Ex 
 
 Libris 
 
 BEATRIX 
 JONES 
 
 LANDSCAPE 
 ARCHITECTURE 
 
 
 REEF POINT GARDENS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 The Gift of Beatrix Farrand 
 
 to the General Library 
 University of Calif ornia,Berkeley 
 
A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Author of ' Days and flours in a Garden' 
 ' Ros Rosarum,' etc. 
 
 Who loves a garden, still his Eden keeps.' 
 
 A. ALCOTT. 1799 
 
 LONDON 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER Row, E.G. 
 1895 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
DEDICATED 
 
 TO MY ELDEST GRANDCHILD, CECIL 
 ALBINIA ARBUTHNOT, WHOSE DELIGHT 
 IS IN THE GARDEN, AND WHO MADE 
 IT THE EDEN OF HER CHILDHOOD. 
 
QONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE ..... ix 
 
 JANUARY ..... i 
 
 FEBRUARY ..... 27 
 
 MARCH ...... 41 
 
 APRIL ...... 55 
 
 MAY 71 
 
 JUNE . . . . . .89 
 
 JULY . . . . . . .109 
 
 AUGUST . . . . .131 
 
 HOME AGAIN . . . . .142 
 
 SEPTEMBER . . , . .151 
 
 OCTOBER . . . . .161 
 
 NOVEMBER . . . . .179 
 
 DECEMBER . . . . .205 
 
 A MOTHER'S DREAM ON CHRISTMAS EVE . 208 
 CHRISTMAS DAY . 216 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Since a preface is said to be a necessary evil, it may per haps 
 be utilised as a means for the embodying of a few notes on 
 subjects not contained in the book itself. A mong these, 
 it should be explained that those flowers "wild or culti- 
 vated whose outlines face first pages of the months, are 
 not supposed to follow in any order of succession as to 
 their proper flowering seasons. They were drawn solely 
 for pure love of them, and were arranged wheresoever 
 they seemed to suit the best. 
 
 On finally looking through the proof sheets, the writer 
 has to confess to a disappointing sense of inadequacy ; a 
 pervading, uneasy impression of how poor a thing after 
 all these slight garden records are. The flowers named 
 in them so few so scanty the attempted portrayal of 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 them ! Most emphatically so, when I see the sun-bright 
 garden in all the joy and glory of this royal month of 
 May now, with Nature at full flood and flow of Spring! 
 with the great elms in the background, half-drest in a fairy 
 garment of budding green. The severity and fatal length 
 of the long winter endured in the garden though many 
 a tender shrub and plant has died of it is forgotten in a 
 moment ; and indeed it seems on the whole almost to have 
 inspired fresh life and vigour of growth in those delicious 
 things which we call Spring flowers. The rich abundance of 
 our early favourites this year is undiminished. Though 
 long in coming, now that they are here at last they seem 
 more brilliantly beautiful than ever. If any long-loved 
 habitual pleasure of the garden fails to-day, it is that 
 birds are fewer. There are fewer thrushes, and we 
 miss the rapture of their music. Blackbirds must 
 know the secret of some less precarious means of living, 
 for they are as numerous as ever. Yet somehow 
 Merulas magic note is, or so it seems to me, less wholly 
 dear than is the singing of the thrush. The air he sings 
 is so brief, the burden of it so sad ! He only sings over 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 and over, ' Di Memoria nudrirsi, piu che di speme ! ' ' / 
 live on Memory more than hope. 1 Of course he does not 
 mean it in the least ! but so the tune -wears on in 
 sad, sweet, iteration. In the winter , after Christmas, 
 the holly trees in the garden shone scarlet, loaded as they 
 were with berries. We had planned to cut away several 
 branches of them, but until the birds had stript the fruit, 
 the gardener s knife was not to be lifted for the pruning. 
 Yet scarcely had ' the wise thrush ' begun to feast, when 
 down there swooped upon the hollies such flocks of field- 
 fares from the open country that, in a day the trees 
 were bare. So the poor throstles to whom of right 
 the garden fruits belong starved and were found dead 
 in numbers. The motto of wild Nature is always neces- 
 sarily, ''Live, and let die who may? And thus there 
 is many a small tragedy enacted often, in the garden. 
 One of the most pathetic perhaps, when a tiny mother- 
 bird was found dead in a thorny brier, pierced to the 
 heart by thorns in tJie Rose-Home of her choice. 
 
 At this very time, as I write, through the open 
 window comes fitfully the complaint of a solitary dove 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 who sits all day alone in the great red horse-chestnut. 
 His story is a sad one. On a cold March day, twelve 
 months ago, a ring-dove appeared no one knows whence 
 and timidly presented himself outside the garden porch. 
 The bird was lame and hungry, and very shy; but 
 after three weeks of persevering attention from us, he 
 grew fat and tame, and came regularly to feed with 
 the pigeons. Very soon he found a mate, and brought 
 her also with him to feed. Then they made a nest 
 in the red chestnut tree, and in due time the pair 
 brmight a fine young one to be admired and fed at 
 the door. Then all three flew away to the woods. 
 Again, last March, the Dove reappeared one day, and 
 his mate was with him and the young one too. But 
 they only stayed a day, and never returned. And 
 now the widowed dove sits all day in the chestnut 
 tree, and calls and calls. From early morning till 
 late afternoon the plaintive cry is heard: the poor 
 bird is forsaken, and it is plain that life for him has 
 lost its interest. Another song comes now and again 
 from far off among the leaves; and as I listen to 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 the unutterable sweetness of that sylvan note, the old 
 long-remembered lines recur and keep time with the 
 wood-pigeon s music. 
 
 ' I heard a stock-dove sing or say 
 His homely tale this very day ; 
 His voice was buried among trees 
 Yet to be come at by the breeze : 
 He did not cease, but cooed, and cooed ; 
 A nd somewhat pensively he wooed. 
 He sang of love with quiet blending, 
 Slow to begin and never ending, 
 Of serious faith and inward glee, 
 That was the song the song for me.' * 
 
 Heavily has the great frost told on evergreens in the 
 garden. The yew hedges which are our pride, look 
 thin and seared. There is scarce a berleris left alivt, 
 and we shall sorely miss those exquisite carpets of 
 yellow and orange which summer by summer did use to 
 spread beneath the shrubs when their little gold bells drop; 
 and there will be no berries ripening in purple bloom. 
 And lavender, on which we set such store, has also 
 suffered, so that the harvest of its fragrant yield will 
 be less rich this year than ever we remember. 
 * Wordsworth. 
 
xiv PREFA CE 
 
 Yet counting all the change and loss that the passing 
 of the seasons has brought, since those other ' Days and 
 Hours in a Garden ' of more than ten years ago 
 enough remains of beauty and delight for us to feel 
 joyously as ever, the ' ver perpeluum ' that irradiates 
 the garden wJiether it be small or great the Garden 
 that we call our own. Of that beloved spot well may 
 it be said, 
 
 ' An hour with thee I when earliest day 
 Dapples with gold the eastern grey, 
 Oh, what can frame my mind to bear 
 The toil and tumult, cark and care, 
 New griefs, which coming hours unfold, 
 A nd sad remembrance of the old 1 
 One hour with thee ! 
 
 ' One hour with thee ! When sun is set, 
 Oh, what can teach me to forget 
 The thankless labours of the day, 
 The hopes and wishes flung away ; 
 
 One hour with thee /' * 
 
 Lovers of their garden should have that feeling for 
 it strong within them, or their love cannot be true. 
 And now, departing not from the custom which holds 
 * Sir Walter Scott, 
 
PREFACE xv 
 
 with letters as with prefaces, and by which the last 
 word is wont to be the most important, a word must 
 be said for the Chief Toiler of the garden, in whose 
 hands lies the responsibility of success or failure. Per- 
 haps there may not be many who would choose a gardener 
 on such lines as these : not many would, so to speak, take 
 the candidate into the garden, and pointing to a cabbage 
 or a currant bush, give the order thus ' Dig a hole and 
 plant that currant head downwards ' / and if forthwith 
 the man did as he was told without a word, engage 
 him on the spot! Yet I believe such imperiousness 
 does exist, and then, is fatal to the garden. We 
 may love dearly our flowers ; we may know (or think 
 we know), everything about them, and call them all 
 by their names. We may believe we are Master, and 
 that things being done entirely under our own directions 
 everything will grow, and all will be well. Yet never- 
 theless nothing will grow, nothing will be well unless 
 the gardener is also in a sense, on his side, master. 
 When his worth is ascertained, give him a free hand 
 over all affairs which come specially under his control. 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 Give him a living interest in the\ garden by letting 
 him exercise his taste (subject always to your s\ in plant- 
 ing and in arrangement of colours, etc., and by show- 
 ing your own constant interest in it ; and if the man be 
 possessed of good Intelligence and Experience, if his heart 
 ts in his -work, if he has it in him to Succeed, succeed he 
 will. The garden and the gardener will grow as 
 it were, to understand one another, and you to trust 
 and understand them both, while your content and 
 gladness in the garden will increase and grow with 
 the year's increase. 
 
 And here a grateful tribute must find place, for the 
 Gardener, JESSE FOULK, by whose rare skill this plot 
 grew into a Garden of Pleasure, whose ceaseless care has 
 maintained its charm for three-and-twenty summers, and 
 who completes the Thirtieth year of his devoted service 
 on the 22nd of May: with which well-omened date 
 I close my Preface. 
 
 ELEANOR VERB BOYLE. 
 
 HUNTERCOMBE MANOR, 
 
 May, 1895. 
 
JANUARY 
 
I 
 JANUARY 
 
 ' Life is a road, at either end a gate, 
 
 The gate of Life behind of Death beyond. 
 Love guards the path and guides us all the way, 
 As through a garden where calm Hope doth rest.' 
 
 G. F. Bodley. 
 
 JANUARY 1894. At last the white snow 
 sheet is lifted, and we draw a breath 
 of relief as it were, after the tension of a 
 long long winter. It was not really long, 
 however, it only lasted about three weeks 
 or so. And there have been brilliant sun- 
 shines, and early morning splendours were 
 not rare, when the lawns became wide 
 diamond-fields, as pure and sparkling as 
 winter's frost could freeze them. Splen- 
 dours also there have been, of sunset skies 
 whose glory died not until the utmost 
 remotest glow of green had faded into 
 grey. Wondrous joys such as these are, 
 
4 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 must be now foregone ; for they perforce 
 have waned with the frosty nights, and 
 scarcely a regret goes with them, so happy 
 is the feeling of the warmer air, and the 
 smell of the grass set free at last from the 
 ice-king's iron grip. Instantly, upon his 
 departure, little sharp blades of crocus, 
 with the broader pale green shafts of 
 daffodil have arisen inches above ground, 
 and ( daisies, pearled Arcturi of the earth,' 
 will soon be born among the grass. Even 
 in the gentian border there appears one 
 poor bell of pinched and sickly blue, 
 gleaming faintly among its frost-tainted 
 leaves. 
 
 The first anxious visit after such severity 
 of frost, is of course paid to the little 
 clump of Olearia, near the western end of 
 the rockery. A dozen or so of plants 
 were grown from tiny cuttings, sent from 
 the Isle of Wight, two years and a half ago. 
 After most tender nursing they grew into 
 fine young plants, as large as an ordinary 
 lavender bush of the same age, and were 
 duly planted out. Last summer they were 
 literally white all over with little daisy 
 
JANUARY 5 
 
 flowers. In the autumn (at the time that 
 they were sheltered carefully under thick 
 green spruce branches), each little spray and 
 twig was loaded with a mass of buds just 
 formed. 
 
 Alas ! a glance underneath the covering 
 at once betrayed the irremediable hurts our 
 pets had suffered. They were all brown 
 and grey, diffusing a sort of sickly fragrance, 
 not perceptible in their summers of full 
 strength and inflorescence. It has to be 
 confessed, that our 'garden lies too low, 
 and is not sufficiently dry, to suit some 
 things. 
 
 Gentians seem to be always blowing : the 
 vitality of them is marvellous; there was 
 one on a patch niched snugly in the rock 
 garden, that bloomed on for ever! It dis- 
 played its ultramarine magnificence every 
 day for fully six weeks. Every day when 
 the sun shone, I did homage to it. 
 Sometimes the blue of it was so velvety, 
 so brilliant, that one could scarce forbear 
 to stoop and kiss its open face ! I find 
 this in my garden diary: 'Oct. 15. A 
 large blue gentian on Roman walk. It 
 
6 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 shuts up when very cold, and opens wide 
 in the sun at noon.' ' Nov. 18. The Gen- 
 tian there still.' On Nov. 27, * Poor little 
 gentian has begun to fade;' and then, 
 Dec. i, 'The Gentian is withered away.' 
 It grew on a glossy-leaved, vigorous root, 
 sheltered by a flat stone ledge, in a pocket 
 half way up the bank, facing due south. 
 This strange flower, with its movements of 
 opening and closing, and its colour-changes 
 of expression, resembled almost some live 
 sea-creature. In May the plant is sure 
 to bloom again, between great cushions 
 of pink and snowy phlox Nelsonii. But 
 then, its natural life will not last for more 
 than a week or two. 
 
 It is like a ' far-off melody,' to return in 
 thought from the grand deep azure gentian 
 of the mountain-side or the garden, to its 
 little sister of our own wild English heaths. 
 It was near the sea coast where first we 
 met, on one of the loveliest of miniature 
 moors, where a sudden hollow hides the 
 unsightly crowd of surrounding villas. The 
 September sun shone down in softened 
 brilliance, and the blowing breeze put one 
 
JANUARY 
 
 in mind of Scotland. The brown heath- 
 land glowed with autumn-flowering furze; 
 that low creeping kind which inter-threads 
 among the heather, and glows in the sun- 
 shine like embroidery of the richest gold. 
 There remained still some scattered tufts 
 of pink bell-heather and ling ; green-grey 
 lichen at their roots, variegated with 
 delicious tones the all-prevailing brown. 
 
 Suddenly, low among the moss, in a wet 
 boggy spot, between two heathery fir- 
 crowned braes, I became aware of a soft 
 gleam of blue. It was the pale azure of 
 wild gentian. The flowers were opened 
 wide in all their gentle loveliness, drinking 
 in the full joy of mid-day. 
 
 It may not be rare, I believe it to be only 
 what is called * local,' but to me it was 
 absolutely new. It is very delicate and 
 shy and how exquisite is its dream-like 
 reflex of that other deep blue dweller on 
 the Alps ! The place where it grew was 
 still, as might be any moorland solitude 
 miles away from everybody. Only an in- 
 distinct low murmur either of the sea or 
 noises of the town, mingled with light 
 
A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 whisperings among the pine tops, floated 
 through the air around. Above the olive- 
 green and tawny sedges where these earth 
 stars shone, each one single and alone 
 on its short upright stalk, there came 
 an Atalanta butterfly leisurely wandering 
 across the valley. ... I hope it was not 
 a very brutal impulse that moved me to nip 
 off and gather into a little bunch every 
 one of those wild Gentian flowers, and take 
 them carefully away! Some covetous eye 
 was almost sure to spy them out, some 
 heedless hand would pull up the roots and 
 carry them away to perish. But it seemed 
 rather like doing evil that good might 
 come ! 
 
 More than nine years have slipped 
 by since the last of these garden notes in 
 September 1883. A new series was begun 
 in the February following, breaking off 
 before November. Three months are now 
 worked in to complete the twelve. Through 
 all these days and hours, changes of every 
 kind have passed over the old Bucking- 
 hamshire garden. Nine times has Spring 
 bloomed and ripened into summer there. 
 
JANUARY 
 
 Summer suns have burned and failed ; 
 Autumn leaves have fallen in showers of 
 rustling gold, and winter -winds have swept 
 them away. Old trees are gone and new 
 trees have been planted, and everywhere 
 about the place reigns the inevitable law of 
 change. Old paths have been turned, 
 flower-beds here and there have been 
 turfed over, or new ones made. Yet now 
 things seem as if they ought always to 
 have been just so, and no other way at 
 all ! A new sundial, put together with 
 old carved stones and cement, now stands 
 upon the east lawn between the Sequoia 
 gigantea, and the Cedar. Already it wears 
 the look of having stood there for years. 
 There is a motto worked upon the steps 
 in Latin : it means, ' Light and shade in 
 turn, but Love always.' Round the top, 
 just below the dial, three lions walk with 
 solemn step from the sun-rising southward, 
 towards the east again. 
 
 The chiefest change of all, is the creation 
 of Peach Corner. On the sunny side of a 
 very old brick wall which had probably 
 formed the boundary between the garden 
 
lo A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 and the stable yard in former days, lay a 
 rubbishy square plot of ground. Here 
 were summered out the Camellias and 
 Azaleas etc., etc. Here also was the place 
 of dilapidated frames, and all sorts of orra* 
 plants, and empty flower-pots. Old Peach 
 trees were trained on the wall, and we used 
 to think that peaches reddened riper there 
 than on other walls. But the Peach trees 
 kept on decaying year by year, making 
 less hard the decision to remove them. 
 When the time came for destroying the 
 bit of old brick work that was a harder 
 matter ; not undertaken until after endless 
 hesitations, yet not regretted since. The 
 walk on the north side used to end in 
 gloomy shade under a very large old 
 Phylleria, growing in a narrow border full 
 of melancholy ferns. Now, a much-needed 
 thoroughfare is gained by carrying on the 
 walk beyond. The great Phylleria breathes 
 freer now, rejoicing in the sun which, for 
 the first time warms its rugged old grey 
 stem. Excepting upon its umbrageous 
 
 * *Orra,' a Scotch word used for anything laid 
 anywhere out of the way. 
 
JANUARY n 
 
 upper half, above the wall, this tree had 
 never seen the sun since George Evelyn 
 planted the row of Phyllereas, in imitation 
 apparently of that at his cousin's place at 
 Wotton. 
 
