaining description, giving us a

far better idea of what the war was really like to the men who took part in it than all the

possible statistics and military treatises."

A LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. By Sidney Lee, Editor

of ' The Dictionary of National Biography.' Fciuirni Edition. With 2 Portraits

of Shakespeare, a Portrait of the Farl of Southampton, and Facsimiles of

Shakespeare's known Signatures. Crovvn Svo. yr. (>d.

I.lTh.RA TU R E. — ' Mr. Lee's work, both for its literary qualities and its scholarship,

does credit to English letters, and it will probably be reg.irded for years to come as the most

useful, the most judicious, and the most authoritative of all existing biographies of the poet.'

SHAKESPEARE'S HANDWRITING. Facsimiles of the Five Authentic

Autograph Signatures of the Poet. Extracted from Sidney Lee's ' Life of William

Shakespeare.' With an Explanatory Note. Crown Svo. td.

THE CRUISE OF THE 'CACHALOT' ROUND THE WORLD

AFTER SPERM WHALES. By Frank T. Bullen, First Mate. The Volume

inclodes a Letter to the Author from RuDVARD Kipling. Fourth Edition. With

8 Illustrations and a Chart. Large post Svo. is. bd.

TIMES. — ' Mr. Bullen has a splendid subject, and he handles it with the pen of a

master. ..." The Cruise of the Cachalot " is a book which cannot but fascmate all

lovers of the sea, and all who can appreciate a masterly presentation of its wonder and

its mysterj-, its terrors and its trials, as humours and its tra'.;edies.'

THE LIFE OF CHARLES STEWART PARNELL (184-6-1891).

By R. Barry O'Brien, Author of ' Fifty Years of Concessions to Ireland," &c.

Third Lmpression. With a Portrait, a view of Avondale, and a Facsimile Letter.

2 vols. Large post Svo. 2ir.
T/fE EARL OF ROSEBERVat Edinburgh.— 'The remarkable biography of a
remarkable man.'

D.4 1 L y CHRONICLE. — ' A book which ranks among the great biographies of the

FIGHTS FOR THE FLAG. By W. H. Fitchett ('Vedette')

Author of ' Deeds that Won the Empire.' Skconu Edition. With 16 Portraits,

13 Plans, and a Facsimile Letter of the Duke of Marlborough. Crown Svo. ts.

REVIEW' Or R E VI E li^.^.—' Thh is the second volume of the series which has

achieved one of the greatest literary .successes of our time. ... As a gift book, or as

a book to take up and read at odd moments, or to devour at a prolonged sitting, this

book has few equals.'

By the same Author.

DEEDS THAT WON THE EMPIRE. Ninth Edition. With

16 Portrait^ and 11 Plans. Crown Svo. 6.?.
SPECT.l TOR. — ' Sot since Macaulay ceased to write has English literature
produced a writer capable of infusing such life and vigour into historical scenes. 'J'he
wholesome and manly tone of Mr. Fitchett's book is specially satisfactory. . . . The
book cannot but take the reader by storm wherever it finds him.'

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

BISMARCK: the Man and the Statesman. Being the Reflections and
Reminiscences of Otto, Prince von Bismarck, Written and Dictated by himself
after his r-^tirement from ofBre. Translated from the German under the supervi.-ion
of A. J. Butler, late Fellow of Trinity College, Camhridge. With 2 Portraits,
Young and Old (Young— from a drawing in the possession of the family ; Old — by
Von Lenbach), and a Facsimile of Handwriting. 2 vols. Demy 8vo. price 33^'.
T/Jlf£S {Lv.ADiNG Article). —'Of great and enduring interest, and must be read as

long as the world continues to interest itself in history and its makers.'

LITER A TURE.—^ Bismarck's own " Reflections and Recollections" will rank, we

think, with that small and select row of books, from the "Commentaries" of Cssar

downwards, in which the chief actors in great affairs have endeavoured to describe their

deeds or expound their characters.'

RHODESIA AND ITS GOVERNMENT. By H. C. Thomson, Author

of ' The Chitral Campaign,' and of ' The Outgoing Turk.' With 8 Illustrations

and a Map. Large crown 8vo. los. dd.
SPECTA TOR. — ' We do not hesitate to say that, however fully a man may think
himself informed on South African affairs, he will do well to study Mr. Thomson's book.
. . . Mr. Thomson's attitude is eminently judicial, and his views are expressed with
great moderation. He is in no sense a " crank " or a " faddist." '

THE MUSICIAN'S PILGRIMAGE : a Study in Artistic Development.
By J. A. Fuller Maitland. Small crown 8vo. 5^.
SPECTA TOR. — 'We cannot leave this fascinating work without calling attention
to the delightful consistency of its construction. The matter of the book is treated with
a lucidity and coherence of thought suggestive of the developments of a sorata.'

OUR PRAYER BOOK: CONFORMITY AND CONSCIENCE. By

the Rev. W. Page Roberts, M.A., Canon Residentiary of Canterbury, Author of

' Law and God,' ' Liberalism in Religion,' &c. Second Edition. Crown Svo. ds.

ACADEiMV. — 'The Canon of Canterbury shows with humorous ingenuity that

such stumbling blocks as priestly absolution and the unkind threats of the pseudo-

Athanasius need constitute no bar to religious communion with the most primitive or the

most rationalistic of Puritans.'

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE RENAISSANCE.

By Mrs. Lilian F. Field. Crown Svo. 6s.
ACADEMY. — ' Mrs. Field seems to us to have accomplished her difficult task very
well. The book is capitally ordered and arranged ; the essential is properly kept in the
foreground, and the writing is clear, sympathetic, and scholarly.'