 Smooth bare poles alone remain of all the 
 others : yet such is their vitality, although 
 to -all appearance they have long been 
 dead, that from the roots have sprung 
 a thicket of young wood, so luxuriant 
 as almost to hide the barren decay of 
 the parent stems. Since Peach Corner 
 commended itself as a pleasant name for 
 the new * improvement,' after the place 
 was cleared fresh soil filled in and the 
 walk extended to justify the title three 
 double blossomed standard peach trees, 
 are placed there in the grass. In the 
 remnant of old wall, arched openings have 
 been worked with a lattice of thin wire 
 strained across, up which Mina lobata 
 climbed joyously last summer to the very 
 top, and then fell over, breaking in a 
 rich mantling of leaf, light and lovely as 
 folds of green lace might be. When mina 
 lobata starts to grow, about the middle or 
 
12 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 end of August, nobody else can possibly 
 climb so fast. Her flower is of no account ; 
 but it no more is needed than the leaves 
 to which belong so much of grace and 
 charm. In a sunny angle of Peach 
 Corner, there is a William Richardson 
 rose. Beautiful as it is, it comes not 
 near, nor never will, to the wonder of 
 one that grew in the gardens of La 
 Mortola, nearly twenty feet high, and 
 crowned with hundreds of orange-hearted 
 roses. The rose called, 'Ideale,' delights 
 and disappoints by turns in the opposite 
 corner. In the border near them, flourished 
 in the later days of summer, a strange 
 black dahlia. 
 
 It is altogether unlike its name, and yet 
 dahlia it is most certainly, by the leaves 
 and the stiff long stalk, by the bud and the 
 flower and the root. At first sight, you 
 would say it was a potentilla of unusual 
 size. For a dahlia, it is very small indeed ; 
 and the velvet-black of it never fails to 
 charm, whether growing in the open border 
 or mixed in when cut, with very bright 
 late-blooming flowers. In late summer 
 
JANUARY 13 
 
 days, Peach Corner is crowded with de- 
 licious things; there is yellow Cassia, 
 luxuriantly gay throughout the day, and 
 after sunset so forlorn with drooping leaves 
 shut close together like the sensitive plant. 
 Nicotiana, whose dejection lasts all the 
 while that Cassia has her day, but who 
 breaks forth in white shining stars at dusk, 
 cobalt Comelina and sweet verbena and 
 apple-scented salvia dotted over with a 
 tiny scarlet flower, and pale blue daisies. 
 There is an edging of Sea- Pink or Thrift. 
 (Why is it Thrift ? Is it because it thrives 
 everywhere, in the richest or the poorest 
 soil ?) In another part of the garden there 
 is a strip of a variety that glows with a 
 deeper tone of pink. These came from a 
 garden in the Highlands, where the sunny 
 middle walk, edged with Sea- Pink, led up 
 to an arbour, overgrown with convolvulus 
 and white honeysuckle, and surrounded by 
 sweet peas. No one ever sits in an arbour 
 now-a-days. I think they are never made 
 now, and dear old Mrs Sherwood's story in 
 that delicious fifty years' ago penny, series 
 of hers (tiny little books in various coloured 
 
14 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 paper covers), entitled 'The Lady in the 
 Arbour,' could not have been written now. 
 In the woodcut frontispiece, the lady, 
 drest in a scanty short-waisted gown, a cap 
 on her head, and a narrow shawl pinned 
 round her shoulders, sits in the arbour 
 with a book on her knee. It is a prim, 
 precise looking latticed arbour, with no 
 wild garlanding of anything about it. Be- 
 hind is a bit of old broken park paling, 
 and a very black wood. Through: a gap in 
 the paling creeps a little child, as if intent 
 on making its way to the lady in the arbour. 
 I think the idea was, that the lady waited 
 there every morning for the wood-cutter's 
 child to read to it from the Bible on her 
 lap. Not much, perhaps, in the simple 
 little story to interest a child-reader. The 
 charm must have lain in that picture of 
 the gap, with its infinite suggestions of 
 all that might lie beyond the wood, and 
 of all there might be on the other side, 
 of moss or snail-shells, or velvety field 
 mouse among the withered leaves and 
 sticks. 
 
 What would I not give to see again 
 
JANUARY 15 
 
 those little penny books with their Bewick- 
 like woodcuts ! Alas ! I seek them in vain. 
 I can recall a few titles such as * The 
 Rosebuds,' * The Little Dog Flora, and 
 her Silver Bell,' ' The Two Dolls,' < The 
 Snow,' * Sophronia and her Kitten.' Very 
 little hope remains of copies of these or any 
 others ever rewarding my long search. But 
 we have wandered far from Peach Corner. 
 Through the glass walls of the green-house 
 which bounds one side, come gleams of 
 scarlet geranium and of red winter carna- 
 tions. The raised border alongside is 
 this year filled with double violets. They 
 are the dark purple kind that are never 
 met with now. Their scent is powerful; 
 and if a drawback to their cultivation 
 exists, it is only that their stalks are too 
 short. Aubretia hangs over the stone 
 edges of this violet bed, and we half-per- 
 ceive behind the glass, a grove of arum 
 lillies, with all the promise of their long 
 spirals soon to untwist and open out in 
 broad patches of ivory white. 
 
 The great Rhynchospermum jasminoides, 
 which for years had filled up one corner 
 
16 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 of the house is dead. Early summer 
 used to clothe it in white waxen clusters, 
 for our delight. Both the old and the 
 new aubretias are here ; the new grows 
 the strongest, but the colour of it is too 
 much mixt with red to please so greatly 
 as the old. When the common aubretia 
 begins to show in lilac upon its compact 
 mass of grey-green cushion, the image 
 of a never-forgotten April evening at 
 Farringford fails not to return to me, 
 with all the freshness of a dearly cherished 
 memory. 
 
 The straight garden path sloped gently 
 upwards to an open summer-house, where 
 sat the Poet Laureate, discoursing with his 
 friends. 
 
 It was the season when aubretia shone 
 in all the bloom of her lilac loveliness, up 
 and down the borders. Later on, white 
 lilies would rise in tall groups at the back. 
 In the trees all around, thrushes and 
 blackbirds were celebrating the early spring 
 at the top of their voices. The hour was 
 late, and efforts were ineffectually made 
 to persuade him to return to the house. 
 
JANUARY 17 
 
 But the air was so balmy, and he was so 
 happy sitting there, in the garden, enjoying 
 the soft glow of evening light, that go 
 into the house he would not. Presently 
 however, as he saw the sky grow grey and 
 misty, wiser counsels prevailed, and then 
 he rose and left the garden. As we slowly 
 wended to the house along the deeply 
 shadowed path between the trees, he 
 pointed to some bushes of the small leaved 
 laurel growing amongst the others. They 
 were his favourites he said : the Victor's 
 Laurel of ancient Greece, and he told of 
 how they loved the shade, and grew the 
 best underneath thick trees. 
 
 Well is it for us that no voice whispers to 
 the heart, sometimes when we say farewell, 
 ( It is the last time, nevermore.' It was the 
 last time I ever saw the beloved poet; a 
 few months passed by, and then the world 
 was poorer by the loss of him who had 
 been given to live so long his noble poet's 
 life amongst us, ( unhasting, unresting like 
 a star ; ' a star that shines forever now, in 
 ' heaven's clear calm.' 
 
 Outside the greenhouse door, a small 
 
 B 
 
18 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 patch of Guernsey lilies grow and thrive. 
 When I am absent at the time of their flower- 
 ing, a box containing one or two blooms, 
 most beautifully pink, is sure to reach me 
 wherever I may be. In the small Propa- 
 gating House near by, Dendrobium nobilis 
 is richly flowering. I believe this dend- 
 robium to be the oldest variety known in 
 England, and our plant has flourished with 
 us for well nigh forty years, having accom- 
 panied us from the old Somerset home. 
 Beside it in delicious contrast, are many 
 clusters of amber-fringed D. fimbriata. 
 The vitality of Nobilis is so strong, that 
 the flower will survive without water, or 
 even worn as a ' button-hole * for almost 
 the whole length of a day. There is an 
 interesting young tree in a small pot in 
 this house, an infant Dragon Tree. It is 
 a seedling from Tenerife, where, till lately, 
 lived that ancient Dragon, recorded to 
 have seen at least two thousand years. 
 They tell me that in about a century, our 
 specimen may have attained the height of 
 four feet. Where shall all we be then ? 
 The most interesting inhabitant of this 
 
' Touch us gently, Time ! 
 We've not proud nor soaring wings 
 Our ambition, our content 
 Lies in simple things, 
 Humble voyagers are We, 
 O'er life's dim unsounded sea, 
 Seeking only some calm clime : 
 Touch us gently, Time ! 'Barry Cornwall. 
 
20 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 house, however, is a large Eft. I found 
 him one day outside the door, in a puddle 
 of rain, asking, as plain as words, to be al- 
 lowed to get inside to be warm. So I took 
 the clammy creature up, and placed him 
 within amongst the ferns and pebbles, and 
 never since has he vouchsafed us a single 
 glimpse of himself. This is a draw-back, 
 for he is extremely handsome. Black, 
 with orange spots, and orange throat. 
 Efts of this kind are not uncommon, 
 though, perhaps, seldom seen so large as 
 our friend, who measured something like 
 ten inches. They are found under stones 
 in dampish places, mostly in churchyards. 
 The small dry brown efts, that some- 
 times walk in at the door from the garden, 
 are not so handsome, but certainly are 
 pleasanter to handle, and the expression 
 of their face is rather pathetic. 
 
 Once, and once only, in the far past, 
 I found a Golden Eft ! It must have been 
 the Queen eft, and it dwelt in one of 
 the most fascinating ponds on Wimbledon 
 Common. The colour was purest yellow- 
 gold, and near its head it wore beautiful 
 
JANUARY 21 
 
 crested gills. There exists a curious and 
 almost universal ignorance about these 
 our lowly fellow - creatures ; about all 
 4 reptiles ' indeed. 
 
 A boy who had ' finished his education ' 
 at school, invited us the other day to come 
 and look at a leech. The ' leech ' turned 
 out to be an eft (or as the country people 
 say, an 'effet'). Long ago, snakes 
 abounded in the garden at certain seasons 
 of the year. They were most harmless 
 snakes, but never are they seen now, so 
 determined has been the enmity against 
 them, so constantly have they been de- 
 stroyed whenever silly enough to let them- 
 selves be seen. Once, I met a beauty 
 four feet long, gliding through the half 
 open orchard gate, into the stable yard. 
 And in those days, I dreamed a dream 
 one night of a great snake-fight raging in 
 the path near the hedge in the House 
 meadow. Next morning the dream was 
 verified, for walking along that path, on 
 the very spot where the visionary fight 
 took place, I came upon the broken up 
 bodies and bones of three snakes. They 
 
22 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 must have been destroyed by some one 
 with a stick who had caught them un- 
 awares while in the blind fury of deadly 
 combat. I think these beautiful creatures 
 are scarcer everywhere than in former 
 days. It is very long since I have rejoiced 
 at the sight of a snake in some wild place, 
 slipping through the long green grass ; a 
 beauteous wreath with melancholy eyes 1 
 or undulating across a streamlet. 
 
 Harmless and graceful however as is 
 the common snake, an adder is quite a 
 different affair ! No living creature bears 
 a more sinister expression. The form of 
 the small cruel head, and the faultlessly 
 regular and even chain-pattern along the 
 back. The very shade of cold pale brown 
 that colours it, and the glassy green of its 
 under side, seem to bear a wicked look. 
 One may well fear ' a snake in the grass ' 
 of that species ! In the garden, animated 
 Nature is always as full of charm, (at least 
 to me!) as are the flowers. A pair of 
 small call-ducks wander here at will. Sir 
 Francis, the drake, is very handsome : 
 plumaged like a mallard. His partner takes 
 
JANUARY 23 
 
 not the slightest notice of him. She quite 
 ignores his devotion, though he follows her 
 about continually, and scarcely eats himself, 
 till she has had her fill. One peculiarity 
 is, that they are essentially dry ducks. 
 They have a holy horror of water the 
 pond in the field which one would suppose 
 might be such a comfort in hot weather, 
 they carefully avoid. When it rains, they 
 waddle inside the porch. And when the 
 walks and grass happen to be wet, they are 
 quite uncomfortable, and scramble up on 
 to any dry place they can find, to be out of 
 the damp. On the other hand, these ducks 
 will make believe to wash on the very 
 dryest gravel, and will clap their wings 
 and dip as if the gravel were deep waters ! 
 Some very secret inhabitants of the garden 
 are the hedgehogs; they are scarcely ever 
 seen but on one day in the year. On 
 warm June evenings, I begin to watch for 
 the old mother hedgehog, who never fails 
 to bring out her young family (almost in- 
 variably three) for their first survey of the 
 wide wide world of green turf, under the 
 elms, at the northern end of the garden. 
 
24 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 The chosen spot is very solitary and far 
 removed, and rarely does the old one 
 permit us to catch the least glimpse of 
 her prickles ! But the three little ones are 
 not so wary. It is very nice to take one of 
 them in one's hand, and peer into the little 
 black face and deep-set sparkling eyes, and 
 feel the soft under-fur and the little cool 
 feet ! One evening however, (there were 
 but two that summer) the young ones 
 rolled up instantly upon hearing footsteps : 
 and although a watch was kept at a distance 
 for full twenty minutes, the little prickleys 
 never moved. So we left them to them- 
 selves. 
 
 All winter through, up to the end of 
 March, or longer, cocoa-nuts hang from 
 the Rose Arches for the titmice. The hole 
 is always made in the lower part, so as to 
 discourage the sparrows, who do not fancy 
 hanging head downwards. (It is not that 
 they couldn't do it, for there is nothing 
 they cannot do if they try !) . For a long 
 time they did not understand that cocoa- 
 nut was good. But unfortunately a nut- 
 hatch let fall some crumbs of it one day : 
 
JANUARY 25 
 
 and then the sparrows found out how nice 
 it was. At regular intervals in the short 
 winter days, the titmice come to feed 
 about four of each kind. There is the 
 great tomtit, masterful and quarrelsome. 
 The cole-tit, very brisk and persevering; 
 the little blue-cap, most lovely and timid 
 and yielding in its ways, and that other tit 
 which is almost the cole-tit with a differ- 
 ence. It may be the male cole, or it may 
 be the Nun. It was on a morning in last 
 June that a mother cole-tit tiny and 
 fascinating little mite ! brought out her 
 newly flown brood to introduce them 
 to me and the cocoa-nuts. I watched 
 from the oak-room window, which exactly 
 faces the line of rose arches. The little 
 mother pecked out little beakfuls of nut, 
 darting to and fro with flits and flirts of 
 wings and tail, feeding the young, and 
 trying to teach them how to get at the 
 food for themselves. After a time they 
 all flew ; and for several minutes the side 
 of the yew hedge was alive with minute 
 tits climbing and clinging all over it. 
 Then they got back to the nuts, and one 
 
26 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 tiny creature in a futile way tried to imitate 
 its parent. But hanging topsy-turvy is 
 rather an impossible trick for a beginner, 
 so it didn't try any more, but set to 
 work at the green-fly on the rose-shoots. 
 The young tit family did not appear 
 again, but a nut-hatch brought her one 
 chick for several mornings to the rose 
 arches. 
 
 It was nearly as big as its mother, and 
 seemed all head and shoulders. It sat 
 shivering and fluttering, while she dug at 
 the nut, every few moments extracting a 
 morsel, and stuffing it down the chick's 
 throat. It did not attempt to dig for 
 itself; when it flew off, one saw how 
 strong on the wing it was. When the nut 
 is fresh, shreds fly about as the nut-hatch 
 hacks it, and then the birds become quite 
 playful ; dashing after the flying fragments 
 and catching them in the air before they 
 fall. 
 
FEBRUARY 
 
II 
 
 FEBRUARY, 1884 
 
 ' Gloomy winter's now awaV 
 
 SUDDENLY, without any warning as it were, 
 winter is away. There's a new sound 
 in the air, *a new face at the door/ 
 This is Sunday and the sound is the 
 rooks' consultation in the tops of the 
 great Elms (they always arrange matters 
 on a Sunday), while in the garden, the 
 air seems full of the voices of birds. 
 Through the budding branches and the 
 thickness of the winter greens is woven 
 a network of melody, where a thousand 
 little finches twitter, and blackbirds and 
 thrushes just lightly touch their long silent 
 notes. And there's a vision of the sweetest 
 face in all the world the first pale glimpse 
 of Spring with her snowdrop crown. It 
 was but yesterday the Snowdrops had 
 
30 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 scarce begun to show in silvery points above 
 the earth to-day the slender stalks have 
 risen two inches high ! There are pure 
 white double primroses and a few coloured, 
 in every part of the garden, where so late 
 as yesterday there seemed to be none. 
 Even the yellow of a winter aconite, or 
 the blue of scyllas, begin to show here 
 and there. I do not know if the sap does 
 actually rise at the touch of spring, but 
 there has come a fresher green in the 
 broad blue-green iris leaves, and the ends 
 of the long rose sprays are flushed with 
 emerald, and a warmer green glows through 
 the prickly junipers. This first awaken- 
 ing comes rather later than usual. Though 
 the season has been so mild, it was un- 
 usually dark, and in my garden diary for 
 December I find fifteen days marked * very 
 dark.' In January there were indeed days 
 when we beheld the sun, but it has been 
 mostly a reign of darkness, and earth's 
 stars, which are the flowers, are few. 
 
 These Snowdrops! year after year they 
 come again to test our appreciation of form 
 and simplicity, and every year their 
 
FEBRUARY 31 
 
 triumph is assured. I challenge you to 
 show me the grandest bell-flower born of 
 tropic suns that can compare in its attri- 
 butes of perfect grace with our English 
 snowdrop. I mean the large old single 
 snowdrop I will have nothing to do with 
 the double, as a snowdrop. The snowdrop 
 is in itself a lesson of form and colour 
 from the straight, long oval of the tube, out 
 of which spring three sweet oval lobes, to 
 the delicate pencilling in Nature's loveliest 
 green of the threefold inner cup. And you 
 will observe there is no over-luxuriant 
 fulness, all is severely, tenderly restrained, 
 as are the lines of a Greek statue. And 
 then the colour! it is pure as fresh-fallen 
 snow upon an alpine peak. The hanging 
 of the bell, too, is a wonder of firm lightness, 
 so light that with a breath it swings, so 
 strong it will upbear the snow-drift. One 
 lovely detail must not be forgotten : this 
 is the folding inwards of the lobes along 
 each outer edge, giving a peculiar grace 
 which hard lines here could never have. 
 But an attempt to describe the snowdrop 
 must fail; I know of no words simple 
 
32 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 enough, nor any language rich enough to 
 give its perfect beauty. Dear innocent 
 flower of home ! There are exiles under 
 skies of eastern drouth whose brave hearts 
 faint with longing if they do but for a 
 moment dwell upon the thought of your 
 cold loveliness. 
 
 FEBRUARY 14. The happy birds are 
 keeping St Valentine's Day, and I have 
 found an Echo ! There seems ever a 
 weird charm in the mysterious presence 
 which makes such arbitrary choice of some 
 special spot, building or rock, and lives 
 there for ever silent and unknown until 
 awoke by chance, and then is so warily on 
 the watch, ever ready to start up and mock 
 the passer-by with a hollow imitation of 
 his voice or footstep. Doubtless there is 
 some scientific explanation, but it does 
 really seem that Echo is a capricious being, 
 and will come and go much as she pleases; 
 else why is it that, after haunting a place 
 for years, she will sometimes disappear one 
 day without rhyme or reason, and never 
 come back ? I have not thought of it for 
 
34 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 many a year; but at this moment I re- 
 member like yesterday a lovely echo, or 
 group of echoes, somewhere in Switzer- 
 land, I think it was on the Grindelwald, 
 within view of the Great Scheideck. A 
 man played a little tune on an immense 
 shepherd's horn. The travellers listened 
 and after a pause Echo gave back the air 
 note for note with clear and sweet preci- 
 sion; and then from hill to hill her hermit 
 sisters took up the music over and over 
 again till the sounds became small and far, 
 dying away in a fairy-like diminuendo. 
 That is how memory recalls to me the 
 beautiful Fairy of the Scheideck Pass. But 
 our new-comer dwells somewhere near the 
 end of a brick wall partly covered with 
 ivy. She, too, is a fairy, but of coarser 
 mould, and she can only repeat once. I 
 was startled by the sudden mockery early 
 one morning as I called my dog, and I can 
 solemnly affirm that this Echo has only 
 just arrived and settled in the wall; for 
 close by, it is an almost daily occurrence to 
 turn and call the dog in, before shutting 
 the garden gate and we have never before 
 
FEBRUARY 3$ 
 
 heard her voice. Echoes are rare here on 
 the flat. We had one in a gable of the 
 house, but she went away or was lost when 
 the yew hedges were planted. In some 
 counties they say the bulls in the fields are 
 made savage by hearing their own cries 
 re - echoing from the woods and hills 
 around. 
 
 We have had busy days of late trimming 
 the creepers all round the house. Long 
 prunings of honeysuckles and jasmine 
 with leafy splendours of Magnolia, lay in 
 lavish waste upon the gravel, and the air 
 was full of the curious pungency of ivy 
 leaves. Pruning days are my delight, 
 when the laurel and box are trimmed, 
 and the aroma of them scents the whole 
 place, and clipped sprigs fall, and are 
 spread about, strewing the ground as if for 
 some garden triumph. One day last spring 
 (it was on May 12) I thought to try a little 
 pruning on my own account, and severed 
 a long healthy branch of vine, which, 
 when in leaf, would smother a young pome- 
 granate growing on the south wall. I 
 shall never forget what followed the rash 
 
36 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 act. The vine began to bleed ; pure 
 crystal sap welled up, and drop after drop 
 fell fast ; it flowed and flowed and poured 
 from the wound, and never ceased till 
 seven days and nights were past. In the 
 first dismay at seeing this wine of life pour 
 forth I tried to staunch it by binding a 
 handkerchief tightly round. But that 
 availed nothing ; the cambric was drenched 
 in a moment, while down the stem the 
 stream ran on as the poor Vine wasted 
 her blood upon the earth. I felt it was 
 murder, and the vine seemed to me like 
 some hapless human creature bleeding to 
 death ! Through the day I returned again 
 and again, and guiltily crept to the place 
 at night when the moon was shining 
 and still the wound bled, and the stem of 
 the vine grew black with moisture, and 
 the wood strawberry leaves underneath 
 were full of big drops. At last one happy 
 morning the tree was dry. I believe it is 
 only in spring that a vine will behave like 
 this and no harm was done ! But for 
 me henceforth, the vine may go unpruned 
 for evermore. The amateur knife does, 
 
FEBRUARY 37 
 
 however, still work usefully on young 
 limes and such -like, keeping the stems 
 smooth and free from buddings out of 
 leaves and twigs, and the Gardener is 
 lenient with my amusements in this line. 
 
 In the Wilderness (so we name a rather 
 wild unkept grassy place outside the gates 
 of old Italian ironwork that enclose a 
 broad opening between yew hedges) we 
 have planted climbing roses, and Clematis 
 Jackmanni and Montana at the foot of 
 some useless apple and plum trees. Many 
 old roses are at their best only when thus 
 grown wild, as it were, without the least 
 restraint. Only in this way do they attain 
 their fulness of grace and beauty. And by 
 this kind of growth only can one imagine 
 the sleeping Titania, quite over-canopied 
 with musk roses. A white Noisette left 
 to itself to grow up the stem of our stone 
 pine has grown so immensely in the few 
 years since it was planted as to take com- 
 plete possession of the tree ; climbing in 
 the richest luxuriance up to the top, and 
 thence hanging down in long rosy wreaths 
 of exquisite lightness. Yet, although in 
 
38 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 its season of flowering none would deny 
 this rose's loveliness, we have hardened our 
 hearts, and have been cutting away the 
 half of it, so as entirely to free the foliage 
 of the pine. There is many a handsomer 
 tree we could easier spare from the garden 
 than the remains of that old Stone Pine. 
 The interests belonging to it are endless. 
 There are the great green cones that reign 
 secure in the widespread umbrella top, and 
 the brown ones that come down with a 
 thump on the grass when the wind blows 
 a gale, and that are good to fill the empty 
 grates in summer, and to smell of Italy in 
 winter ; and the titmice and wrens and 
 robins and all manner of small birds that 
 lodge in its branches, whose ways are so 
 pleasant and past finding out ; and the 
 curiosity that is never satisfied as to the 
 enormous white fleshy grubs we sometimes 
 see them dig out of holes and crannies in 
 the bark, and carry off in their beaks. 
 And the long double pine needles which 
 drop and lie flat all day where they fell, 
 and bristle upright in the turf next morn- 
 ing after the worms have been pulling 
 
FEBRUARY 39 
 
 them under all night. All these and 
 countless small matters besides make up 
 a little world of interest in our great Pine. 
 The seeds are collected yearly, and they 
 always grow when sown, and thrive up to 
 a certain age ; yet we have not been able 
 to rear any young trees. 
 
 In the Boccage there are now two living 
 proofs of the mild weather we have had. 
 The unconscious obstinacy of one of them 
 sometimes makes me smile : it is a Tritoma. 
 December came too soon, and caught the 
 central flower-stalk with its usual pyramid 
 of buds still incomplete. The plant re- 
 mained in the same position quite uncon- 
 cerned, and has managed ever since to 
 keep life in the buds, holding itself doggedly 
 upright, and in perfect health, with a sheaf 
 of fresh green leaves about it, and actually 
 surrounding itself with a family of shorter 
 flower-stalks ; and after sometimes looking 
 pale in snow-time or frost, the whole group 
 takes heart again vigorously. With a little 
 sunshine we should see it in nearly as fine 
 bloom as in September. Near the grass 
 walk, glowing in bright pink against the 
 
4 o A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 grey of a shadowy elm-tree background, 
 there has been for three weeks or more a 
 large round half-opened Rose : it blooms 
 at the end of a long summer rose-shoot. 
 In the wintry winds it has swung to and 
 fro undismayed. Once or twice I have 
 seen it crested with frost. The white 
 crystals fell away and left it bright as ever 
 when warmer days brought to it a new 
 warmth of colour. Now it begins to flag; 
 the pink petals have gradually hardened, 
 and some of the green leaves are withered; 
 but yet the half-opened rose endures 
 bravely, and sometimes shines like a rosy 
 star. The violet leaves, in sheltered places 
 under the walls, are just beginning to be 
 strewn with amethysts; and the double 
 lilac Marie Louise violets, which we turned 
 out in the borders, have borne flowers as 
 large and fragrant as those in the frames 
 all through the winter. If the old garden- 
 ing books may be believed, it is quite easy 
 to double the single purple wild Violet, 
 
 Y 
 
MARCH 
 
Ill 
 
 MARCH 
 
 ' March comes in with an Adder's head, 
 And goes cut with a Peacock's tail.' 
 
 Old Saying. 
 
 MARCH 12. I waste my time just now in 
 observing from the window, a pair of little 
 blue titmice. They mean to build in the 
 ivy and roses that cluster round the old 
 stone pine ; not, I think, in the rustic 
 bark mansion placed ready for them in a 
 yew tree hard by. These titmice are the 
 gracefulest little things imaginable : flitt- 
 ing about like airy living leaves, their colour 
 a lovely grey-green flashed with blue. One 
 never tires of following with the eye their 
 pretty graceful movements, while they 
 are hunting in and out of the branches. 
 Nothing can exceed their animation and 
 grace as they turn and twist upon a small 
 
44 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 square of bacon-fat* made fast to the end of 
 a long string. This dainty, replaced con- 
 stantly as it wastes, hangs all the winter 
 from the tree for the tomtits' special benefit. 
 They are tame also, and, like all very little 
 birds, are seemingly not able to take in the 
 idea of a large human being. Quite unlike 
 this small fearlessness of titmice is the 
 impudent effrontery of our little ne'er-do- 
 weels the sparrows. Their familiarity 
 seems to have no touch of kindliness in it. 
 I do not blame them. It is the shape of 
 their blunt coarse beaks, that affects their 
 whole nature ! The sparrows' perverse- 
 ness increases, and the friendlier we are 
 to them, the worse they behave. They 
 tear up into shreds our beautiful purple 
 and yellow crocuses, but mainly the yellow. 
 The white and the lilac are left compara- 
 tively unmolested, and they seem to attack 
 the beds only in full sunshine. Crocuses, 
 I feel sure, never before suffered from 
 sparrows as they do this season. 
 
 * At the time this was written, in 1884, we had not 
 invented cocoa-nuts a pleasanter feast, and equally 
 acceptable to the tits. 
 
MARCH 45 
 
 The Sea Purslane also, which luxuriates 
 in our warm soil, has been persecuted all 
 the winter, and is now stripped nearly bare 
 of leaves. I believe this ferocity (for it is 
 nothing less) of our sparrows is to be 
 attributed to the unusual dryness of the 
 weather following the long drought of 
 last summer. Want of food it cannot be, 
 for all our beloved birds have been fed 
 throughout the winter. Moisture is sought 
 by them in the honey-drop within the 
 crocus flower, and in the rather fleshy 
 foliage of the sea purslane. In the spring 
 the sparrows will amply pay for the sorrows 
 they cause us now, and the more sparrows' 
 nests, the fewer grubs there will be to plague 
 us. It is remarkable that the Gardener is 
 not unfriendly to our sparrows. In his 
 judgment their extreme cleverness hides a 
 multitude of sins. They have now actually 
 set to work to master the Indian corn 
 which we give to the pigeons in the hope 
 that sparrows will never find the way to 
 swallow it. Their perseverance in trying to 
 get at the core of it, without holding down 
 the grain as anyone else would, with one 
 
46 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 foot, is worthy of a better cause. The 
 sparrow's eye for colour (one would guess 
 that flaunting yellow would be their chosen 
 colour ! ) is not the same as the hive-bee's. 
 Bees seem to avoid the yellow Crocus, 
 while they love the white, the purple, and 
 the striped. I have watched them of late 
 when the sun has been warm and bright. 
 I do not know if hive-bees carry on into 
 the summer their objection to yellow ; it is 
 certain, however, that in sunflower time 
 the yellow sunflowers are visited by 
 Humble-bees only. One division of our 
 crocus enemies has been partly check- 
 mated by the simple plan of putting in the 
 bulbs very deep ; the mice do not quite so 
 easily get at them.* Numbers have also 
 been successfully trapped. Hares, on the 
 other hand, have annoyed us more than 
 usual. A long row of fine young wall- 
 flowers have been devoured by them, 
 besides scores of carnations in the Boccage 
 the hares and I agreeing in our love for 
 wallflowers, only their fancy is for the 
 
 * A more successful plan is to stretch black thread 
 from little sticks across the flowers. 
 
MARCH 47 
 
 leaves, not the flowers. Poor hares ! It 
 is little consolation for our loss to remember 
 that they were all shot and roasted for 
 dinner, after they had done the mischief ! 
 
 Charming as masses and lines of crocus 
 are in the borders and parterres, to enjoy 
 them thoroughly they must be growing in 
 the green grass, and they must be spread- 
 ing themselves wide open to the sunshine 
 at mid-day. The orchard is gay with 
 broad patches of yellow crocus remnants 
 torn from the field of the Cloth of Gold ; 
 and the banks of our tiny watercourse is a 
 long green cloth laid out with services of 
 amethyst and silver cups. Within the 
 garden pure white and golden crocus 
 sprinkle the turf round trees and else- 
 where, where their leaves need not be 
 mown off too soon. 
 
 All this should be in the past tense, for 
 the crocus has already seen its prime, and 
 the remaining few look pinched under the 
 east wind's bane. How strangely vivid, 
 with how great tenacity, will some very 
 little unimportant scene or feeling some- 
 times cling to the memory through all the 
 
48 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 years ! Thus, with February's first purple 
 crocus, for me unfailingly arises in a far-off 
 tender light the vision of some forgotten 
 garden wilderness enclosed with trees,, 
 beyond the town, where my mother and I 
 once walked together. There, as we rested 
 under the trees, appeared before us a 
 solitary purple Crocus, shining on the 
 grassy lawn ! After years, whose number 
 one scarcely cares to count, that moment's 
 joy is in sober truth recalled as the most 
 exquisite of a whole long lifetime. 
 
 On the old brick south wall of the 
 kitchen garden our only plant of Pyrus 
 japonica is arrayed in finer bloom than 
 usual. Hardly an inch of brown wood 
 shows between the clustering red of a 
 thousand rich and brilliant blossoms. Last 
 autumn the fruit ripened (or, to be truer, 
 hardened) upon it in large green apples 
 of a pippin shape. What an old-fashioned 
 shrub it is ! and how seldom seen but in 
 old gardens : and how, in these days, one 
 never thinks of planting a new one. About 
 the roots of the Pyrus japonica, and along 
 the narrow border at the foot of the wall, 
 
MARCH 49 
 
 is a delicious tangle of iris, violets, and 
 rosemary, narcissus of the less common 
 kinds, with many a sweet South -loving 
 plant that has got there one knows not 
 when nor how. Amongst them is a star 
 of Bethlehem, and in the wall itself grow 
 bunches of yellow fumitory (Corydalis 
 lutea) just coming into flower ; and there 
 is a seedling holly, and a little starved 
 yew niched in a cranny near the top, and 
 there are patterns in grey lichen scrawled 
 upon the red brick. The polyanthus 
 narcissus, under the wall roots that have 
 been turned out of the greenhouse after 
 flowering in days gone by are luxuriantly 
 beautiful this season. Their petals are the 
 clearest yellow, and the cups deep orange, 
 most richly scented. The orange centres 
 seem to gather in and hoard all the sun- 
 shine that has ever shone upon them, 
 giving it out again in living sun-gold, even 
 in dullest weather. 
 
 The delicate lilac flowers of Iris ensata, 
 sheltered among the thick-growing bushes 
 of dark green leaves, are blooming abun- 
 dantly. There have been hundreds of 
 
50 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 blossoms, and we have never been without 
 them since December, for we had them 
 under glass all January till February, when 
 we began to perceive a lilac glow among 
 the leaves in the open air. These Irises 
 bloom here at precisely the same time 
 with those of the same kind in their own 
 warm sun-steeped land. They could not 
 flower here so early but for the sheafs of 
 sheltering leaves which almost hide them 
 from sight. Few things look more charm- 
 ing for the table than the transiently per- 
 fumed iris ensata ! One evening we had 
 them arranged in knots, with mignonette 
 and sprays of lemon-scented pelargonium, 
 toned with the brown of Cryptomeria 
 elegans. One often hears a gardener's 
 arrangement of flowers reviled as stiff, or 
 garish ; yet this lovely contrast of lilac, 
 green, and brown was only a gardener's 
 nosegay ! As a decoration it might have 
 been deemed pallid, but for the presence of 
 glasses filled with deep coloured prim- 
 roses, Dog-tooth violets, and Glory of the 
 snow, all resting against the brown. The 
 tips of Cryptomeria used in this way are 
 
MARCH $ I 
 
 neither stiff nor heavy, but full of the 
 lightest grace. 
 
 MARCH 2 1 . Spring began this morning * 
 before 6 A.M. The tame robin sang such 
 a brilliant brief fantasia in the magnolia just 
 outside my window, that when the shutters 
 were opened it was a surprise to see heavy 
 snow falling. Snow is as good as change 
 of scene to us home-keeping folk. Our 
 view from the windows is transformed. 
 The large Ilex oak drooping under its 
 load of snow looks more like a yew, or 
 some kind of fir tree. The outline and 
 character of the Stone pine is entirely 
 changed. 'Deborah' and the sun dial 
 stand out boldly sculptured in black and 
 white, as every day they certainly are not. 
 The parterre with its crocuses is gone; 
 the grass and the walks are nowhere. 
 Branching elms in the background are 
 almost as much increased in size by the 
 snow crystalising over every slender twig, 
 as in summer by their leafy millions. But 
 all this proved only a dissolving view : by 
 noon the grass appeared again, green as 
 * Spring is said to commence 2 1st March. 
 
52 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 an emerald, and the thrushes were loudly 
 rejoicing. The yews will smoke no more 
 after such heavy snow ! On bright after- 
 noons, chiefly during the earlier part of 
 the month, it was exactly as if smouldering 
 fires burnt within some of them so hidden 
 were they in clouds of smoke. There 
 must have been always a light breeze 
 stirring at the time ; yet the air would 
 mostly seem unusually still when this 
 smoke arose. And then, when it cleared 
 off, the yews were like * dusty millers/ 
 powdered over with pollen. One or two 
 of the younger yews (they never flower 
 profusely until they are many years older) 
 give ' the idea ' of bursting into fresh green 
 buds of spring all over them, at the points 
 of almost every twig. Buds, however, 
 they are not, only mischievous imitations ; 
 or a sort of gall made by insects (mites). 
 Nothing can be discovered by pulling 
 these buds to pieces ; at least, after minute 
 examinations, we have never been able 
 to find the insect inside. When the days 
 are warm and dry I have often worked 
 for an hour or so at one time, pulling off 
 
MARCH 53 
 
 the growths as high as I could reach all 
 round the trees, but the result is small ; 
 they soon come again as thick as ever. 
 