THE SEPOY MUTINY, AS SEEN BY A SUBALTERN FROM

DELHI TO LUCKNOW. By Col. Edward Vibart. With 2 Portraits, a
Plan, and 10 Illustrations. Large crown Svo. ts. 6d.
ARMY AND NA VY GAZETTE.—' A narrative of surpassing interest. It holds
the reader spell-bound by its intensity of feeling and narrative power.'

CHARLES LAMB AND THE LLOYDS. Edited by E. V. Lucas.

With Portraits and a Facsimile Letter. Small post Svo. ts.
MANCHESTER GUARDIAN.— ' \t is difficult to maintain critical composure
and decorum on a discovery like this, and the difficultv becomes an impossibility when it
is found that these additions to the canon of Lamb's writings are not inferior in beauiy
and interest to the best of his published work.'

IDLEHURST : a Journal kept in the Country. By John Halsham.

Crown Svo. 8r.
PALL MALL GAZETTE.— 'Very c^HTminz. . . . The best advice we can give
to those who like to read about the country is to get " Idlehurst " for themselves.'

THE POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BRIDGES. Vol. I. Small

crown Svo. bs.
Co.vTRNTS : — Prometheus the Fire-giver ; Eros and Psyche ; and The Growth of Love.
ACADEMY.—' In this edition Mr. Bridges at once makes his bow to the general
public, and at the same time assumes the honoursof an established and recognised j>oei.'
PAGES FROM A PRIVATE DIARY. Reprinted from the Cornhill
Mas^azine. Fourth Edition. Crown Svo. 6j.
ATHEN/EUM. — ' VwW of happy sayings, of stories, and of pleasant turns of
ob.servation . . . and amusing from cover to cover. . . . Really a model to uiodein
writers of diaries for the public'

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

SIR FRANK LOCKWOOD: a Biographical Sketch. By Augustine

HiKKKLL, Q.C., M.P. With 2 Portraits, lo Full-page Illustrations, and 3 FacMinile

l^ettcrs. touKTn Edition. Lar^e crown 8vo. i&i. 6(/.
' This is in many respects a model biography, vivid, sympathetic, and entertainine,
and full without overflowing the due bounds of personal historj-. In short, Mr. LSirrell
has written a genial life of one of the most genial and popular of men.'— Times.

COLLECTIONS AND RECOLLECTIONS. By « One who has kept

A DiARV." With a Frontispiece. Seventh Impression. Demy 8vo. i6s.
' One of the most entertaining books that we have ever looked through. Mr. Russell
not only tells us who is who, but who was who. We lay down the book with a proud
feeling that we have enjoyed a short intimacy with every one. All the people who flit
before us live, and some of them live in quite a new light.' — Spkctator.

SONGS OF ACTION. By Conan Doyle. Second Impression.

Fcp. 8vo. ss.
'Dr. Conan Doyle has well named his verse "Songs of Action." It pulsates with
life and movement, whether the scene be laid on sea or land, on ship or on horseback.' —
Punch.

MR. GREGORY'S LETTER-BOX, 1813-30. Edited by Lady

Gregory. With a Portrait. Demy Svo. i2j. 6d.
' Lady Gregory's pages bristle with good stories. Indeed, the great difficulty of a
reviewer in dealing with this fascinating book is the plethora of good things that clamour
for quotation.' — World.

EGYPT IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ; or, Mehemet AH and

his Successors until the British Occupation in 1882. By Donald A. Cameron,

H.B.M.'s Consul at Port Said. With a Map. Post Svo. 6s.

'A valuable handbook to the subject. . . . Mr. Cameron has the rare gift of knowing

what to leave out, and instead of confusing his pages with unimportant details he presents

a clear outline picture filled in just enough to put the reader in possession of the necessary

points.' — Times.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF ARTHUR YOUNG. With Selections

from his Correspondence. Edited by M. Betha.m-Edwards. With 2 Portraits
and 2 Views. Large crown Svo. 1 2S. 6ei.
'Miss Edwards has done her task wiih a reserve and succinctness to be much
commended. She deserves well of all who hold in honour the memory of one who ever
strove manfully to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before.' — Times.

THE LIFE OF SIR JOHN HAWLEY GLOVER, R.N., G.C.M.G.

By Lady Glover. Edited by the kight Hon. Sir Richard Temple, Bart.,
G.C.S.I., D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S. With Portrait and Maps. Demy Svo. 14J.
' Written with noteworthy tact, ability, and discretion by his widow. . . . One ot the
best and most satisfactory biographies of its class produced within recent years.' — World.

FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XV. By James Breck Perkins, Author

of ' France under the Regency.' 2 vols. Crown Svo. i6s.
'A very good book. ... Mr. Perkins' tracingout of the foreignpolicy of France through
the wars which did so much to break down her power and the prestige of her crown is
very clear and intelligent, and his judgment appears to be generally sound.' — Times.

THE STORY OF THE CHURCH OF EGYPT : being an Outline of

the History of the Egyptians under tlieir successive Masters from the Roman
Conquest until now. By E. L. Butcher, Author of ' A Strange Journey,'
'A Black Jewel,' &c. In 2 vols. Crown Svo. i6j.
' Mrs. Butcher is to be congratulated on the ability, thoroughness, and research which
she has brought to the accomplishment of her formidable task.'-CHRiSTiAN World.

BELIGIO MEDICI, and other Essays. By Sir Thomas Browne.