 My favourite Garrya elliptica is in beauty 
 now, growing against the east wall of the 
 entrance court. A soft veil of catkins 
 enshrouds the tree from its top down- 
 wards ; each long catkin, just tinged with 
 a rosy bloom, is delicately outlined against 
 the dark round-leaved foliage. I can fancy 
 the Garrya standing alone, thus softly 
 veiled, upon the open sward how beauti- 
 ful it would be ! But if this ever happens 
 I do not know, for in our climate it seems 
 to need the support or shelter of a wall. 
 I have been going round the garden in the 
 bleak windy sunshine ; and I think our 
 flowers of March are nearly many enough 
 and varied enough to satisfy even our 
 immoderate desires. 
 
 The straight walk in the kitchen garden 
 never looks fairer, with all its roses, than 
 now in the simple green and gold of 
 daffodil clumps all the way on both sides. 
 All sorts of daffodils are everywhere, from 
 the large heavy headed double ones, to 
 
54 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 the diminutive brilliant little Hoop petti- 
 coat, only three inches high. There is 
 Pulmonaria, Triteleia, and white violets 
 and patches of white Arabis, and primroses 
 just becoming plentiful. There is a long, 
 blue-rimmed border of Grape Hyacinth, and 
 another of metallic-shining Scillas. Blue 
 prevails indeed blue Scilla and Chiono- 
 doxa, blue hepatica, blue Omphalodes. 
 Soon there will be deep blue gentian, be- 
 side which all other blues will pale. Dear 
 little cheerful-eyed Omphalodes! The 
 old plants have worn themselves out, but 
 young roots are spreading over some stones 
 near the Roman Walk, and flowering with 
 enthusiastic vigour. A charming Hungarian 
 lady the other day embraced it (so to 
 speak) with delight. She said Ompha- 
 lodes verna grew wild in her native woods. 
 Amongst the rarer gems must be counted 
 Sisyrinchium grandiflorum, or better 
 named, Satin-flower, with its exquisitely 
 shaped purple bells, like hanging crocus 
 flowers ; and on the rounded south side 
 of Glorietta is a group of magnificently 
 fiery, scarlet anemones. 
 
APRIL 
 
IV 
 APRIL 
 
 4 " Ay, there's easting in it," 
 The white-haired sailor said, 
 As he looked on the sweep of tossing grey 
 And the flying flakes of snowy spray, 
 Wind-borne o'er the great pier-head. 
 
 4 " Ay, there's easting in it," 
 
 Said the herd, who his moor-watch kept ; 
 " The lambs crouch clustering under the Oak, 
 
 And last night a sound like sea-waves broke 
 
 As the wind my turf-walls swept." ' 
 
 APRIL 3. Yes, * there's easting in it/ this 
 dry hard day, under the hard pitiless blue. 
 Day after day, a cold sun shines down 
 upon the parched and dusty world. The 
 sun shines, but there is none of the sove- 
 reign delight of sunshine. The sky is as 
 steel and brass; the grass is white with 
 frost morning after morning, and there has 
 not fallen one April shower to set the sap 
 
58 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 running within the black bare trees and 
 loose the young leaves and blossoms bound 
 up within their hard buds. There is no 
 life in the fields, no balm in the air, * no- 
 thing grows,' as the saying is. Everything 
 looks pinched and unhappy, and I think 
 no living thing enjoys the east wind, 
 except perhaps the skylarks. They, dear 
 souls, spring up and glory in the open 
 heaven above them. They rise quivering 
 and carolling up to the very gates ! Doubt- 
 less they in their joy are singing, 'Blow, 
 thou wind of God ! ' How beautiful are 
 the daffodils just now; and how their pure 
 cold yellow seems in harmony with the 
 freezing sunshine ! But they are none the 
 better for it, and never were there so 
 many imperfect, unaccomplished flowers 
 among them. One or two in every clump 
 come out uncomfortably green, or open 
 unkindly, and as if they could not make 
 up their minds to be either good green 
 leaves, or fair yellow flowers ! These un- 
 happy ones are rather amusing, but they 
 are certainly very ugly : * there's easting in 
 it.' The great mass of daffodils, however, 
 
APRIL 59 
 
 were never finer. I am comparing the 
 common single long-tubed daffodil (Tela- 
 monius plenus) with Sir Watkin. The 
 former would surely be thought almost the 
 handsomer of the two, but for Sir WatkhVs 
 star-like corolla and erect carriage. Our 
 Cernuus, a new possession, is in bloom : 
 it seems almost too delicate for the open 
 border. But in the Boccage, there grows 
 the joy of my eyes, a lovely group of 
 cream-white daffodils ! 
 
 The joy of daffodils is not to be forbid, 
 and their season is the most beautiful 
 of all the year ! Thus did my heart 
 decide this very evening as I wandered 
 amidst a flood of daffodils overflowing 
 every corner of the garden, surging over 
 every border, sprinkling every breadth 
 of green grass, in all the crystal clear- 
 ness of their yellow gold. The young 
 moon showered silver all about them, the 
 thrushes sang aloud their praises far 
 and near. Millions of daffodils joyously 
 blooming everywhere. Yet it is certain 
 that as soon as the gentians come, or the 
 apple-blossoms, or the hawthorn, or the 
 
60 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 rose, I shall feel just the same, and shall 
 say again, * This is the most beautiful time 
 of all ! ' So was it when crocuses, yellow, 
 white, and purple, burst into splendour 
 in those wintry days of March ; so was it 
 when long lines of Scylla, made the whole 
 garden bluely beautiful. But the intense 
 purity of these daffodils takes the fancy 
 and holds it with a spell more powerful 
 than the magic of all other colours. Dur- 
 ing sixteen years have the daffodils 
 silently multiplied as they grew in the 
 garden. In all these years the different 
 strains have never mixed. The fine old 
 double-flowering Telamon, still crowds 
 broad reaches of the lawn, with inter- 
 mingling groups of single long-cupped 
 flowers; the double are still richly double, 
 the single yet remain austerely single 
 unchanged, and as I believe firmly un- 
 changeable. My favourite star-shaped 
 short-cupped daffodils, however, go on 
 doubling for ever. In sheltered corners 
 there are choice collections of the rarer 
 kinds. There is the coy Princess : 
 Obvalaria and Leedsii, and pallid down- 
 
APRIL 6 1 
 
 cast cernuous, etc., etc. Little pumilis is 
 going off, after taking part in the soft 
 colour-chord touched by Glory of the 
 snow (Chionodoxia) blue Hepatica and 
 Sysirinchium. 
 
 On the grass in the orchard, are 
 wild Lent lilies, transplanted hither 
 from the sweet wild meadows of Derby- 
 shire. They are modest little things, 
 most palely delicate in colour, their bent 
 heads all turned one way, south-east. 
 There is something peculiarly neat and 
 pretty in the half-opened bud, the long 
 tube being fu/Ied round the edge as if drawn 
 in by a thread a bit of Dame Nature's 
 neatest needlework ! We are trying these 
 wild ones also in a garden border, but 
 I do not expect them ever to double.* 
 In the broad new border of the Boccage 
 and in the Fantaisie, heavily scented 
 jonquils flourish in perfect peace, their 
 deep content plainly visible, as it always is 
 with some flowers. ' Blue Roses ' would 
 
 * In 1895, several years after this was written, the 
 Lent lilies from Derbyshire, planted in the border, 
 still remain single. E. V. B. 
 
62 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 give one little pleasure ; but how exquisite 
 is the idea of a White Jonquil- ! There are 
 times when I am possessed with the wish 
 for coloured flowers to be white. A 
 white Camellia japonica ! a white Chinese 
 currant ! At this moment, however, a 
 crowd of pure white daffodils is the desire 
 of my heart. In the garden of our castle 
 in Spain there shall be a long green walk, 
 bordered thickly on each side, under the 
 pomegranate trees, with white and golden 
 daffodils, both single and double. 
 
 In the orchard there is a green walk 
 where one passes through the shimmer- 
 ing pink of large bushes of Chinese or 
 Californian currant (ribes sanguineum). As 
 yet they are only in rosy bud ; but there is 
 something fairy-like in the extreme light- 
 ness of these interlacing branches, tipped 
 with clustered points of pink ; it is better 
 than when the flowers are full, for-then a 
 little green begins also to show and there 
 is something gone from the beauty of them. 
 Better still than the magic of this roseate 
 mist, there is a certain sweet and silvery 
 charm begun to spread over all the garden, 
 
APRIL 63 
 
 quite low on the ground, almost under 
 foot. The seeds may have lain there long, 
 first carried by the birds, perhaps. We 
 have never before observed this overspread- 
 ing of White Violets. In every corner 
 where there may be any little bit of 
 border not dug under trees, even niched 
 into the walls in all parts of the garden 
 are white violets. We should not be 
 content with always white instead of 
 purple ; yet there is some kind of strange 
 little spell about the white, so that some- 
 times I am compelled to put on my 
 hat and hasten out into the garden, just 
 for a moment's look at their fresh pleasant 
 faces, and to inhale their scent. There is 
 no 'easting' in their perfume, whether 
 they come white or blue ! and indeed I 
 think these white violets must be here 
 < for luck ! ' It matters not if we have 
 to-day's chill sunlight, or if a black north- 
 easter blows, the silvery violet patches 
 shine on unheeding in serene and genial 
 lowliness. Ah, how ungrudgingly would 
 we not if this might be pass them on 
 into the grey life of one or two, to cheer 
 
64 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 them for a space, when they sigh, ( Ay, 
 there's easting in it,' .... sighing sadly 
 
 4 O for the perfect work of time ; 
 O for the other shore ! 
 Where the riddles of years are read at last 
 And the east wind blows no more.' 
 
 Violets are very little flowers, but some- 
 how there's much to say about them ! 
 Under a sunny hedgerow of the Walk 
 meadow, blue and white violets grow to- 
 gether, with a third kind in which the 
 blue seems to run into the white ; white 
 violets dashed with blue or lilac. And 
 two or three years ago under another 
 quickset hedge in our lane, I scattered some 
 seeds of purple violets for the delight of 
 our village children, or for any little way- 
 farers in the spring. The seeds did not 
 seem to come up, and I forgot' all about 
 them till the other day, when we saw, with 
 great satisfaction, a little boy and his big 
 brother happily engaged gathering dark 
 sweet Violets under the barren hedge, and 
 making them up into posies with a few 
 scant early daisies. I sowed many seeds 
 
APRIL 65 
 
 that year along our dull roadside banks 
 common things that might well have 
 grown, and I counted on the children's 
 pleasure and surprise when they found 
 such lovely things in bloom there were 
 Campanulas and Stocks and Poppies, 
 Snapdragons, Primroses, Foxgloves, and 
 yellow Broom, and Virginian Stock. But 
 never a plant came up, excepting just one 
 foxglove, whose fine spire of buds was 
 untimely plucked and now the violets. 
 I do not know if the east wind has to 
 answer for our Forget-me-nots coming 
 red. Most of the blue is more freely mixed 
 with pink than usual, and one root, under 
 a chestnut tree near the water-course, has 
 fairly gone into deep crimson. If the seeds 
 can be saved, we might possibly get from 
 them a new variety. But a crimson for- 
 get-me-not would be unpoetical, and un- 
 real, and like the dark blue which appeared 
 a few years ago, interesting only as a 
 curiosity. There was some failure in the 
 seed last year, so that our pave of turquoise 
 will not this season be quite so extensive 
 as usual. Brilliant and close-flowering, 
 
 E 
 
66 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 however, as our garden Myosotis* is, the 
 pleasure of it never could compare with 
 the image glassed I suppose in almost 
 every heart of the clear quiet pool, set in 
 some sequestered meadow, on whose green 
 margin grew the blue forget-me-not. Or 
 of the place where it bloomed just out of 
 reach in the little stream among wavering 
 weeds, shedding starlets of heaven's blue 
 upon the water under the willows. Those 
 were the real Vergessmeinnicht of our youth, 
 and when we sat on the bank beside them, 
 or wet our feet in gaining difficult posses- 
 sion of them, we thought then upon the 
 dear old half-sad, half-foolish German 
 romance never remembered in the 
 garden plots. 
 
 APRIL 13. At last a gracious rain has 
 fallen. A sort of quickening thrilled at 
 once through all the garden, and now the 
 grass gives out a green answer to the 
 precious drops. There is to-day at the 
 southern end of the broad walk in the un- 
 tidy because too full border facing the 
 east, a new beautiful colour of Paeonies in 
 * Myosotis dissitiflora 
 
APRIL 67 
 
 their first young growth. I do not re- 
 member them before the rain ; now the 
 strong healthy stalks pushing up above the 
 ground are a full crimson red. The colour 
 is so vivid, it almost has the effect of some 
 strange flowers, seen from a little distance. 
 At the opposite end of the walk the onion 
 flavour of the Crown Imperials is not so 
 unpleasantly perceptible as it sometimes 
 has been. I remember it was long before 
 we discovered the source of the strong 
 odour pervading that part of the garden. 
 Not an onion anywhere near ; there seemed 
 nothing to account for it. Gerard says, 
 ' the whole plant do savour or smell very 
 like a fox.' I think we may well forgive 
 our crown imperials their smell, however, 
 for the stately show they make ; and if 
 taste and fashion did not change with 
 flowers as with other things, they might 
 still be among the choice favourites of 
 spring. Ours ought to be somewhat taller, 
 a fine Crown Imperial should rise so high 
 that a little child might stand under the 
 yellow bells and look up into the moon- 
 stone circlet within ; for * in the bottom of 
 
68 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 each of these bells there is placed six drops 
 of most clear shining sweet water, in taste 
 like sugar.' In another place are also 
 saffron-coloured crown imperials, coming 
 into bloom. They are commoner and less 
 beautiful than the yellow. 
 
 This is the legend of the crown-im- 
 perial, or Pearl Lily. ' Jesus walked in the 
 garden of Gethsemane. And the lily we 
 call the crown-imperial lily, had just been 
 crowned. And when all the other flowers 
 bowed their heads as the Saviour passed 
 along, she alone refused to bend, and held up 
 her head quite straight and stiff. Jesus laid 
 His hand upon the flower and gently said, 
 u Lily, lily, be not so proud ! " Ever since 
 the flowers of the crown-imperial have bent 
 down all round and have stood so, filled 
 with tears.' 
 
 I never dwell upon failures in the 
 garden : they are never many, and are 
 soon forgotten. Here may be the place, 
 however, to record one small disappoint- 
 ment. Round the stone floor of the 
 garden porch, we had made an outer rim 
 of gold and silver Thyme. The intention 
 
APRIL 69 
 
 was, that with every passing step, crossing 
 over to the gravel, or with the sweep of 
 a trailing gown, should arise sweet thy my 
 odours on the air. But the thing did not 
 succeed. The gold and silver thyme all 
 died away before any one had enjoyed it 
 much. And yet perhaps, the idea is 
 worthy of another trial. Perhaps thyme 
 or wild mint might be induced to grow 
 upon the lawn, and in the mowing or the 
 treading it would smell deliciously. A 
 trimly shaped Rosemary in bloom, is about 
 as pleasant a sight as can well be seen on 
 an April day. The l sweet gaping flowers ' 
 of a bluish-grey, set not too thickly among 
 the dark green narrow leaves, give such 
 a sense of neatness ; they look so clean 
 and cool, that the wonder is the sweet- 
 smelling shrub should not be a greater 
 favourite. Two hundred years ago it seems 
 to have been planted in every garden. 
 Then there were gilded rosemarys, and 
 Rosemary of the poets, and several wild 
 rosemarys all grown for physical or civil 
 purposes. It was used at weddings, and 
 funerals, and a bundle of it was a welcome 
 
70 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 gift bestowed upon friends. Where rose- 
 mary flourishes nigh the house, there the 
 wife is said to rule. It is by no means for 
 any such reason, however, that so shapely 
 and fine a bush of it grows beside our 
 south porch ! It is because it worships the 
 sun, and when the sun shines the bees are 
 about it all day long. 
 
 ' The life that throbs in April's heart 
 Wakes every mortal thing ; 
 And grief , with birds and buds and flowers 
 Stirs freshly in the Spring' 
 
 Burns. 
 
MA Y 
 
MAY-DAY EVE IN THE MORNING 
 
 ' Well may I guess and feel 
 Why Autumn should be sad, 
 But vernal airs no sorrow feel, 
 Spring should be gay and glad.' Keble. 
 
 THE hour from 8 to 9 A.M. is often the 
 quietest in all the day. Everybody has 
 gone to breakfast, and the garden is de- 
 serted. Thrushes and blackbirds are 
 breakfasting all over the meadow, and the 
 distant singing heard among the further 
 elm trees gives emphasis to the nearer 
 silence. Even the bees are gone home to 
 breakfast ; only here and there a lumber- 
 ing old humble-bee grumbles alone in the 
 blossoming fruit trees. It is time for the 
 young nestlings' second or third meal, and 
 the tame robin redbreast (who, though it is 
 no longer winter, still visits the window) is 
 hurriedly packing a slender worm in her 
 bill, and then, by the. direction of her flight 
 
74 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 betrays the cherished secret of her treasure. 
 Yet it must be confessed that when the air 
 is less chilly the hour is often fuller of mur- 
 muring stir among the birds and bees than 
 it is to-day. 
 
 ' The small bees busy at their threshold old, 
 And lambs lamenting in their four-fold fold. 
 
 Cold as it is, there is one tall white Iris just 
 one among a thousand budding now in 
 double file throughout the garden care- 
 fully, slowly opening. It rises above all the 
 other irises first and fairest, as the first of 
 every flower is and to-morrow it will be 
 full-blown, in honour of the day. The eve 
 of May-Day should be full of mysteries in 
 earth and air. A great change is approach- 
 ing, and all Nature knows it. I myself but 
 dimly guess and feel what it may be. It may 
 be that the birth of summer is at hand, and 
 already a few of Nature's loveliest children 
 * haste to die.' Snowdrops are forgotten, 
 and primrose-tide is fading from the woods. 
 Under the yellow Berberis yellow petals 
 lie in little heaps or lines of yellow drift : 
 and every pearly bud on the white cherry 
 trees has opened wide. There is no wind, 
 
MAY 75 
 
 but they will not last ; another day or two 
 and the fruit will be set, and we shall see 
 twin cherries swelling greenly all over each 
 long length of blossomed bough. 
 
 Either to-day, or on May-day, one ought 
 to see the fairies, according to the old 
 Scottish legends 1 No fairies appeared 
 this time, but I saw a good deal between 
 eight and nine, looking from the broad 
 walk, upon our old kitchen garden walls, 
 bright with the eastern sun. How shall 
 the charm of these old brick walls be 
 described? Words could never paint it. 
 In the clear glow of morning light, the reds 
 are so delicately pure and warm, and they 
 are mottled with such varied greys and 
 many-tinted yellows. There are stout old 
 buttresses, too, mossed and ferny, and grey 
 with eld. Ancient rugged pear trees grow 
 up against it,' and their outstretched 
 knotted old limbs are set now with knots of 
 flowers, and young, tender leaves, and the 
 half-transparent shadow of every flower 
 and leaf lies still, or trembles on the wall. 
 One of these pear trees, quite worn out 
 and decayed with age, had been cleared 
 
76 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 away last winter, leaving a broad vacant 
 space, a space that is not bare, but full of 
 interest. Little incidents and details, un- 
 observed before, were plainly seen this 
 morning. There is a curious arrangement 
 of wood -bricks built in regular order 
 amongst the others. Worm-eaten and 
 decayed, they have weathered to the same 
 colour as the greyer of the bricks, and are 
 so inconspicuous as to pass usually unre- 
 marked. These wood-bricks must have 
 been devised for the more careful nailing 
 up of fruit trees. The fine new garden 
 walls of those days might not be disfigured 
 with nails ! some have fallen out, leaving 
 recesses convenient for wrens' and other 
 nests. Suddenly appeared a curved line of 
 bricks, set end-wise, showing where once 
 had been a low-browed narrow door-way, 
 bricked up long since. There is another 
 as low and narrow, faintly visible farther 
 down. Carlyle wrote of the days 'when 
 dresses were smaller and thoughts were 
 larger.' Certainly our modern door-ways 
 are mostly wider than those of older date. 
 The old walls, with the sunlight dis- 
 
MAY 77 
 
 covering upon them traces of Time's land- 
 marks, are enough to set one dreaming 
 of those former days, and for the moment 
 it is easy to live in many a bygone scene ; 
 to fancy the precise training of the fruit 
 trees to the wood-blocks; the daily traffic 
 through that little doorway. One could 
 see the gardeners with their quaint old- 
 fashioned wheel - barrows and watering- 
 pots going in and out; and I recalled the 
 day named in Evelyn's Diary, when 
 George Evelyn and his cousin John 
 Evelyn of Sayes Court, walked through 
 the door together George, showing his 
 gardens with due pride John, with grave 
 observant eye, noting how they were 
 'exquisitely kept though large.' That 
 afternoon was July 23, 1679. The sunny 
 wall stood then in deep shade on this 
 side, and where now, on May Eve, two 
 centuries after, Pear blossoms whiten all 
 over it, George Evelyn's young trees were 
 ripening their first fruits. Along the top 
 of the wall grow wild grasses and crested 
 moss. There is a plant of Shepherd's 
 Purse with glorious spread of seed and 
 
78 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 flower, luxuriating up there in lofty, safe 
 seclusion. Seen from below, so freshly 
 green against the blue, these wild things 
 do to us enhance the picturesqueness 
 of the old wall ; and while looking up at 
 them thus, one feels in some degree that 
 curious sense of infinity, the reason of 
 which no one ever has explained. The 
 Evelyns in their day would have treated 
 them as unruly weeds, and would have 
 made short work with them. Not half-an- 
 hour hence, when the Traveller turns the 
 corner, and his gold face looks the other 
 way, the old door and the wooden bricks 
 with the vision of that summer day two 
 hundred and five years back, will fade fast 
 and be lost in shadow. Another old wall 
 on the other side of the lawn is also 
 propped at intervals with heavy buttresses. 
 The aspect is north, and on these rude 
 masses of old brick grow my wild gardens. 
 The buttresses are gnarled and irregularly 
 scored and furrowed by huge ivy stems 
 veiled under moss and lichen. 
 
 The finest of the two ' gardens ' is that 
 one nearest Syringa and the greenhouse 
 
MAY 79 
 
 door. There, a Nut tree of 6 inches, and a 
 Yew 3 inches high, are thrown into the 
 shade by two great Moon Daisies and a 
 giant Broom. These are my forest trees 1 
 The broom don't care for so much cold 
 shade, and every season makes rampant 
 efforts to reach above it and catch the sun 
 upon its golden plumes. It is all but at 
 the top now. If I look down very closely 
 a miniature landscape may be discerned 
 strips of flower garden inwoven with a wild 
 scene of mossy caves and deep ravines. 
 The edges of all these tiny fissures are at 
 this time faintly blue with eyebright of 
 microscopic littleness. One must almost 
 use a glass to see plainly the tiny perfect 
 flowers, no bigger than a pin's head, with 
 little leaves and stalks to match. Delicate 
 small grasses overhang the mouth of the 
 caverns, where small wild beasts of insect 
 race lie lost after their night of rapine. 
 Weird jungles of grey Cup-moss and lichen 
 skirt the garden side, and sheaves of mimic 
 bulrush wave gold-brown heads in a morass 
 of greenest moss; and then we come upon 
 a brilliant little daisy, every stalk a-flower 
 
80 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 in the very perfection of blithe good 
 humour, though not one single ray of sun- 
 shine has ever touched its silver. A rather 
 coarse Polipody fern in part supports the 
 daisy's roots, and one or two more tender 
 ferns droop gently near it. The group is 
 fringed below with a lilac patch of chance- 
 sown aubrietia. Perhaps a scarlet wood 
 strawberry will ripen late on the tufted 
 pink runners that are always climbing 
 higher up the buttress; and I shall soon 
 look for the pretty Draba verna, which 
 with one or two sister weeds all micro- 
 scopically small will in their courses 
 bloom and fade here through the summer; 
 that is, if they are not overtaken by the 
 drought already threatening. 
 
 Along the upper ledges young leaves of 
 Cymbalaria are coming thick and fast. 
 This lovely well-known little antirrhinum 
 is more or less common all over Europe, 
 I believe, however named whether 
 Mother of Thousands, as in the old stone 
 fences of Somersetshire, or in Scotland 
 Wandering Sailor, or the Fronde della 
 Madonna of the rocks and carved pedi- 
 
MAY 81 
 
 ments of Italy. Wherever old stone or 
 marble is, there with the universal pelli- 
 tory we find the sweet enrichment of 
 our toad-flax.* Soon it will be breaking in 
 avalanches all down the old buttress, and 
 at close of summer a thick green curtain 
 will have long been drawn over my small 
 enchanted wild. 
 
 MAY 21. To-day there is heavy rain, 
 and the Gardener has just come in to 
 announce the first blooming of a new Iris. 
 A plant of pale grey iris was given to me 
 last summer, and we have looked anxiously 
 for its flowering. The Iris procession 
 begins this year with the white and purple 
 in lavish profusion. They flower together 
 for the first time, alternately, along the 
 line of holly hedge. The purple are too 
 impatient usually to wait for the blooming 
 of the white. These stand now in multi- 
 tudes under the dining-room windows, 
 and along the south-walk. Someone has 
 compared them to the company of St 
 
 * Among the stones of ' the Roman walk ' occurs 
 another and more lovely variety. A. Pilosa, is its dis- 
 tinguishing name. 
 
 F 
 
82 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Ursula's white-robed virgins. Our irises 
 begin to know that they are especial 
 favourites here, and their great size, and 
 luxuriance is bewildering. Of course * they ' 
 would tell me it is only because their roots 
 have ' become established,' as they say. 
 Both Ensata and the Fleur-de-Lys bear 
 forcing well, and we have never been with- 
 out either since January. The fine broad 
 foliage of the fleur-de-lys was welcome, 
 for its masses of fresh green in winter, 
 when the flowering plants were brought 
 into the house. The white flowers send 
 forth, however, when thus forced, a 
 fragrance that some find too powerful; as 
 Gerard says of lilac, * troubling and 
 molesting the head in a strange manner, 
 with a ponticke and unacquainted savour.' 
 It is strange that Iris germanica, whose 
 scent I have sometimes known at Rome 
 (and notably where it grows round the 
 tomb of Caecilia Metella) to make the 
 sweet air still more delicious, has here no 
 kind of scent. A pleasant change of colour 
 comes, near the entrance court : it is purple 
 iris growing with a clump of amber-edged 
 
MAY 83 
 
 yellow tulips. And still more refined and 
 lovely is the contrast upon a south wall, 
 of a large flowered mauve clematis, with 
 Gloire de Dijon rose and the brown 
 shoots of flexuosa honeysuckle intermixed 
 with white iris below. The tulips in the 
 tulip parterre are over, after a brilliant 
 existence of nearly four weeks. One day 
 they were seen to shine like lamps of 
 coloured fire, through the thinner spaces 
 of a large black Irish yew. The beautiful 
 effect never returned again ; it was per- 
 haps due to some strange accident of light. 
 Light does often use * lawful magic ' mar- 
 vellously under the pure intensity of a 
 morning sky, or just before the sun goes 
 down. I have seen the Phillyreas in the 
 garden in the early hours, reflect back 
 positive blue from their dark foliage, and 
 there is a Persian lilac in bloom whose 
 colour is gorgeous at such a time. It is 
 absolutely dazzling. Birds, too, flash past 
 with colours that might vie with those of 
 oriental plumage. Green-finches on the 
 wing or among the branches are emerald- 
 green like real green parrots, or a titmouse 
 
84 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 flits from tree to tree in * azurn sheen/ as 
 blue as any kingfisher. It is the way the 
 sun strikes at this sweet hour. At sunset 
 I have seen the great elms all glorious 
 within, the straightness of their massive 
 stems burning with a lurid glow from root 
 to treetop behind the leaves ; and last 
 evening when, after the rain, the sunset 
 shone upon a cypress, a million rain -drops 
 twinkling all over it became lustrous 
 diamonds of the purest water, darting long 
 rays of rainbow hues. 
 
 No springtime could ever be more per- 
 fect in its outward beautifulness than this 
 May is, though indeed the rain and cold 
 do somewhat spoil our full enjoyment. It 
 must have been in a spring like this that 
 Jean Paul wrote of ' winter painted green. r 
 Yet there were days when the perfume of 
 apple blossoms was borne through all the 
 garden as balmily as if the breezes had not 
 been ice. Never were apple trees more 
 snowily, rosily radiant. It was as beautiful 
 as a dream to pass along underneath their 
 flower laden branches ; and so abundant 
 was the bloom that when it fell the petals 
 
MAY 85 
 
 lay so thick upon the grass that the 
 thrushes tripped up and stumbled in their 
 haste to run through it ! Lilac, too a 
 more lasting pleasure is in finer bloom 
 than ever I remember it. Lilacs do not 
 usually take the place they are worthy of 
 in our gardens. In former days, when 
 the ' Blew-pipe tree ' was a novelty, they 
 planted it in the front ranks ; but now, 
 somehow, it seems always pushed out of 
 the way, and yet the loveliness of lilac 
 trees in May can be scarcely equalled, 
 while one feels that the first whiff of their 
 perfume in the garden is as the very heart 
 and soul of memory. Our old trees at the 
 back of the Broad Walk border are scarcely 
 seen from the garden. They cheerfully give 
 their beauty to the other side, overhang- 
 ing the tarred paling of the potting-house 
 yard, and glorifying its business-like sur- 
 roundings with a world of fragrant colour. 
 From an upper window of the house I 
 look down upon a distant view of this 
 tossing sea of lilac. 
 
 Two or three young lilac bushes were 
 planted a few years back in the orchard ; 
 
86 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 they are better placed : one can enjoy 
 them more intimately, walk round them, 
 or pull down a branch to smell the lilac 
 cones. But our white lilac, most refined 
 and loveliest of all, grows nowhere unen- 
 cumbered with shrubbery. 
 
 If the forest of the Fantaisie were but 
 half a mile round instead of half a rood, it 
 would be perfect. Its position gives variety, 
 that quality which charms as much in a 
 garden as does the play of expression in a 
 human face. It is as if in following the 
 green garden ways we went * from grave to 
 gay, from lively to severe.' 
 
 From the sunny masses of pink and 
 white Phlox repens, blue Gentian, and 
 narcissus poeticus, in the wildest profu- 
 sion, ending in a wholly indescribable glow 
 of azalea mollis, the path winds along 
 smooth grass, and close-trimmed laurel 
 into the woodland shade, between great 
 clumps of purple iris growing among stones 
 and flints, over-run with stonecrop, violas, 
 and fumitory. Here, though so tiny that 
 some one the other day, took it for a child's 
 garden, there is something of the dim quiet 
 
MAY 87 
 
 of a wood. Every wild plant that makes 
 its home in it is welcome ; even dande- 
 lions, and stellaria, and wood - sorrel 
 (flower of the Holy Ghost), one little flower 
 of which has just remembered it is Whit- 
 suntide, and opened its veined petals. 
 
 The bluebells nodding to each other 
 under this sun-chequered living green of 
 Spring, are fresh joy to me every morning 
 and every evening. I suppose wide sheets 
 of them, a very ( Heaven upbreaking from 
 the earth/ might give greater pleasure ; 
 but only in extent scarcely in degree. 
 My l wood ' is but a little chink of heaven, 
 yet the delight of it is as pure as it is 
 small. There was a fear lest these wild 
 hyacinths might deteriorate in land not 
 poor enough to keep them humble ; that 
 downward curve of the slender stalk, which 
 is grace itself and the glory of bluebells, 
 seemed about to be lost in over-luxuri- 
 ance ; the heads of flower, bent low 
 enough however, after they were fully 
 blown. There are countless groups of 
 white, and blue, and pale mauve hyacinths 
 that once were wild, dispersed about the 
 
88 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 borders ; but the cultivated ground seems 
 to give a certain fatness to leaf, and stalk, 
 and flower, which takes just so much off 
 from their perfect beauty. 
 
 Coming out of the wood, a sharp turn 
 to the left leads one into a fair round 
 green, and * Glorietta ' smiles out of the 
 enclosing thicket. Parrot tulips flaunt 
 in yellow and scarlet rags, amid purple 
 iris and red anemones, round one-half of 
 the charmed circle ; the other half, being 
 turned from the sun, can only boast of 
 late green buds. A deeper interest lies in 
 the junipers above the budding tulips, 
 for there the birds build, and know them- 
 selves secure. 
 
JUNE 
 
VI 
 THE JUNE GARDEN 
 
 1 The whispering of the boding trees 
 The deep-toned music of the soul.' 
 
 ' One hour with thee, when burning June 
 Waves her red flag at pitch of noon; ' 
 
 JUNE is the most beautiful month in all the 
 year. There is nothing like it. After 
 years of wavering choice between autumn 
 and the spring which might be best the 
 decision is made, and the question, in my 
 own mind at least, at rest for ever, on this 
 green June morning. There is nothing 
 else on earth that ever can compare with 
 beautiful, flowery, flowerful June ! The 
 colour of the leaves is exquisite, and as 
 perfect is the colour of the shade they cast. 
 After June is past it will be different, since 
 the leaves will no longer then be thinly 
 half-transparent ; but now on this glorious 
 
92 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 ist of June, the sun shines down upon the 
 trees from his throne of cloudless blue, and 
 there is no shade ; it is all green sunshine 
 under the trees. The green, when many- 
 tinted summer is new, if not so brilliant as 
 autumnal gold and red, is yet sufficiently 
 various to satisfy the eye. The olive-green 
 of young oak, and poplar, and ash, 
 contrasts with the fresher greens of elm 
 and lime. I remember an old Somerset- 
 shire woman, who used to say, the woods 
 in June were like a piece of ( lady's em- 
 broidery work.' To-day the hedgerow 
 elms and lines of distant wood are lustrous. 
 No other word could give so well this 
 wonderful glow of June upon the leaves, 
 and only a poet could have found the 
 word ! * And then when the sun is down, 
 and the glowing trees are by contrast dim 
 and solemn, and the soft { tur-turring ' of 
 the turtle-doves in the thorn tree in the 
 field is hushed, I know that I shall find the 
 white Irises more shining in their polished 
 whiteness than during all the day, filling 
 
 * ' Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, etc.' 
 Tennyson. 
 
JUNE 95 
 
 the air with perfume. In the garden, we 
 have gold as rich as October ever gave ; 
 and we have silver which is June's alone. 
 Laburnums rain gold above the golden 
 broom, and intermix with Silvern heaps 
 of white-thorn and silvery broom. And 
 when did ever autumnal-mellowed beech 
 light up the yellow groves with velvet fires, 
 so softly red as the young shoots of copper 
 beech, which scatter now their spray of 
 rubies and clear jacinth, dropping down 
 between us and the sun ? And when did 
 autumn ever burn with such crimsons as 
 glow in these scarlet double thorns, or in 
 the piled-up splendours of rhododendron, 
 which now illuminate the woods ? 
 