Edited, with an Introduction, by D. Llovd Roberts, M.D., F.R.C.P. Revised

Edition. Fcp. Svo. 3^. dd. net.
'An excellent selection, edited with the loving care of a true bibliophile, which
leares no phase of Browne's genius unrevealed.' — Manchester Coi;rier.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

MRS. E. B. BROWNING'S LETTERS. Edited, with Biographical

Additions, by Frederic G. Kenyon. Fourth EditioiN. 2 vols. With Portraits.

Crown 8vo. 15J. net.

' These volumes are the first adequate contribution which has been made to a real

knowledge of Mrs. Browning. . . . 1 he inestimable value of the collection is that it

contains not merely interesting critical writing, but the intimate expression of a

personality.' — Athen.«um.

MRS. BROWNING'S COMPLETE WORKS. New and Cheaper
Edition, complete in One Volume, with Portrait and Facsimile of a ' Sonnet from
the Portuguese.' Large crown 8vo. bound in cloth, with gilt top, 7^-. M.
•e* This Edition is uniform with the Two-volume Edition of Robert
Browning's Complete Works.
'The first really complete edition of the poetess' works. . . . In form, as well as in
substance, the volume will be a welcome addition to many a library and bookshelf.' — Times.

THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE, 1821-1833. By W.

Alison Phillips, M.A., late Scholar of Merton College, Senior Scholar of
St. John's College, Oxford. With Map. Large crown 8vo. -js. 6d.
'We sincerely commend Mr. Alison Phillips' "History of the Greek War of
Independence "... We have met few books better calculated to clear the mind of cant
on a subject concerning which much cant has been talked.' — St. James's Gazette.

LORD COCHRANE'S TRIAL BEFORE LORD ELLENBOROUGH

IN 1814. By J. B. Atlav. With a Preface by Edward Uownes Law,

Commander, Royal Navy. With Portrait. 8vo. i8j.
' Goes far to show that the version of Lord Ellenborough's conduct to which Lord
Dundonald himself and certain of his apologists and biographers have given currency,
cannot be sustained.'— Times.

FRIENDSHIP'S GARLAND. By ?>Iatthew Arnold. Second Edition.

Small crown 8vo. bound in white cloth, ^s. 6J.
'All lovers of Matthew Arnold and of genuine humour will hail with delight the
republication of "Friendship's Garland." . . . The book is written throughout in the
highest possible spirits, and there is not a dull page in it.' — Daily News.

A BROWNING COURTSHIP ; and other Stories. By Eliza Orne

White, Author of 'The Coming of Theodora ' &c. Small post 8vo. ss.

INDIAN FRONTIER POLICY. An Historical Sketch. By General
Sir John Adve, G.C.B., R. A., Author of ' Recollections of a Military Life.' With
Map. Demy 8vo, 3^. 6J.

ELECTRIC MOVEMENT IN AIR AND WATER. With Theoretical

Inferences. By Lord Armstrong, C.B., F.R.S., LL.D , &c. With a SUPPLE-
MENT, containing a continuation of his Experiments, together with an extension
of them made in concert with Henry Stroud, M.A., D.Sc, Professor of Phy.'ics,
Durham College of Science, Newcastle-on-Tyne. With Additional Plates.
Imperial 4to. £1. los. net.

•«• The Purchasers of the First Edition will, on application to Smith, Elder, & Co.,
receive gratis a copy of the Supplement.
' One of the most remarkable contributions to physical and electrical knowledjre

that have been made in recent years. . . . The illustrations are produced in a superb

manner, entirely worthy of so remarkable a monograph.' — Times.

GABRIELE VON BULOW, Daughter of Wilhelm von Humboldt.

A Memoir compiled from the Family Papers of Wilhelm von Humboldt and his

Children, 1701-1887. Translated by Clara Nordlinger. With Portraits and a

Preface by Sir Edward B. Malf.t, G.C.B., G.C.M.G., S:c. Demy 8vo. i6j.

'Miss Nordlinger 's excellent translation gives English readers an opportunity of

becoming acquainted with a very charming personality, and of following the events of

a life which was bound up with many interesting incidents and phases of EngliKb

history.'— Times.

London : SMITH ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

NEW AND CHEAPER EDITION OF ' THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY.'

In 7 volumes, large crown 8vo. wilh 2 Portraits.

THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY. By John Addington Symonds.

1. THE AGE OF THE DESPOTS. With

a Portrait. Price 7^. 6</.

THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

Price 7J. td.

THE FINE ARTS. Price 7^. M.

4 & s- ITALIAN LITERATURE.
2 Vols. Price 15^.

6&7. THE CATHOLIC REACTION.

With a Portrait and an InUex to
the 7 Vols. Price 151-.

ISABELLA THE CATHOLIC, QUEEN OF SPAIN : Her Life,

Reign, and Times, 1431-1504. 15y M. Le Baron ue Nekvo. Tran.slattd from
the Original French Ly Lieut. -Colonel Temj-le-West (Retired). With Portraits.
Demy Svo. \-2s. dd.
' Neither too long nor too short, not overladen with detail nor impoverished from

Lick of matter, and is at the same time ample and orderly enough to satisfy the ordinary

student.' —Daily Telecrai'h.

THE INDIAN EMPIRE : its Peoples, History, and Products. By Sir
W. W. HuNTEK, K.S.C.I., C.I.E., LL.D. Third and Standard Edition, with
Map. Demy Svo. i?>s.

THE ANNALS OF RURAL BENGAL. From Official Records and

the Archives of Native Families. By Sir W. W. Huntek, K.S.C.I., C.I.K.,

LL.D., &c. New, Revised, and Cheaper Edition (the Seventh). Crown 8vo. 7^. td,

' One of the most important as well as most interesting works which the records of

Indian literatuie can show.' — Westminster Review.