 The yews and yewen hedges have put 
 on a new face, and conceal all trace of 
 gloom beneath young leaves of russet- 
 gold. Yet there is regret and grief this 
 beautiful June morning ! I find myself 
 quoting Wordsworth, saying to myself, 
 ( There is a change, and I am poor ' ; for 
 the whole garden is all jubilant with song, 
 but the song that is best is not heard. 
 There is no nightingale this year. We 
 
94 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 listen and watch in vain. Sometimes 
 some thrush singing notes of unwonted 
 fire and sweetness will for a moment deceive 
 the ear : this has happened once or twice. 
 But when indeed the nightingale sings, 
 he is never mistaken for a thrush. What 
 alas ! is the mysterious cause of our loss ? 
 We are fain to hope it may be the cold 
 winds of May and April ; because there are 
 no glowworms ; or because there is so little 
 oak about the place. (Oak scrub must this 
 autumn be planted somewhere.) Anything 
 is better to believe than the ugly reason 
 of bird-stealers. Whatever the reason be 
 
 4 Such change, and at the very door 
 Of my fond heart, hath made me poor/ 
 
 Of a winter garden it is easy enough to 
 write. But in June ! the garden in mid- 
 summer ! Out of the fulness of it how is 
 choice to be made of one bright flower for 
 praise more than another ? It is a world of 
 surpassing beauty. This morning, in the 
 still shade of a south window, one small 
 petal dropped upon the window-sill from 
 a flowery branch of cotoneaster (Good 
 Neighbour). One is seldom present just at 
 
JUNE 95 
 
 the very moment when a petal falls. The 
 flower may wither or be shaken in the 
 wind, or fall at a touch, and the leaves be 
 scattered. But when both shape and 
 colour are unchanged, and yet the petals 
 drop quietly one by one in some profound 
 calm of a summer dawn or evening twilight, 
 there is pathos in it. The flower is not 
 dead, but her time has come. The flowers 
 of the cistus family, which are now delight- 
 ing us, quite literally have their day. In 
 the morning there is a mass of bloom; at 
 evening not a single flower remains. The 
 sole trace left is a pink or white or yellow 
 mosaic, where the falling petals have 
 showered down upon the grass or gravel. 
 The difficulty is, to find room enough for 
 cistus. They require some bank or lengths 
 of rock garden, to be given up entirely to 
 them. Then there might be a blaze of 
 colour through all the summer, in favour- 
 able weather, for they do not like too much 
 rain. In proportion to the brief individual 
 existence of the Cistus flowers are their 
 innumerable buds. And they are as costless 
 as they are lovely ; a few packets of seed 
 
96 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 will stock a garden ! Once we had the 
 pink Riviera cistus of the large grey-green 
 leaves and exquisite flowers which light up 
 the hills and dusty roadsides like rose- 
 coloured lamps alive in broad daylight ! 
 Our plants perished in some unusually 
 severe frost. The white cistus, with 
 narrower, more polished, aromatic foliage,, 
 is hardier, and seems quite happy here 
 in a south aspect. We have but one 
 old Gum Cistus, as fragile, and more 
 wondrously beautiful than all the rest. 
 How the folds and crumples in the satin of 
 her ample petal do but enhance her beauty 1 
 It grows on the lawn at the foot of a 
 Noisette rose that now envelopes the bare 
 stem of a dead weeping ash. The rose 
 climbed up to the top of the tree, and falls- 
 over in a great luxuriance of flower and 
 leaf and thorn. Within the thorniest heart 
 of this thorny rose-thicket a thrush has her 
 nest. I think, in her wisdom, she this time 
 made it just a little too safe. The young 
 thrushes still sit full fledged in the nest; I 
 think they dare not tempt the thorns. 
 As we pass through the south porch the 
 
JUNE 97 
 
 martin from her mud hut over the door 
 skims out into the sunshine. When she 
 begins to sit there will be little time for 
 these wide sweeps of flight, or to idle upon 
 the Rose arches, twittering and preening 
 those long, blue-black wings of hers ! On 
 either side the porch there grows a 
 lavender bush and a rosemary. The 
 lavender is failing, as it did last summer. 
 The bud-stalks look quite firm and healthy 
 up to a certain point, and then each head 
 hangs down and in a little while they 
 look withered and black as if they were 
 strangled. * Some failure at the root,' is 
 the Gardener's verdict for this and many 
 another unpleasantness in the garden. 
 Is it not mostly 'failure at the root' in 
 many of our mistakes outside the garden ? 
 None of the other lavender plants seem 
 affected in the same way, fortunately. 
 Ferns and a fine root of Turncap Lily 
 grow at the back of the lavender, and up 
 the porch wall is a young Banksia rose 
 climbing apace, and flowering for the first 
 time. It ought to have been yellow, but 
 it has come white. Under the rosemary 
 
98 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 is a great old conch shell, kept filled with 
 fresh water for the birds. The narrow 
 border that runs along under the Oak- 
 room window is my trouble and my dear 
 delight. I hope nothing will ever lead me 
 to call it a 'herbaceous border!' It has 
 become so much the fashion to call every- 
 thing herbaceous which is not 'bedding 
 out,' that the meaning of the word is 
 usually lost sight of, and all kinds'of woody 
 perrenials are, so it seems to me, included 
 in the 'herbaceous border.' The phrase 
 also seems to leave out all the poetry of 
 the garden. Not, I think, more than a 
 dozen or fifteen years old, it dates from 
 the first rage for yellow calceolarias and 
 pyrethrums and the carpetings, when 
 * herbaceous ' things were admitted only 
 somewhere out of the way by sufferance. 
 May this be the first and last time I 
 have to write ' Herbaceous border ! ' 
 
 Under the window a cotoneaster bears 
 good promise of its pink liliputian apple 
 crop for the blackbirds in October. And 
 then there is a little wilderness of wood 
 strawberries. They want to have it all 
 
JUNE 99 
 
 their own way here, and mean to get it. 
 They smother the hepaticas, and choke 
 the irises, and over-reach the turf verge ; 
 and then ground-Ivy stretches along and 
 over the strawberries, and has to be 
 quickly made an end of. Red wood-straw- 
 berries are ripening for the children, mixed 
 with a few of the yellow-flowered fragaria 
 indica, whose berry is very handsome, but 
 so acrid as to ensure its stay safe enough 
 on its stalk. Neither child nor bird would 
 taste a second time. Italians, with their 
 characteristic gentle fun call it 'Inganna 
 Donna.' Vine and pomegranate and 
 white French honeysuckle, clematis and 
 Eccremocarpus, grow up in more or less of 
 wild luxuriance around the window. The 
 pomegranate never yet has flowered, 
 though her sister plant (since dead) in 
 another part of the garden used to flame 
 with blossom. Were it possible to decide 
 which to like best of all these, one or two 
 at least might attain perfection. It ought 
 perhaps to be the pomegranate, and a 
 clear place should be made for it. But 
 none of the others can be sacrificed ; and 
 
ioo A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 indeed I wish for a pyracantha and a 
 Ceanothus (for its blue), and a hundred 
 others, to be added. Then there come the 
 Star of Bethlehem and Pink Convolvulus 
 and a line of stately white Lilies which 
 always bloom well; and just now brilliant 
 roses upon unpruned trees, in gadding 
 wreaths of beauty, stray above the straw- 
 berry leaves, with a sullen glow of yellow 
 and purple iris (Darius) between the 
 wreaths. This tall Iris defied' the over- 
 mastering luxuriance about their roots, 
 while the beautiful 'Versailles' was dis- 
 couraged and withdrew herself. 
 
 There is aromatic Santolina and woodruff 
 and Japan anemone, all mixed up, and 
 entangled with the wood strawberries, and 
 the border ends at a pink wall pink with 
 great hanging bunches of the old china 
 rose. Right in front, indifferent alike to 
 strawberries and all the world, are three 
 Euphorbias. Of their own good will and 
 choice they grow up here. It would be 
 cruel to uproot them, they stand so firm 
 and grand in their placid self assertion. I 
 do not love them, but they compel my 
 
JUNE 101 
 
 regard. It has been remarked of them 
 that they are beautiful, from the de- 
 cision of character they display. Even from 
 seed, they know how?they intend to grow, 
 and they complete their plan. There is 
 the smooth firm stem, straight as a line, in 
 colour emerald washed with amethyst, and 
 the narrow leaves, exactly matched in size, 
 placed with perfect symmetry up the stem 
 till they reach the four-branched seed- 
 holders, which proceed like a branching 
 capital from the top of the green tall 
 pillar. The seed-holders on the four 
 branches support ileaves of another shape in 
 ordered pairs, and each pair guards a 
 poisonous-looking flower or seed. From 
 first to last there is not a shade of inde- 
 cision in the mind of any one of these three 
 tall euphorbias. (Caper spurge). 
 
 The 'Roman Walk' in the morning, 
 when shadows fall, is almost picturesque. 
 There are some large^ clumps of Sysirin- 
 chium striatum in profuse bloom ; the 
 flower spikes and iris-like leaves are most 
 1 showy,' contrasting well with the rocks 
 and rounded masses of leaf and flower near 
 
102 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 them. The little pale yellow flowers, 
 taken singly, may seem rather insignificant, 
 yet there is something moving almost, in 
 their religious attention to the hour which 
 unwritten laws have determined ; for even 
 when gathered and kept in water in the 
 house, at a distance from the windows, 
 they shut up just the same, punctual to 
 a minute. Lovely little purple Linaria 
 reticulata (aureo-purpurea) scatters itself, 
 self-sown, about the ledges, with the sweet 
 sad-coloured night stock ; and I am afraid 
 we tread heavier than need be upon the 
 camomile, spread flatly- on the stony walk, 
 to make it give out all its aroma. The 
 small campanula pulla's deep purple bells, 
 nod in crevices near edelweiss clothed in 
 grey cottony bloom. It is curious to see the 
 horror which an English dweller in Switzer- 
 land feels for this throned queen of alpine 
 flowers ! That edelweiss, a name we pro- 
 nounce almost with reverence, should 
 ever be called ( a cockney flower/ seems 
 almost past belief. Yet so it is, and I am 
 sorry, for there had been a certain pride 
 when I thought our plants were finer on 
 
JUNE 103 
 
 the heights of the rock-garden, than in its 
 lower ranges ! There is mesembryanthemum 
 and painted portulaca, a coral schizostylis, 
 a yellow sysirinchium, and the stonecrops 
 are coming into bloom. The artichoke 
 rears itself grandly, almost like some grey- 
 leaved giant fern, on the top ridge of rock, 
 casting a great shadow across the stones. 
 
 A broad border screened from a stray 
 bit of kitchen garden by a battlemented 
 arbor- vitae hedge has been divided into 
 large squares of favourite plants. There is 
 a square of ranunculus, and this is a dis- 
 appointment. I believe the flower resents 
 its removal from the old place under the 
 south wall. Our ranunculus used to be 
 small fireballs of vermillion and gold. Then 
 there is a square of yellow sweet sultan, 
 and with it a lovely lily with sea-green 
 silvery leaves. Pancratium maritimum is 
 the right name, I believe, but I prefer to 
 call it a Star Lily. There are carnations, 
 and then most delicately beautiful Spanish 
 iris; a large flowered variety. The last 
 square in the border is a blue mass of 
 anchusa, not Italica, but the native wild sort. 
 
io 4 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 The air just there is perfumed with musk. 
 We let the musk wander at will all over 
 this border. We give it neither care nor 
 culture, and it gives back to us, for 
 nothing, the treasure of its sweetness. 
 With the parterre which lights up the 
 lawn before the dining-room windows, I 
 have little to do. The Gardener plans the 
 colours and arrangement of it, and I feel it 
 is in good hands ; two centre beds this 
 season appear to me especially happy. 
 They are the white Bride gladiolus, mixed 
 with deep red Tuscan rose; pure white 
 and crimson. 
 
 The other long-shaped, narrow parterre 
 we have tried to pattern out like one I 
 saw last summer on a sunny Somerset 
 rectory terrace. It was in Vandykes of 
 many-coloured verbena ; ours is chiefly 
 variegated and scarlet pelargonium, blue 
 lobelias, both bronze, leaved and green, 
 dwarf ageratum tagetes, for yellow, and 
 serastium tomentosum, known sometimes 
 as Summer Snow. This snow looks very 
 brilliant from a distance, seen through 
 openings in the dark yew hedge. White 
 
JUNE 105 
 
 is perhaps too much neglected in the 
 ordering of coloured plots ; yet in all the 
 best art of old times, in stained glass or 
 eastern embroideries, it is the white parts 
 that give brilliance to the whole. In the 
 garden, yellow is the trouble, calceolarias 
 I will not have ; I seek vainly some low- 
 growing yellow, the same tone as the little 
 double yellow rose that is teasing me by 
 blooming high up out of reach by the 
 garden gate. It should have the same 
 effect, only in yellow, as the pink silene. 
 
 A short time since this Silene was used at 
 Cliveden in a way that once seen, cannot 
 be forgotten. An immense circle of pink, 
 lay like a magic ring upon the grass. 
 There is a set of jewel-shaped beds on a 
 grand scale, leading up to it on either side. 
 Between the ring and the lofty terrace, 
 and the house, there simply lies unrolled, 
 about a quarter of a mile of green velvet. 
 Beyond the pink ring, dip down in sweetly 
 wooded lines, steep cliffs and banks, to 
 level meads, and windings of the silver 
 Thames. 
 
106 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 JUNE 24. On this midsummer morn St 
 John's wort, under the Elms, is not yet 
 in bloom. Yet I thought as I went over 
 the garden, there could not be a more 
 ideal 24th of June. 
 
 White and purple foxglove throng to- 
 gether in stately beauty in the Boccage 
 and Fantaisie, with heads bent in the mid- 
 day sun : but where one slender spike 
 milk-white or red rises alone in some 
 shady spot, peering through green brake 
 fern, that, is better still ! I wonder what 
 like was the 4 lesser dusky foxglove/ 
 observed by Gerard in John Tradescant's 
 garden. Also his * Digitalis ferruginea, 
 with flower the; colour of iron.' A fine 
 plant of the yellow Swiss foxglove lives 
 snug and solitary, under a currant bush in 
 the kitchen garden. It is certainly hand- 
 some, but I never know whether to admire 
 it much or not. There is always an uncer- 
 tainty about the name of foxglove. In 
 old French it is Gante nostre dame ; in high 
 Dutch, as in German, Finger-hut. 
 
 And Roses ! It is roses, roses every- 
 where. A very Pasque della Rose. Never 
 
JUNE 107 
 
 do I remember the garden to be so much 
 of a real rose garden ; and the sweetest 
 rose of all is that i which decks the sweet 
 brier hedge. Paul Neron, with all his 
 seven inches across and no scent, is no- 
 thing to that little deep-pink brier rose ! 
 The damask roses overspreading a corner 
 at the south wall are an ideal of rose love- 
 liness. It is worth while to make a good 
 south place for this old rose ; it will soon 
 repay you a hundredfold in delicious 
 beauty. Once more, after nigh two score 
 years, I have the pleasure of smelling a 
 York and Lancaster rose. Her perfume 
 is divine. And we have a real black rose 
 (Empereur de Maroque ?), if gathered be- 
 fore the sun has time to burn it, most 
 beautiful haunting the memory with that 
 old foolish rhyme 
 
 * Rosy in the parlour, Rosy in the hall : 
 Rosy was a black Rose, better than them all.' 
 
 As for our old blush rose, age does but 
 increase its charm. 
 
JULY 
 
VII 
 JULY 
 
 ' This too will pass.' Persian Saying. 
 
 JULY 3. The thought of June Roses would 
 have been marred had the grievous blight 
 that fell upon some of them been spoken 
 of at the time. Happily ours, which are 
 affected thus, are few, and the disfigure- 
 ment they suffer, slight compared with the 
 reports from other places. The roses 
 most dear to me have, however, suffered 
 most. The leaves of the Damask roses, 
 filling up that corner of the old south wall, 
 are white with blight ; some of the York 
 and Lancasters the same, and the leaves 
 of some few other kinds are spotted all 
 over with brown. Not one of the Tea 
 roses is touched, nor any of our new 
 roses. Where the green leaves are 
 
ii2 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 affected the flowers themselves also suffer, 
 and look pale and stunted. Far worse 
 than blight are the ravages of that cruel 
 caterpillar which skins the leaves. He 
 seems to prefer the old Blush rose to all 
 others, and its leaves are the first to be 
 attacked. I confess I hate the skinner, 
 and destroy as many as I can lay my 
 finger on. He is as wily as he is destruc- 
 tive, and being the same colour as the leaf 
 is very hard to find. He has a way of 
 lying close along the very edge of a leaf, 
 or stretched out in such a position as to 
 be almost indistinguishable from the veins. 
 At mid-day, when the skinner has turned 
 in under the leaf for shade, it is useless 
 to hunt for he cannot possibly be seen. 
 The best time for a successful massacre 
 is in the morning, as early as you please. 
 A little patch of fresher colour betrays a 
 fresh-skinned portion of a leaf; there the 
 enemy lies, invisible, except to the long- 
 practised eye. As soon as he is discovered 
 turn the leaf over and squeeze him tight ,- 
 there are grounds, however, for a dismal 
 suspicion that unless the head be crushed 
 
JULY 113 
 
 the creature refills himself, the skin being 
 tough, and next day he is at work again as 
 hungry as ever. This suspected occurrence, 
 however, I refrain from too closely verify- 
 ing. The rose pest of former years that 
 little bright green caterpillar who after 
 awhile sewed himself up in a leaf, became 
 a tiny black chrysalis, and then emerged a 
 smart little yellow moth, was not nearly 
 so bad as the voracious Skinner. It is long 
 since that little moth used to be too 
 common in the garden. To see it again 
 would at once bring back the past, with 
 a feeling of dark summer evenings in 
 long-lost years, and a pervading sense of 
 the smell of rain upon the summer leaves. 
 There are some insects which would 
 seem to be less abundant now than formerly. 
 It gave me pleasure to meet a cockchafer 
 one morning ! The burnished rose-beetle 
 who used to sit like a green jewel in the 
 heart of a rose, or burr over the roses in 
 the sunshine, I never see here now. Even 
 the little leaf cutter bee has deserted us. 
 His neatly rounded cuttings, sawn out of 
 the rose leaves, disfigured them infinitely 
 
 H 
 
ii4 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 less than one day's work of a skinner ! 
 The musk rose that we planted last year is 
 flowering freely ; small flowers with a small 
 delicious scent. I wonder if the delicate pink 
 of its petals is the * musk-colour ' of some 
 old writers ! Does not Shakespeare write 
 somewhere of a ' musk-coloured coat? ' 
 
 The white noisettes climbing all over 
 our old Stone Pine droop down to 
 the very grass in trails and wreaths 
 covered thick with bunches of little 
 white roses in lavish beauty. The curi- 
 ous strong fragrance fills all that end of 
 the garden. A child, a little elf of blue 
 eyes and pink cheeks running here and 
 there through and through the rose -falls, 
 was one day, like a vision from fairyland ! 
 Rosa microphylla has grown herself into a 
 great green bush in the Fantaisie. But as 
 to flowering, she seems to think little of 
 that : two or three red flowers only, of no 
 account. The darlings of the year are the 
 great broad-flowered York and Lancasters. 
 I count them over morning after morning 
 as a miser counts his gold. It is worth a 
 visit just after sun-rise to see and smell 
 
JULY 115 
 
 them with the dew upon their petals. 
 They are what Chaucer would call * brode 
 roses,' so wide do their firm and well-set 
 petals spread. The white Cabbage which 
 survives in borders skirting the older, 
 more distant shrubberies is this summer 
 more than ever bounteous in its pure 
 white bloom. White Roses, however, 
 are not my favourites, excepting perhaps 
 Niphetos, the waxen Devoniensis and the 
 Japanese Rosa Rugosa. 
 