FROM GRAVE TO GAY : being Essays and Studies concerned with

Certain Subjects of Serious Interest, with the Puritans, with Literature, and with
the Humours of Life, now for the first time Collected and Arranged. By J. St.
LoE Strachev. Crown Svo. 6s.
' Undeniably clever, well-informed, brightly written, and in many ways interesting.'

TiMKS.

COLLECTED CONTRIBUTIONS ON DIGESTION AND DIET. With

an .Appendix on the Opium Habit in India. By Sir William Rouekts, M.D.,
F.R.S. Second Edition. Crown Sxo. 5^-.

THROUGH LONDON SPECTACLES. By Constance Milman.

Crown Svo. 3J. 6d.
' Altogether a very pleasant and companionable little book.' — Spectator.

SIR CHARLES HALLE'S LIFE AND LETTERS. Being an Auto-

biography (1819-60), with Correspondence and Diaries. Edited by his Son,

C. E. Hall^, and his Daughter, Marie Halle. With 2 Portraits. Demy

Svo. 16^.

'The volume is one of the most interesting of recent contributions to the literature

of music. . . . A strong .vense of humour is manifest in the autobiography as well as in the

letters, and there are some capital stories scattered up and down the volumes.'— Tim KS.

THE MEMOIRS OF BARON THIEBAULT (late Lieutenant-General

in the French Army). With Recollections of the Republic, the Consulate, and

the Empire. Translated and Condensed by A. J. Butler, M.A., Translator of tne

' Memoirs of Marbot.' 2 vols. With 2 Portraits and 2 Maps. Demy Svo. 28^-.

'Mr. Butler's work has been admirably done. . . . These memoirs abound in varied

interest, and, moreover, they have no little literary merit. . . . For solid history, bright

sketches of rough campaigning, shrewd studies of character, and lively anecdote, these

memoirs yield in no degree to oihers.' — Times.

PREHISTORIC MAN AND BEAST. By the Rev. H. N. Hutchinson,

Author of 'Extinct Monsters,' 'Creatures of Other Days,' &c. With a Preface

by Sir He.nkv Howarth, M.P., F.R.S. , and 10 full-page lllustration.s. Small

demy Svo. ivs. td,

* A striking picture of living men and conditions as they once existed. ... It combines

graphic description with scientific accuracy, and is an admirable exampleof what a judicious

use of the imagination can achieve upon a basis of established fact.' — Knowledge.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.

POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN. By Mrs. C. W. Earle.

Wiih an Appendix by Lady Constance Lytton. EIGHTEENTH

EDITION. Crown 8vo. 7^. td.

Dean Hole, in an article upon the work in the NINETEENTH CENTURY,

says:— 'There is not time for further enjoyment of this sweet, spicy "Pot-pourri";

no space for further extracts from this clever and comprehensive book ; only for two more

earnest words to the reader -Buy it.'

A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections from the Writings of John

Burroughs. Wiih Illustrations from photographs by Clifton Johnson. Cr. 8vo. ts.

' The book is an excellent example of its kind, pleasant, chatty, and readable. . . .

Fresh and graphic, instinct with country sights, scents, and sounds.' — Land and Watek.

' The book is pleasant reading, and Mr. Burroughs is a true lover of Nature.'

Athen.«um.

THE MINERAL WATERS AND HEALTH RESORTS OF EUROPE.

With Notes on the Treatment of Chronic Diseases by Spas and Climates, and
Hints as to the Simultaneous Employment of various Physical and Dietetic
Methods. Being a New, Revised, and Enlarged Edition of WEBER'S 'SPAS
AND MINERAL WAIERS OF EUROPE.' By Hermann Weber, M.D.,
F.R.C.P., Consulting Physician to the German Hospital and to the Royal National
Hospital for Consumption, Ventnor, &c., and Frederick Parkes Weber, M.D.,
F.R.C.P., Physician to the German Hospital. With Map. Demy 8vo. loj-. 6(i.
' This very much improved edition of " The Spas and Mineral Waters of Europe "

is now a practically complete and perfectly trustworthy guide. It is well-arranged, clear,

and concise.' — Manchester Guardian.

THE MONEY-SPINNER, and other Character Notes. By H. Seton

Merriman, Author of 'The Sowers,' 'With Edged Tools,' &c., and S. G.

Tallentyre. With 12 Full-page Illustrations by Arthur Rackham. Second

Edition. Crown 8vo. 6^.

'We have many bad books, and many goody-goody books, but few good books ; this

is one of them.' — Mr. James Pavn, in the Illustrated London Ne7us.

BRITISH RULE AND MODERN POLITICS : an Historical Study.

By the Hon. A. S. G. Canning, Author of ' The Divided Irish,' ' History in Fact
and Fiction.' Large crown 8vo. "js. 6d.
WESTMINSTER REVIEW.—'- An examination of the effect of English literature
upon modern politics, which in Mr. Canning's able hands is eminently successful.'

AURORA LEIGH. By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. New and

Cheap-r Edition. With an Introduction by Algernon Charles Swinburne,
and a Frontispiece. Crown Svo. cloth, gilt edges, 3^. dd.

THE RING AND THE BOOK. By Robert Browning. New

Edition. With 3 Portraits and 11 full-page Illustrations. Largecrown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

GARDNER'S HOUSEHOLD MEDICINE AND SICK-ROOM GUIDE:

a Description of the means of Preserving Health, and the Treatment of Diseases,
Injuries, and Emergencies. Revised and expressly adapted for the Use of Families,
Missionaries, and Colonists. By W. H. C. Sta\elev, F.R.C.S. Eng. Thirteenth
Edition. Vv ith numerous Illustrations. Demy Svo. 8s. 6d.

' Fully succeeds in its object, and is essentially practical in its execution.' — Lancet.

' It is difficult to conceive that its invaluable information could be presented in a
better form.' — Daily Telegraph.

A SIMPLE GRAMMAR OF ENGLISH NOW IN USE. By John

Earle, M..'\., Rector of Swanswick ; Rawlinscni.in Professor of Anglo-Saxon in

the University of Oxford ; Author of ' English Pro.se : its Elements, History, and

Usage,' ' The Philology of the English Tongue,' S:c. Crown Svo. 6s.

'Cannot fail to help anyone who reads it attentively to think and speak and write

■with accuracy and precision, and to the majority of mankind this is the best service a

grammar can render. . . . We should like to see the " Simple Grammar " in the hands

ol every educated man and woman.' — Guardian.

By the same Author.
ENGLISH PROSE : its Elements, History, and Usage. Svo. i6j.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

WORKS OF
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

THE POEMS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

New and Cheaper Edition. Complete in i volume, with Portrait
and Facsimile of the MS. of ' A Sonnet from the Portuguese.'
Large crown 8vo. bound in cloth, gilt top, "Js. 6d.
•«• This Edition is uniform with the Two-Voiume Edition of Robert
Browning's Complete Worlds.

THE POETICAL WORKS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT

BROWNING. Uniform Edition. Six Volumes, in set binding,

small crown Svo. 55. each.
This Edition is ttnifortji 7vith the X"] -Volume Edition of Air. Robert
Browning^ s Works. It contains the following Portraits and Illustrations : —
Portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett at the age of nine. — Coxhoe
Hall, County of Durham. — Portrait of Elizabeth Barrett Moulton-Barrett
in early youth. -Portrait of Mrs. Browning, Rome, February 1859. — Hope
End, Herefordshire. — Sitting Room of Casa Guidi, Florence. — 'May's
Love' — Facsimile of Mrs. Browning's Handwriting. — Portrait of Mrr,
Browning, Rome, March 18^9. — Portrait of Mrs. Browning, Rome, 1 86 1.
The Tomb of Mrs. Browning in the Cemetery at Florence.

AURORA LEIGH. With an Introduction by ALGERNON Charles
SwiNEURNE, and a Frontispiece. Crown 8vo, cloth, gilt top, 3^. dd.

A SELECTION FROM THE POETRY OF ELIZABETH

BARRETT BROWNING. First Series, crown Svo. 31. 6d.
Second Series, crown Svo. 35. 6d.

POEMS. Small fcp. Svo. half-cloth, cut or uncut edges, is.

EXTRACT FROM PREFATORY NOTE BY MR. ROBERT BROWNING.

'In a recent " Memoir of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," by John H.
Ingram, it is observed that "such essays on her personal history as have
appeared, either in England or elsewhere, are replete with mistakes or
misstatements." For these he proposes to substitute " a correct if short
memoir": but, kindly and appreciative as may be Mr. Ingram's per-
formance, there occur not a few passages in it equally " mistaken and
misstated."'

The LETTERS of ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

Edited, with Biographical Additions, by FREDERIC G. Kenyon.
In 2 vols. With Portraits. Third Edition. Crown Svo.
15X. net.

THE LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING AND ELIZA-
BETH BARRETT BARRETT. Third Impression. With
2 Portraits and 2 Facsimile Letters. 2 vols, crown Svo. 2IJ-.
*^* These Volumes are uniform with ' The Letters of Elizadeth
Barrett Browning.'

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

ROBERT BROWNING'S WORKS

AUD 'LIFE AND LETTERS.'

THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING.

Edited and Annotated by Augustine Birrell, Q.C, M.P., and Frederic G.
Kenyon. In 2 vols, large crown 8vo. bound iu cloth, gilt top, with a Portrait-
Frontispiece to each volume, ys. iid. per volume.
•j» An Edition has also been printed on Oxford India Paper. This can be obtained
only through booksellers, who will furnish particulars as to price, &c.

UNIFORM EDITION OF THE WORKS OF ROBERT

BROWNING. 17 vols. Small crown 8vo. lettered separately, or in set binding,
SJ. each.
This Edition contains Three Portraits of Mr. Browning, at different periods of life,
and a few Illustrations.

COIsTTElTTS O^'

PAULINE : and SORDELLO.

PARACELSUS: & STRAFFORD.

PIPPA PASSES : KING VICTOR
AND KING CHARLES : THE
RETURN OF THE DRUSES :
and A SOUL'S TRAGEDY. With
a Portrait of Mr. Browning.

A BLOT IN THE 'SCUTCHEON :
COLOMBE'S BIRTHDAY: and
MEN AND WOMEN.

DRAMATIC ROMANCES: and
CHRISTMAS EVE & EASTER
DAY.

DRAMATIC LYRICS : and LURIA.

IN A BALCONY: and DRAMATIS
PERSON^. With a Portrait of
Mr. Browning.

THE RING AND THE BOOK.
Books I to 4. With 2 Illustra-
tions.

THE RING AND THE BOOK.
Books 5 to 8.

THE RING' AND THE BOOK.
Books 9 to 12. With a Portrait of
Guido tranceschinu

THE "VOXjTJX/TES.

11. BALAUSTION'S ADVENTURE

PRINCE HOHENSTIEL-
SCHWANGAU, SaviourofSociety:
and FIFINE ATTHE FAIR.

12. RED COTTON NIGHTCAP

COUNTRY: and THE INN
ALBUM.
I 13. ARIS-rOPHANES' APOLOGY, In-
cluding a Transcript from Euri-
pides, being the Last Adventure of
Balaustion: and THE AGAMEM-
NON OF i«SCHYLUS.