 There are summer days when it is too 
 hot for any but white flowers ' to deck the 
 house,' and in such sultry heat white 
 roses help to cool the shaded room. A 
 rose-de-meaux, a little perfumed nest of 
 prim pinkness, has bloomed like an old- 
 fashioned woodcut iUnder the holly hedge. 
 I want to have near it the tiny Fairy rose 
 of former years, a wee bush pinked over 
 with the wee-est of China roses. Several 
 new plants of Souvenir d'un ami are 
 blooming well. No rose lasts so long 
 when gathered, as this does. The old 
 Marechal Niel in the greenhouse has re- 
 newed his youth, and has given us his 
 
ii6 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 hundreds this spring, while one planted 
 under a north wall (according to advice) 
 failed to do better for us than give a few 
 greenish buds. The roses of the Boccage 
 are superb in size and colour. The new 
 ground suits them, and for half the day 
 they are shaded by the elms. For a 
 modern rose, I like Beauty of Waltham as 
 well as any ; its form and luminous colour, 
 emitting rays of crimson that almost ( bid 
 the rash gazer wipe his eye,' are as perfect 
 as any such rose can be. In the shade, 
 behind the others, modestly blooms a 
 lovely new rose, Madame Audot, scarcely 
 differing, however, from our old friend the 
 Maiden's Blush perhaps a little richer in 
 colour, and in scent a little poorer. It is 
 pleasant to come suddenly upon this blaze 
 of roses at a distance from the house, and 
 divided from the nearer pleasaunce by 
 grassy paths and lines of trees. So much 
 for our Rose garden. 
 
 The garden is more fragrant this summer 
 even than is its wont. One cannot tell 
 which sweet scent does most prevail, 
 whether that of sweet peas, or mignonette, 
 
ii8 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 or honey-scented Alyssum; while about 
 the iron gates in the old brick walls 
 flexuosa honeysuckle flings perfume far 
 and near. The sweet pea hedge round 
 half the tennis-lawn is full of lovely 
 caprices of colour. One set of white 
 blossoms is tinged with pale bluish. That 
 quaint, patchy, grayish and white kind, 
 which by some absurd association of ideas, 
 reminds me always of the old sign of 
 the ' Bald-faced Stag ' on Putney Heath, is 
 frequent, and so is the old fashionedst of all 
 the pretty pink and white. We have 
 not yet the new pink sweet pea, the 
 colour of a moss rose or of raspberry 
 cream. Plain white is, after all, the best 
 perhaps. Nature never planned a lovelier 
 flower of such airy lightness. It might 
 shake its butterfly wings and fly, it is so 
 lightly poised upon the slender stalk ! 
 Perhaps to the name * sweet pea,' and to 
 the sweet freshness of the flower, memories 
 of childhood cling more closely than to any 
 other garden name. 
 
 Sweet peas and mignonette should 
 always grow together. Even the down- 
 
JULY 119 
 
 trodden Everlasting pea (' Pease everlast- 
 ing/ and 'Save euerlasting,' as Gerard 
 calls them), with its large frank blossoms, 
 has this year won its way to favour. 
 That plant is in itself an epitome of all 
 the sermons of the year, with Courage 
 and Constancy for their text ! It is as 
 good as a meditation by Jeremy Taylor. 
 We were very grave about it last year ; 
 only a very little was to be permitted ; it 
 was denounced as too encroaching ; and a 
 quantity of it was ruthlessly cut away. 
 We believed its humiliation to be secure. 
 Not a bit of it! Never did it spread and 
 flourish and flower more abundantly than 
 it- has done this summer. It ran round 
 the corner of the house and made a bloom- 
 ing bower of itself in the shade under the 
 east porch. It gave a rich deep pink 
 background for the white irises, and Blush 
 roses to the south ; it actually climbed 
 up and looked in at the dining-room 
 windows, and nodded to us as we sat at 
 breakfast. * J'y suis et j'y reste ! ' it said, 
 as plain as words ; and after all I had 
 to confess its conquering beauty. The 
 
120 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Gardener would say I am rather weak 
 about some things. ' pease everlasting/ 
 has overcome ; and so has the white 
 briony. I had said that this briony 
 should not advance beyond a certain 
 point. And I found myself to-day sur- 
 rounded by the beauty of ten thousand 
 ice-green blossoms, overspreading a low 
 ivy wall, at least twelve feet beyond the 
 bounds I had set. With unnumbered 
 lengths of out-shot tendrils stretching 
 all over it every way in eager quest for 
 the touch of some sympathetic branch, 
 with glossy ivy and blue berberis berries 
 mixing through the flowers and foliage, 
 it is certainly as people say, 'a picture.' 
 Near a little wicket gate at the end of a 
 grass walk, grows a female briony, smaller 
 and more reticent, wreathed about with 
 round green fruit. During a short absence 
 this was written to me * No one has passed 
 through the little green gate since you left, 
 I am sure ; the briony has put out a tiny 
 hand which clasps it so tight.' Totally 
 different and most charming in its way, are 
 the clumps of Alstromeria, whose orange 
 
JULY 121 
 
 blossoms pass * wrapt through many a rosy 
 change' into pink and white. It is in- 
 valuable in nosegays for the flower-glasses. 
 It will have to be transplanted from its 
 rather obscure corner at a distance from 
 the house by the garden-men's cottage. 
 It would keep the east border ( furnished ' 
 until the time of phloxes. Ever since 
 mid-winter, the flower-glasses on our tables 
 have glowed with a rich succession of 
 Amaryllis formosissima and double scarlet 
 hibiscus. The long firm petals of this 
 amaryllis, well named ' the most beautiful,' 
 burn red beneath the silken surface a just 
 imitation of old red enamel. I never tired 
 of watching the play of inner light ; the 
 turn of each petal shone like a piece of old 
 jeweller's work. 
 
 JULY 24. One month has passed since 
 the garden lay flushed with the full glory of 
 midsummer. It is a little sad that nothing 
 now remains but a memory of it ; that 
 thinking of the garden flowers one must 
 say that this, and this, has been / Many 
 a flower since June has budded, bloomed, 
 
122 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 and fallen ; and like the quickly passing 
 sweetness of them, many a friend has come 
 and gone. The dry, green paths hedged 
 in with beech or rose are haunted in this 
 parching weather, not alone by waving 
 shadows on the grass, but by dear 
 memories of a face or a voice that was 
 here, and is not. The garden, through 
 all its prime, was remarkable for its blue. 
 Cloudy pillars of delphinium rose every- 
 where on the borders, showing well especi- 
 ally among the cryptomerias of the 
 Fantaisie. There were many shades of 
 blue, from pale sky to ultramarine. The 
 dark blue double kind is a desirable plant, 
 for its quality of lasting longer than its 
 single sisters. Within the walls there 
 grew a lovely group of white lily with pink 
 roses against a misty background of blue 
 larkspur, while on the other side the walk 
 reigned in brilliant confusion, Himalayan 
 poppies of every red and rosy tint. People 
 say that these poppies, which we call 
 Himalayan, or annual poppies, are common. 
 Yet nobody seems to grow them ! They 
 have been from May till now to ourselves 
 
JULY 123 
 
 and every visitor the wonder and joy of 
 the garden. Whether double or single, 
 like the field poppy they are full of a 
 happy radiancy of colour which cheers 
 both eyes and heart. 
 
 New combinations of colour and pattern 
 are perpetually coming ; and I do not 
 despair of the scarlets some day running 
 into pure orange-yellow. There is a low- 
 growing double kind, scarcely distinguish- 
 able from a pink carnation. There is one 
 half-double with white petals hemmed 
 with pink, and one streaked with crimson. 
 The colours .are all bright and clean, set 
 off by the yellow stamens. One or two 
 are rather handsome with black centres ; 
 but these have none of the clear joyous 
 grace of my favourites. For ' decking the 
 house ' (to use again Parkinson's quaint 
 phrase), they are admirable, lasting fresh 
 for days, if gathered in the cool of morn- 
 ing. To me the petals are like fairy 
 shells ; my housekeeper is reminded by 
 them of the muslin gowns her grand- 
 mother used to wear.* The whole race of 
 
 * Our Himalayan poppies, having bloomed with 
 
124 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 French poppies, so called, are far inferior, 
 despite their grand seed vessels, and their 
 fine grey foliage. ... I am rebuked by 
 the sweet face of one of these very poppies 
 looking reproachfully at me across the 
 table. The colour is vermillion-red and 
 white, most delicate and pure. The seed 
 of that poppy must be marked. 
 
 In the white splendour of their contrast 
 to the poppies, how beautiful the blooming 
 of Madonna lilies has been ! (it is all 
 * has been,' now !) Does any one know 
 why the lily leaves almost always fail ? 
 Before their buds flowered our lilies for 
 the most part looked deplorable their 
 withered leaves hanging down around the 
 tall stems. In due time, when the stems 
 were crowned with the majesty beside 
 which the glory of Solomon was as nought, 
 we forgot the dreary deadness of the foliage. 
 In Switzerland, where the cottage gardens 
 are filled like those in England, with 
 white lilies, I am told the stalk-leaves 
 remain green. Two or three of our finest 
 
 us since 1872, have since become known as ' The 
 Shirley Poppy ! ' 
 
JULY 12$ 
 
 clumps failed suddenly in one night, it 
 seemed the doomed plant withering down 
 to the very bulb. This was an unusual 
 disaster, and I blamed * the invisible worm 
 that flies in the dark and howling storm.' 
 In the same border we have several great 
 plants of Lilium auratum without a speck 
 upon their leaves. 
 
 The Evening primrose (QEnothera) came 
 into bloom before its appointed time, and 
 her fair flowers are even larger than usual. 
 Downy-winged moths hover round them 
 in the dark warm evenings. It is said that 
 those who watch may see the buds open. 
 I have watched, but had never patience to 
 wait long enough. Most flowers are best 
 in the morning, when they are refreshed 
 with dews and darkness ; but to see (Eno- 
 thera aright she * must be visited by the 
 pale moonlight/ when the air is still and 
 heavy with the odours of night-scented 
 flowers under the full golden moon of July. 
 On such a dewless night, (Enothera ex- 
 pands her broad primrose flowers, and 
 seems to throb through all her being with 
 a strange moon-life. Once sown, the 
 
126 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 evening primrose takes care of itself ever 
 after. We have them growing in a line 
 along the Larch walk, all twined about and 
 dressed with a large-blossomed wreathing 
 pink convolvulus. Another company of 
 them edging an evergreen border shine in 
 the light of loveliness out of the sombre 
 brown of cryptomerian darkness. Alas ! 
 QEnothera owns one fatal flaw. It is hard 
 even to whisper of its repulsive smell a 
 smell which is also so sensitive that the 
 flower seems to give it out or retain it at 
 will. At night, if the stem be shaken, or 
 if the flower-cup trembles at the touch of a 
 moth as it alights, out pours the dreadful 
 odour. I shall hope some day, for the 
 perfumed white variety. Another old love 
 of former years is the Indian moonflower. 
 Some of the large white seeds were sent 
 us in the winter from Madras, and now I 
 am anxiously watching the growth of two 
 fine plants which sprung from them. It 
 used to blow at the end of July, when the 
 moon was full, between 9 and 10 at night; 
 opening wide, like a pure white con- 
 volvulus, with a delicious scent. 
 
JULY 127 
 
 Night-blowing flowers are mostly pale 
 or white. The nicotiana hanging on its 
 stalk half-dead by day, is radiant as a 
 silver star when night draws on. In the 
 Boccage we have two fine clumps of 
 spiderwort (Tradescantia), a flower I re- 
 member set amongst childhood's wonders, 
 earliest almost of all flowers. Buds mass 
 themselves in clusters all over the plants, 
 and every day on each cluster appears a 
 new three-cornered purple gem. The old 
 fanciful likeness to spiders' legs can be 
 but barely traced in the leaves. There is 
 a sense of mysterious awe, in the way 
 Gerard says the leaves are good ' for the 
 bite of that Great Spider,' without naming 
 the creature more particularly. 
 
 John Tradescant lived once at Dorney 
 Court, not far from here. There is some 
 tradition that there he presented his 
 Pine-apple* to Charles II, and it is 
 not many years since a little wayside 
 public-house near, retained still the sign 
 
 * The first grown in England. At Dorney Court 
 there is an old engraving, which represents Tradescant 
 kneeling before the King in a garden, presenting his 
 pine-apple. 
 
128 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 of a Pine-apple. * Deborah's ' little mount 
 in the parterre was a while ago parcel- 
 gilt with the silver of small white hare- 
 bells, and the gold of yellow stonecrop. 
 It is grieving to recall thus the garden 
 as it was ! Sweet things do still remain, 
 but after all the daily waterings some- 
 times whole days are spent in water- 
 ing the place as a whole is parched 
 up with long drought. Some things 
 dwindle, and cannot by any means be 
 saved. Eleven weeks without rain ! 
 Long weeks when the sun burns un- 
 clouded, and the only clouds are clouds of 
 greenfly, that is the worst ; greenfly that 
 destroy whole rows of sweet peas in a 
 single night, and blackfly that smother the 
 fruit trees, and distort the stalks of lovely 
 poppies. If one sits in the garden they 
 settle all over one, and outside the garden, 
 down along the roads, one encounters 
 storms of flying aphides. Flycatchers sit 
 stupidly on the rose arches, bewildered by 
 the myriads that float in the air. The 
 lime avenue is dried up, and yet dripping 
 with honeydew. Rain will come at last, 
 
JULY 
 
 129 
 
 however, and meanwhile the trees will 
 ripen their wood, and it may be that good 
 will fall rather than harm, even to the 
 green things that claim our pity now. 
 
 \ 
 
AUGUST 
 
VIII 
 AUGUST 
 
 4 Such virtue have my marigolds, 
 Within their stalks enfolde, 
 That Phoebus with his burning beames 
 Cannot their leaves unfolde. 
 
 ' The double daisies all in rankes 
 
 About my garden goe, 
 With comelie course of camamile 
 That spreadeth to and fro.' 
 
 Hugh Plat, 1572. 
 
 AUGUST 1 8. How full of charm is the 
 return after absence to a beloved garden ! 
 One comes home rejoicing, to see with a 
 fresh eye each dear tree and each familiar 
 spot of lawn or border, and bringing home 
 stores of pleasant memories with sweet 
 suggestions for new delights to perfect and 
 bring to pass and make one's own another 
 day. 
 
 I note for special use these : A Mande- 
 
134 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 villia growing in the open air. It covers 
 half the front of an old house, climbing up 
 to the roof, and when I saw it the pure 
 white blossoms were clustered thickly all 
 over it. The situation in which this 
 Mandevillia grows and has flourished for 
 many years is warm and sheltered, the 
 house-walls of hummel-stone, being built 
 in a niche under a limestone cliff. Pos- 
 sibly this may not be the only greenhouse 
 creeper that might thrive in the open air, 
 at least during the summer months. We 
 have tried successfully the white and the 
 salmon-coloured black-eyed Thunbergia ; 
 also convolvulus from Indian seed, which 
 has richer and more varied colouring than 
 the common convolvulus major. 
 
 The lightness and gaiety of a flowery 
 hedge of it is indescribable. That which 
 I saw is nearly 10 feet high, the frame- 
 work made of crossed stakes, the convol- 
 vulus climbing and twining up to the top 
 and flowering profusely on both sides. 
 
 Espaliers of gooseberries I also saw 
 at an old place in Hampshire, bordering 
 the walks round three sides of the kitchen- 
 
AUGUST 135 
 
 garden. Nothing can be more neat and 
 useful than these espaliers, the goose- 
 berries being easily gathered without much 
 prickling by thorns, while nets fall comfort- 
 ably over, protecting them from the birds. 
 It was a delightful garden ! A long green 
 walk lay between rows of hollyhocks, pink, 
 black, white, and pale primrose. These 
 lovely hollyhocks had the free, aspiring 
 form, that is now so rarely seen when the 
 blossoms seem to clump irregularly up the 
 slender stem. Roses and most of the 
 summer flowers had faded from the borders 
 at the time of my visit. White everlast- 
 ing pea and red, strongly scented, fraxi- 
 nella were among the few that still bloomed 
 in beauty. A favourite plant of red 
 fraxinella was lost from our garden a year 
 or two ago, and I had not seen one since. 
 The scent of the flower is said to be due to 
 the emission of a vapour that can be set on 
 fire with a lighted match. That, must one 
 day be tried. One has but to pass a glove 
 lightly across the flower, however, and it is 
 perfumed all over. In another part of that 
 old garden grew white strawberries of a 
 
136 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 peculiar kind. They flower and fruit at 
 the same time, and the fruit, which is in 
 flavour like a Hautbois, goes on ripening 
 as late as October or November. Every 
 little runner bears its flowers and straw- 
 berries. A basketful of ripe berries was 
 gathered the day that I was there August 
 10. I believe in Shakespeare's time straw- 
 berries were still called ' straeberries,' from 
 the Saxon * strae ' or ' stray,' indicating the 
 habit of the strawberry in putting forth 
 runners to a distance from the parent 
 plant, giving to both independent life. In 
 some outland country places they still talk 
 of the * straeberry.' 
 
 In a beautiful sea garden, high above 
 the sea, half hid in groves of ilex, a spot 
 so sheltered that even in winter the lawns 
 are scarcely ever swept by the wild sea 
 winds, I found the little white sweet- 
 scented* orchis in the middle of the 
 month, growing on the brown parched- 
 up turf. There had been no rain there, 
 nor hardly any dew ; the lawns, destitute 
 of any poor vestiges of verdure, lay * gasp- 
 
 * Commonly called ' Lady's tresses,' or * traces.' 
 
AUGUST 137 
 
 ing as a thirsty land.' Yet here and there, 
 made bold by the idleness of scythe and 
 mowers, suddenly arose these green and 
 white points of orchis. One of them, as 
 it seemed in one night, shot up 4 inches, 
 and this one I took home with me. It is 
 set in water by my window, and now I can 
 watch the untwisting of the plaited tress, 
 as day by day its smoothness roughens 
 with twin - petalled moonlight - coloured 
 flowers. It was a pretty notion to liken 
 the little flower-spike to tresses of the 
 Virgin's hair, though one may perhaps 
 just fancifully trace in it a mingling of 
 pagan fairyism ; for mermaidens combed 
 their sea-green locks, and I myself once 
 knew the traditional fairy lady of a well, 
 all in green, with long green hair. Her 
 well-spring bubbled up by the side of a 
 deep West Country lane, and many chil- 
 dren and old people have seen the green 
 fairy rise at twilight from the water ! 
 
 The House,* whose high windows and 
 turrets look down over these brown lawns 
 
 * Highcliff, Hampshire. Belonged at that time to 
 Louisa, Lady Waterford. 
 