14. PACCHIAROTTO, and How he

Worked in Distemper; with other
Poems: LA SAISIAZ : and THE
TWO POETS OF CROISIC.

15. DRAMATIC IDYLS, First Series:

DRAMATIC IDYLS, Second
Series: and JOCOSERIA.

16. FERISHTAH'S FANCIES: and

PARLEYINGS WITH CER-
TAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORT-
ANCE IN THEIR DAY. With
a Portrait of Mr. Browning.

17. ASOLANDO : Fancies and Facts;

and BIOGRAPHICAL AND HIS-
TORICAL NOTES TO THE
POEMS.

A SELECTION FROM THE POETICAL WORKS OF

ROBERT BROWNING. First Series, crown 8vo. 3*. W. Second Series.
Crown 8vo. 3i. (ni.

POCKET VOLUME OF SELECTIONS FROM THE

POETICAL WORKS OF ROBERT BROWNING. Small fcp. 8vo. bound
in half-cloth, with cut or uncut edges, price O.ne Shilling.

THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF ROBERT BROWNING.

By MRS. SUTHERLAND ORR. With Portrait, and Steel Engraving of
Mr. Browning's Study in De Vere Gardens, Second Edition. Crown 8vo.
\-is. td.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

WORKS BY MISS THACKERAY.

Uniform Edition, each Volume Illustrated with a Vignette Title-page.
Large Crown 8vo. 6s. each.
OLD KENSINGTON.

THE VILLAGE ON THE CLIFF.
FIVE OLD FRIENDS AND A YOUNG

PRINCE.
TO ESTHER; and other Sketches.
THE STORY OF ELIZABETH: TWO

HOURS : FROM AN ISLAND.

BLUEBEARD'S KEYS; and other
Stories.

TOILERS AND SPINSTERS.

MISS ANGEL: FULHAM LAWN.

MISS WILLIAMSON'S DIVAGA-
TIONS.

MRS. DYMOND.

ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF

MRS. GASKELL'S NOVELS AND TALES.

In Seven Volumes, bound in cloth, each containing Four Illustrations,
price 3s. 6d. each.

CONTENTS OF THE VOLUMES:

Vol. III. SYLVIA'S LOVERS.
Vol. IV. CRANFORD.

Vol. I. WIVES AND DAUGHTERS.
Vol. H. NORTH AND SOUTH.

Company Manners— The Well of Pen-Morpha— The Heart of John Middleton — Traits
and Stones of the Huguenots — Six Weeks at Heppenheim— The Squire's Story —
I.ibbie Marsh's "Ihree Eras— Curious if True— The Moorland Cottage— The Sexton's
Hero— Disappearances — Right at Last — The Manchester Marriaj^e — Lois the VPitch —
The Crooked branch.

Vol. V. MARY BARTON.
Cousin Phillis— My French Master — The Old Nurse's Story — Bessy's Troubles at Home-
Christmas Storms and Sunshine.

Vol, VI. RUTH.
The Grey Woman — Morton Hall — Mr. Harrison's Confessions — Hand and Heart.

Vol. VII. LIZZIE LEIGH.

A Dark Night's Work — Round the Sofa — My Lady Ludlow — An Accursed Race — The
Doom of theOriiViths — Haifa Lifetime Ago — The Poor Clare — The Half- Brothers.

•«• The Volumes are also to be had in small post 8vo. limp green cloth,
or cloth boards, gilt top, price 2s. 6d. each : and in Eight Volumes,
small fcp. 8vo. bound in cloth, with gilt top, price Is. 6d. each ; or
the Set, in gold-lettered cloth case. 14s.

ILLUSTRATED EDITIONS OF

POPULAR \VORKS.

JIandsotnelij hound in cloth ffitt, ear.h volunte containing Four
lUustrtitiotis. Croivn Hao. S.t. G<1. each.

THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON.

Ky Anthony TuoLLoi'ii.

FRAMLEY PARSONAGE. By An-

TK'JNV TR'JLL(;PE.

THE CLAVERINGS By Anthony

Trolloi'E.
TRANSFORMATION: a Romance. By

Nathaniel Hawthorne.

DOMESTIC STORIES. By the Author
of 'John Halifax, Gentleman.'

THE MOORS AND THE FENS. By

Mrs. J. H. RiDDELL.

WITHIN THE PRECINCTS. By Mrs.
Olifhant.

CARITA. By Mrs. Oliphant.

FOR PERCIVAL. By Margaret

Velev.

NO NEW THING. By W. E. Norris.
LOVE THE DEBT. By Richaxd Ashe
King (' Basil').

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo I'lace.

NEW EDITION OF W. M. THACKERAY'S WORKS.

In 13 Volumes. Lar^e crown 8vo. cloth, gilt top, 6s. each.

THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION OF

W. M. THACKERAY'S COMPLETE WORKS.

THIS NEW AND REVISED EDITION

COMPRISES

ADDITIONAL MATERIAL and HITHERTO

UNPUBLISHED LETTERS, SKETCHES,

and DRAWINGS,

Derivedfrom tlu Author s Ori^^Tial Manuscripts
and Note-Books.

AND EACH VOLUME INCLUDES A

MEMOIR, IN THE FORM OF AN

INTRODUCTION,

By Mrs. RICHMOND RITCHIE.

iVThe 13 Volumes are also supplied in Set cloth binding, gilt top,
ppice £3. 18s. Od.

1. VANITY FAIR. With 20 Full-page Illustrations, 11 Woodcuts, a Facsimile

Letter, and a new Portrait.

2. PENDENNIS. With 20 Full-page Illustrations and 10 Woodcuts.

3. YELLOWPLUSH PAPERS, &c. With 24 Full-page Reproductions of Steel

Plates by George Cruikshan'k, ii Woodcuts, and a Portrait of the Author by
Maclise.

4. THE MEMOIRS OF BARRY LYNDON: THE FITZBOODLE PAPERS.

&c. With 16 Full-page Illustrations by J. E. Millais, R.A., Luke Fildes,
A.R.A., and the Author, and 14 Woodcuts.

5. SKETCHBOOKS:— THE PARIS SKETCH BOOK; THE IRISH SKETCH

BOOK; NOTES OF A JOURNEY FROM CORNHILL TO GRAND
CAIRO, &c. With 16 Full-page Illustrations, 39 Woodcuts, and a Portrait of
the Author by Maclise.

6. CONTRIBUTIONS TO 'PUNCH' &c. With 20 Full-page Illustrations, 26

Woodcuts, and an Engraving of the Author from a Portrait by Samuel
Laurence.

7. THE HISTORY OF HENRY ESMOND; and THE LECTURES. With

20 Full-page Illustrations by George DU Maurier, F. Barnard, and Frank
Dicksee, R.A., and 11 Woodcuts.

8. THE NEWCOMES. With 20 Full-page Illustrations by Richard Dovle and

II Woodcuts.

9. CHRISTMAS BOOKS, &c. With 97 Full-page Illustrations, 122 Woodcuts, and

a Facsimile Letter.

10. THE VIRGINIANS. With 20 Full-page Illustrations, 6 Woodcuts, a Photo-

gravure, and a new Portrait.

11. THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP; and A SHABBY GENTEEL STORY.

With 24 Full-page Illustrations by Frederick Walker and the Author,
6 Woodcuts, a Facsimile of M.S., and 2 Facsimile Letters.

la. LOVEL THE WIDOWER; ROUNDABOUT PAPERS; DENIS
DUVAL, &c. With 20 Full-page and 11 Text Illustrations by Frederick
Walker, A.R.A., Charles Keene, and the Author, and 2 pages of MS. in
facsimile.

13. BALLADS AND MISCELLANIES. With 35 Full-page Illustrations by the
Author, Georgb Cruikshank and John Leech, 35 Woodcuts, 3 Portraits of
Thackeray's Ancestors, an Engraving of the Author from a Drawing by Samuel
Laurence, and a Photogravure, from a Drawing by Chinnery, of Thackeray
at the age of 3, with his Father and Mother. The volume also contains A Life
of Thackeray by Leslie Stephen and a Bibliography.
•«• A Prospectus o/tlie Edition, ivith specimen pages, luillbe sent post free
on application.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

H H

NOVELS BY Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD.

HELBECK OF BANNISDALE. Fifth

Edition. Crown 8vo. 6s.

From THE TIMES.—' A book which will take rank with Mrs. Humphry Ward's best
work. . . . The story is a story of a great passion worthily told. Fine luminous
passages, fraught with delicate significances, permit us to understand the atmosphere in
which the two chief actors move.'

From THE SPECTATOR.— 'Very few men and women will, we predict, be able to
close Mrs. Ward's book without the sense that they have been profoundly interested and
deeply touched. We follow the searchings of heart experienced both by Laura and the
Squire with intense interest. We never lose our human interest, nor do the chief
combatants ever cease to be real people, and so we shall venture to predict for
Mrs. Ward's new book a success quite as great as that which fell to her last two novels.'

SIR GEORGE TRESSADY. Third Edition.

Crown 8vo. dr.

From THE TIMES: — 'In every sense this is a remarkable novel. . .. The writer
takes an even wider range than before, and deals with contemporary politics and the
burning questions of the morrow with the veri'e and no little of the knowledge of a
Disraeli. . . . The charm of the novel is the actuality of the personages. Mrs. Ward
has been living with them : so they live and breathe.'

From THE STANDARD :— ' " Sir George Tressady " is an exceedingly able book.
We doubt if any other living woman could have written it. . . . It is a wortc tliat does
her heart and imagination infinite credit.'

MARCELLA. sixteenth Edition. Crown 8vo. ^s.

Cheap Popular Edition, bound in limp cloth. Crown 8vo. 21. dd.
From THE TIMES :— 'Mrs. Humphry Ward again thrusts her hand into the hot fire
of living interests. Perhaps from this reason not a page is insipid. Everj'where is fresh,
bright "actuality"; everywhere are touches of intimacy with the world which she
describes.'

THE HISTORY OF DAVID GRIEVE.

Ninth Edition. Crown Bvo. 6j. Cheap Popular Edition, bound in limp cloth.

Crown 8vo. 2.f. 6</.
From THE SPEAKER:— 'This we can affirm, hat in masterly grasp of the various
phases of spiritual tliought and conflict in the England of to-day, " David Grieve " stands
alone in modern fiction, and must be confessed as what it is— a masterpiece.'

ROBERT ELSMERE. Twenty-seventh Edition.

Crown Bvo. Cs. Cheap Popular Edition, bound in limp cloth. Crown 8vo.

2^. td. Cabinet Edition, "Two Volumes. Small Bvo. i2j.
From THE SPECTATOR:— 'This is a very remarkable book. . . . Profoundly as
we differ from Mrs. Humphry Ward's criticism of Christianity, we recognise in her book
one of the most striking pictures of a sincere religious ideal that has ever been presentea
to our generation under the disguise of the modern novel.'

THE STORY OF BESSIE COSTRELL.

Square i6mo. is.
From THE CHRISTIAN WORLD :— 'Mrs. Ward has done nothing finer than this
brief story. The sustained interest, which does not permit the reader to miss a line ; the
vivid clearness in which each character stands out in self-revelation ; the unfailing insight
into the familiar and confu.sed workings of the village mind— all represent work of the
highest class. " The Storj- of Bessie Costrell " will become an English classic'

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

RURAL ENGLAND.

' A series of hooks of really incomparable freshness and interest.' — ArHENjErjr.
' Books uTisiirjynssed in power of observation and sympathy with Tiaturalobjects
ly anything that has appeared since the days of Gilbert White.' — Daily Ne-ws.

WORKS BY THE LATE RICHARD JEFFERIES.

THE GAMEKEEPER AT HOME ; or, Sketches of Natural

History and Rural Life. New Edition, with all the lUustratious of the former Edition.

Crown 8vo. 5s.
' Delightful sketches. The lover of the country can hardly fail to be fascinated whenever
he may happen to open the pages. It is a book to read and keep for reference, and should
he on tlie slielves of every countrv jrentleman's library.' — Saturday Review.

ROUND ABOUT A GREAT ESTATE. New Edition. Crown

Svo. 5j.
' To read a book of his is really like taking a trip into some remote part of the country
where the surroundings of life remain very much what they were thirty or forty years ago.
Jir. Jpfferies has made up a very pleasant volume.' — The Gr.oBE.

WILD LIFE IN A SOUTHERN COUNTY. New Edition.

Crown Svo. Gs.
'A volume which is worthy of a place beside White's "Selbome." In closeness of obser-
vation, in power of giving a picture far beyond the power of a mere wortt- painter, he is the
equal of the Selborne rector — perhaps his superior. This is a book to read and to treasure.'

Tns ATHBS^UM.

THE AMATEUR POACHER. New Edition. Crown Svo. 55.

' We have rarely met with a book in which so much that is entertaining is combined with
matterof real practical worth.' — The Graphic.

HODGE AND HIS MASTERS. New Edition. Cr. Svo. 75. U.

' The oiie great charm of Mr. Jefferies' writings may be summed up in the single word
" ginphic." He has a rare power of description, and in "Hodge and his Masters" we find
plenty of good reading.' — Standaiid.

WOODLAND, MOOR, AND STREAM ; being the Notes of a

Natui-alist. Edited by J. A. OwKX. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 5.?.
' As a specimen of word-painting, the description of the quaint old fishing village close
to the edfe of the North Kent marshes can hardly be surpassed. . . . The bock is capitally
written, full of good stories, and thoroughly comtnendable.' — The Athen^um.

FOREST TITHES ; and other Studies from Nature. By the

A uthor of ' Woodland, Moor, and Stream,' &c. Edited by J. A. Owex. Crown Svo. 5^.
' The book should be read. It is full of the spirit of the South Country, and as we read
It we seem to hear again the clack of the millwheel, the cry of the water-fowl, and the splash
of fish.' — Spectator.

ALL THE YEAR WITH NATURE. By P. Anderson

Graham. Cro^vTi Svo. fis.
' Of the 28 papers composing the volume there is not one which does not brim over with
love of Nature, observation of her by-p.aths, and power of sympatheticexpression.' — Observer.

A YEAR IN THE FIELDS. Selections from the Writings of

JoHX Burroughs. With Illustrations from Photographs by Oufton Johkson.
Crown Svo. 6s.
'An excellent example of its kind, pleasant, chatty, and readable. . . . Fresh and graphic,
instinct with country sights, scents, and sounds.'— Laxd and Watkk.

POT-POURRI FROM A SURREY GARDEN. By Mrs. C. W.

Eari.h. With an Appendix by Lady Conbtasce LviTo.v. Eighteenth Edition. Crown
Svo. 7.?. 6ci.
Dean Hole, in an article upon the work in the ' Nineteenth Century,' says :— ' There isnot
tlrne lor further enjoyment of this sweet, spicy " Pot-Pourri" ; no space for further extrHCts from
this clever and comprehensive book; only for two more earnest words to the reader — Buyit.'

London: SMITH, ELDEB, & CO^ 5 Waterloo PlaceT

' Assuredly there are few books wblcb will live longer in
English literature than those that we owe to the pens of the
Bronte Sisters.'— THE SPEAKER.

Messrs. SMITH, ELDER, & CO. announce the publication, in 7 Monthly
Volumes, large crown 8vo. cloth, gilt top, 68. each, of

A NEW EDITION

TO BE TERMED

THE •HAWORTH' EDITION

OF THE

Life and Works

OF

The Sisters Bronte

WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Including Views of places described in the Works, reproduced from
Photographs specially taken for the purpose by Mr. W. R. Bland of
Duffield, Derby, in conjunction with Mr. C. Barrow Keene of Derby.

Introductions to the Works are supplied by
Mrs. HUMPHRY WARD,

AND

An Introduction and Notes to Mrs. Gaskell's * Life of

Charlotte Bronte ' by Mr. CLEMENT K. SHORTER,

the eminent Bronte authority.

Volume I JANE EYRE— will be published on October 17,

and the remaining volumes will be issued at monthly intervals.

DU^ The Edition will be similar in format to the
recently completed BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION of W. M.
THACKERAY'S WORKS.

London: SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 Waterloo Place.

£^| University of British Columbia Library

Swok.>DUE DATE

' ti < ■

M^ :> 6 wm

\

FORM 3IO 1

1 1=4

Ilk

•:I
1 1^3

IbJ
ICK
I '!■■'.•

IOC

!^

'a.
i

t--
o
ou

Ul

a:

AGRICLRfURE .
. FORESTRY - =
. LIBRy^RY =

c'6'^a-c.a_