138 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 and flowers, and ilex woods, is romantic ; 
 like a poet's dream, rather than a house 
 of the nineteenth century. Its stones, 
 however, are the grey stones of an old 
 house in Normandy. They were brought 
 over many years ago, and rebuilt here on 
 the edge of the sea in strange architecture, 
 with the carved mouldings and gargoyles, 
 and oriel windows of the past, put in just 
 as they were. The open parapet round 
 the roof reads thus in stone letters : 
 ' Suave mari magno turbantibus cequora 
 ventis Terra magnum alterius spectare lab- 
 or em} The words seem to make music 
 with the soft measure of the waves below, 
 and the sound of the wandering winds. 
 The thick-leaved ilexes soon loose them- 
 selves in woods of chestnut and fir, and 
 paths cut through them in lines of endless 
 shade close in at last, each with an arch 
 of sapphire sea. Beyond the edges of the 
 woods, wild honeysuckle and low sea- 
 blown oaks, and brambles, grow together 
 in a sweet entanglement, and grassy paths 
 between are set with purple heather and 
 knapweed (knops, or hardheads), and 
 
AUGUST 139 
 
 yellow Fleabane ; and here a legion of 
 butterflies perpetually dance and play, 
 and make merry in the sunny weather. 
 It should make amends for much sorrow 
 in the world of Nature to see these 
 thousands of beautiful creatures, secure 
 and happy in their innocent joy. 
 
 Along this green glade your feet are 
 every moment ensnared by long-reaching 
 brambles, and every step disperses a 
 fluttering cloud of butterflies. They are 
 so tame that scarcely will they rise at 
 your approach, often giving the observer 
 time to stoop and examine with a lens 
 their spangled wings and silver-topped 
 antennae and busy proboscis. The Fleabane 
 is the butterflies' dear delight. (Did not 
 the child who called them ' flutterbyes ' hit 
 upon a better name ?) Two or three of 
 diverse kinds will often prank their wings, 
 and unrolling long black tongues, dig for 
 honey settled together on the same flower, 
 though flowers may not be few; but when 
 a Painted lady (Vanessa cardui), and a 
 silver-spotted Fritillary meet on one flower 
 they are sure to fall out, and rising chase 
 
140 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 each other hotly. Besides the multitudes, 
 of common and uncommon white butter- 
 flies and little cloudlets of the azure-winged 
 Alexis, Peacocks, and Tortoiseshells, and 
 Painted ladies in troops with now and 
 then a rarer clouded yellow Colias, or rapid 
 Fritillary, disport themselves up and down 
 the glade till past mid-day. Long may 
 their happy world be unknown to green 
 gauze nets and murderous ammonia bottles! 
 I am curious to know if any variation has 
 ever been observed in the markings of the 
 wings of these insects. I have for years 
 closely examined Peacocks and Tortoise- 
 shells and Atalantas, and can never find 
 the colours or patterns to vary in the least 
 degree from those of the oldest specimens 
 I can remember. In the glade dragon-flies 
 dart fiercely to and fro, -and wild ' bees are 
 busy on their threshold old.' The honey 
 gathered on that Hampshire coast is 
 crystal pale this summer. It was made, as 
 I was told, from fruit tree blossoms in the 
 spring, the long-continued drought having 
 dried up every drop of honey in the 
 heather-bells. 
 
I 4 2 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 IX 
 
 HOME AGAIN ! 
 
 ' Nature always wears the colours of the spirit.' 
 
 AND now I have been tasting the 
 pleasures of roaming through my own 
 principality once more ! noting with the 
 keenest zest the changes that eighteen 
 days have wrought. I want to go all 
 over it again. In a grand red glow, 
 covering an area of 462 square feet 
 of lawn, lighting up the old hall and 
 the windows of other rooms that look 
 that way, like the reflex of some fine 
 sunrise, just beyond the south porch, lies 
 the Sumach tree (Rhus cotinus). I can- 
 not say that it stands upon the lawn, 
 as would be said of any other tree, for 
 the beautiful soft masses of it are like 
 nothing else but those great white cumuli, 
 or summer storm-clouds, steeped in a 
 crimson after-glow, when we watch their 
 changeless glory moving slowly on, upon 
 the low horizon. These sumach snows 
 however, are reddened by hot weeks of 
 
AUGUST 143 
 
 July suns ; they cover all the tree, till 
 gently they shimmer down and lie still 
 upon the turf. Not a branch or a twig, 
 scarcely even one green leaf, strays out 
 amid the lightness of these plumes of 
 marabout to break their dim monotony. 
 This plumage of the tree is sunny red, 
 cooled with grey or lilac shadows. Ever 
 since June has it been ripening into this 
 miracle of misty beauty. The lawns are 
 burnt, but the parterre is formal and 
 brilliant just as it should be. So are 
 the zig-zags of verbena and Pelargoniums 
 beyond the yew hedges. The southern 
 wall is fragrantly overhung with festooned 
 clematis. But all these are quickly 
 passed by. I long to know all's well with 
 the Fantaisie and the Boccage. Ah ! the 
 sweet pea hedge round the tennis-lawn 
 is gone and past. Turn - cap Lilies, 
 proudly splendid, replace the roses of 
 the Fantaisie. The cryptomeria elegans, 
 intermingling here with verdure of won- 
 derful freshness, seem to rejoice in the 
 dry weather, and fair flowers of deep 
 blue salvia begin to blow. 
 
144 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Three paces through the deep shadow 
 of 'the wood/ and there is the broad 
 border of the Boccage in all its glory ! To 
 know how this had fared in my absence, 
 while yet the ground had not received 
 comfort from any kindly rain, had been 
 my secret trouble. I should like for the 
 moment to be some one else, and as a 
 stranger to describe this border quite im- 
 partially ! Yet the only words I can devise 
 as some one else's first impression seem 
 cold and dry. Such as ' a beautiful band 
 of flowers, that reflects the highest credit 
 on the care and skill which have made it 
 what it is.' That will not do. I must be 
 myself, and try to give some faint outline 
 of it. When I saw it last last month 
 roses and pinks were over ; and besides 
 some budding corn-flags and hyacinthus 
 candicans, there was little to give grace to 
 the border, saving certain patches and 
 rounds and clumps of green traced in 
 and out between the roses. I returned 
 to find this young green grown out of 
 all knowledge, and flowering with a strange 
 luxuriance of bloom, the flowers all mixing 
 
AUGUST 145 
 
 in delicious confusion. There is Ladies' 
 Pincushion (Saudades), made in pale coral, 
 passing through velvet shades of red to 
 deep ' murrey/ stuck with silver pins as 
 usual. Lobelia fulgens (the Cardinal's 
 flower), burn between the tufts of white 
 and lilac Sultan's flower (Sweet Sultan). 
 Gaillardia picta Lorenziana mingles with 
 Gailliardia picta flowering in gold and 
 crimson petals, fantastically nicked, set 
 round in little coronets; a bunch or two 
 of lilac Catananche, deep lengths of Marvel 
 of Peru in three bright colours, many 
 coloured China asters, double stocks, 
 lupins, dwarf phloxes, one choice corner 
 filled in with salpiglossis of richly varied 
 colours, brown, purple, and grey. Sword 
 lilies flash scarlet here and there amid 
 all these, and grandest of all are the 
 fine plants of hyacinthus candicans, each 
 plant sending up three or four great stems, 
 blue-green with the bloom of health, and 
 each bearing a ring of bells in ivory-white. 
 A white ' Peach-leaf bell flower,' (campan- 
 ula) in a shadowy place near at hand betrays 
 by contrast the only failure amid the perfect 
 
146 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 beauty of these fine hyacinthus flowers 
 failure in the purity of their whiteness. 
 
 Against a low beech hedge at the back 
 there is a stately line of auratum lilies, 
 counting seventy-three great heads of 
 bloom with store of buds rich in promise 
 for weeks far into the autumn. And 
 around the lilies are enlaced large African 
 marigolds of lemon and deep gold colour, 
 with scattered posies of little striped 
 French marigolds and of Zinnia Haageana. 
 At the farthest end a thicket of dianthus 
 superbus scents half the garden, and nearest 
 to the Fantaisie, a narrow grass walk in- 
 tersecting the border and leading into 
 Glorietta is fringed with lobelia sene- 
 cioides luxuriantly green, and most deli- 
 cately blue. Chrysanthemum tricolor fills 
 up the corner, and on the other side deep 
 purple and blue perennial-blooming pansies 
 set off the clean yellow rays and chocolate 
 eyes of Rudbeckia Newmannia. Towering 
 above the junipers tall 'flowers of the 
 Sun' keep watch, their green buds not 
 opened yet. Mignonette and honied alys- 
 sum and orange and red tigridias seem to 
 
AUGUST 147 
 
 grow naturally in and out between the 
 other plants, with now and then a sharp 
 gleam of roses in second bloom. How 
 obscure and dull is the thought-picture, 
 the best I can make of the Boccage border ! 
 Old Parkinson would paint it in a dozen 
 words ! He would just say, * the place is 
 like a piece of tapestry of many glorious 
 colours to increase every one's delight.' 
 Yet the colour is not all. A pervading 
 perfume works like a charm about the 
 place to bind in one sweet whole the out- 
 ward brightness of the flowers, and the 
 unseen soul of them, which is their scent. 
 
 I wonder how many moles there may 
 be in the garden. The Gardener certainly 
 would borrow Keats's phrase, and echo 
 heartily ' the demon mole ! ' For they 
 burrow and throw up their earthworks, 
 and overturn stones, and uproot precious 
 plants, caring nothing for right or wrong. 
 For me, the mole is simply * the four- 
 handed mole,' the odd little persecuted 
 wild beast (one of the last left in England), 
 the little velvet-coated gentleman-navvy, 
 who excavates in darkness, carrying his 
 
148 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 subways across our neatest turf-walks with- 
 out the least regard to propriety or order 
 in the garden. At the entrance of the 
 Fantaisie, indeed, for the last twelve years 
 a mole-run has existed across the path. 
 Our attempts to stop this right of way 
 have signally failed. Scores of moles were 
 caught year after year, and gibbeted near 
 the spot as a warning, till at last the 
 order came for executions to cease. I 
 could no longer endure the piteous sight 
 of the beautiful mole-skin coat squeezed 
 round the middle, and the two ungainly 
 serviceable hands that had worked so 
 hard, helplessly spread on either side. So 
 the underground * taupies' ' pertinacity 
 scored that time ! and the run remains to 
 this day. Long ago, when the world was 
 young, mole-hills were thought to be 
 useful for lambs to sit upon, or to shelter 
 under if the wind blew cold. ('Nootie- 
 stumps,' they call them in Gloucestershire.) 
 Lately, however, it has been discovered 
 that ( there is nothing more useful to the 
 floriculturist, whether for pots or borders, 
 than earth from a mole-hill ; ' for, ' as the 
 
AUGUST 149 
 
 mole lives entirely on worms and insect 
 larvae which are found in the best soil, that 
 which he throws to the surface while in 
 pursuit of his prey, finely pulverised, and 
 free from the seeds of weeds as it will be 
 found to be, is just in the state for pro- 
 ducing the best flowers/ 
 
 A long-desired white Tigridia has just 
 now for me all the charm of a new 
 possession. The cream-white flowers, 
 with crimson-spotted centres, are a most 
 exquisite delight. It is one of those 
 strange beings which look as if they had 
 come from another world. Until now, 
 the two tigridias the yellow and the 
 red with their threefold flowers seemed 
 always incomplete. Now, nothing more 
 is needed. I do not want a blue or a 
 pink tigridia ; this mysterious white third 
 is enough. 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
X 
 SEPTEMBER 
 
 * All tendrils green of every form and hue, 
 Together intertwined and trammell'd fresh : 
 The vine of glossy sprout ; the ivy mesh, 
 Shading its Ethiop berries ; and woodbine, 
 Of velvet leaves and bugle-blooms divine ; 
 Convolvus in streaked vases flush ; 
 The creeper, mellowing for an autumn blush, 
 And virgin's bower, trailing airily ; 
 
 3. Keats. 
 
 SEPTEMBER i. The soft triumph of the 
 Sumach is over. According to the su- 
 preme beauty of her prime, is now her 
 forlorn and wretched ruin. All in a day, 
 so it seemed, the feathery fluff began to 
 crisp and loosen. One night the west 
 wind blew in his strength, and left our 
 Wig tree well-nigh bald. The marabout 
 plumes, blown hither and thither, ac- 
 cumulated in angles of the house, and 
 
154 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 all the borders thereabouts were bedded 
 deep in fluffy pink. But even this relic 
 of grace is past, and the tree, nearly un- 
 leaved (for her feathers left no room for 
 leaf), all dishevelled and hung with rags 
 and tatters, is an almost ghastly sarcasm 
 on her summer self. 
 
 SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 13. Autumn or 
 spring ! * I know not which is sweetest, 
 no, not I' the deep mellow calm of an 
 evening such as this, in the middle of 
 September, or the green brilliance of the 
 spring. The tone is rich, like the colour 
 of an old Venetian master; and how sad ! 
 with the strange sweet sadness of all last 
 things last days, last hours. The air is 
 filled with a golden warmth, and all 
 tremulous with the sound of bells. The 
 chimes of four churches make music to- 
 gether, within a half circle of four miles. 
 Save for the dazzling glow of tall crimson 
 phloxes, or where the leaf of some Virginian 
 vine, impatient of the lingering summer 
 breaks into sudden scarlet, or where great 
 Sunflowers burn in fair majesty serene, the 
 
SEPTEMBER 155 
 
 tones of colouring are subdued and solemn ; 
 the young moon alone shines coldly through 
 thin saffron clouds that pass across the far 
 azure of the southern sky, while in the 
 west a pink flush, deepening into orange 
 fires, reflects back rosy-gold upon the 
 lulled earth beneath. Across the petunias 
 and many-coloured zinnias* bend fruitful 
 branches of apple and of pear. There is a 
 sense of settled calm and peace, of home, 
 and of all that may be most pleasureful and 
 most secure, in these plenteous boughs 
 weighed down by the load of their good, 
 great apples, and gently swelling pears, 
 and the mellow round of each ripening fruit 
 glows as if illumined from within. And 
 now a great silence steals on upon the air. 
 The bells have ceased, their last vibrations 
 lost along the far-spread fields. The sharp 
 ( tzit, tzit,' of a robin, or a beetle's drone in 
 passing flight, seem but to intensify the 
 stillness. In this beautiful hour, as twilight 
 deepens down upon the flowers, they seem 
 to open their hearts to you and speak. 
 
 * * Where are we to put the zenanas ? ' asked a 
 friend's old Scotch gardener t'other day ! 
 
156 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 The cold half-withdrawn look of common 
 day has vanished from each lovely face, and 
 as you pass by, voiceless, they tell you 
 sweet nothings without words. 
 
 It is more strange than perhaps at first 
 sight appears, the illumination of flowers 
 and bright coloured objects after sundown, 
 while the green of surrounding grass and 
 foliage is lit only with a sombre radiance. 
 I may be pardoned for giving a suggested 
 theory in explanation, thus : The colour 
 of all objects depends upon the kind of 
 illumination they receive. A completely 
 yellow light thrown upon a nosegay will 
 kill all colour excepting in the yellow 
 flowers. Newton discovered that sunshine 
 and all white lights have the power of 
 pouring every conceivable shade of colour 
 upon all objects, and these again have 
 the power of extinguishing all shades 
 except the few which suit their own sub- 
 stances and textures. ( A blue salvia 
 extinguishes all the red, yellow, green, 
 and possibly the violet rays, while a red 
 poppy absorbs all the violet, blue, green, 
 and possibly yellow. We therefore see 
 
SEPTEMBER 157 
 
 the latter brilliantly red, and the former 
 purely blue.' When mellowed fruits and 
 yellow and red flowers shine at evening 
 it is because the sunset light comes to 
 them through more and more of the 
 air that envelopes the earth, and which 
 though invisible, quenches almost entirely 
 the violet, blue, and green. All objects 
 disposed towards yellow and red are then 
 illuminated as with a pure light of these 
 two colours, and they gleam out tri- 
 umphantly, because all other green, blue r 
 and violet objects are more or less deprived 
 of their favourite rays. Nothing of this, 
 however, quite explains why white and 
 yellow flowers often appear so bright at 
 night, or why some other flowers and 
 notably some kinds of crimson snap- 
 dragon (antirrhinum) do often shine, so 
 as to attract the eye from a distance on 
 some very dull grey days. These (as 
 indeed all flowers in some degree) doubt 
 less have a self-luminous power, which we 
 call phosphorescence, whatever that may be. 
 We have already had large store of 
 delicious, well-sunned wall fruit peaches,. 
 
158 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 figs, and plums. I can believe that, had 
 we means to build and keep up long 
 ranges of houses peach houses, and 
 nectarine and fig-houses they would be 
 built, and we should draw from their rich 
 produce the same enjoyment in the same 
 way that others do who possess glass. 
 But I do not believe that these houses 
 would ever give me the same delight as 
 does the little basketful of fruit and flowers 
 that I find placed on my table every morn- 
 ing on these late summer days. I do not 
 believe that the finest fruit ripened under 
 glass could compare at all with the beauti- 
 ful red sun-ripened peaches, picked from 
 the old brick walls ! My basketful holds 
 sometimes one such perfect peach, two or 
 three purple figs, yellow plums bursting 
 with sugared juice; or a golden pear, a few 
 Muscat or Madresfield Court grapes lovely 
 in their exquisite bloom of misty gold or 
 black, while single flowers of richly-scented 
 tuberose and dainty pink begonias lie 
 intermixed with the green vine leaves 
 and the fruits. Our sole pride of glass 
 fruit culture is in the vinery. Season 
 
SEPTEMBER 
 
 159 
 
 after season our grapes excel in size and 
 in flavour. The Muscats remind me of 
 the grapes of Italy. Travelling along the 
 Corniche in days before railroads, grapes, 
 large and golden- green as these are, the 
 peasant people would bring to us and pour 
 into our laps, with green figs and china 
 roses all fresh and dewy. The quantity 
 of immense bunches that are gathered 
 out of our one small house, lasting up to 
 nearly Christmas, never fails to be a sur- 
 prise to me, although it is always the same 
 every year. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
XI 
 OCTOBER 
 
 ' Withered leaves, one two and three 
 
 Through the calm and frosty air 
 Of this morning bright and fair 
 Eddying round and round they sink 
 Softly, slowly.' 
 
 W. Wordsworth. 
 
 OCTOBER 19. My best yellow autumn 
 window curtains are up ! No other 
 curtains could ever please me so much as 
 these. But to make it understood how 
 perfect in their way they are, the windows 
 also must be described. They are almost 
 the only windows in the house that are 
 not old-fashioned casements. At that 
 period, in the beginning of the century, 
 when in most old houses the picturesque 
 and small-paned casements were made into 
 sash-windows, the windows of the room 
 
1 64 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 I inhabit were enlarged and modernised. 
 Here then, are two very large sash windows, 
 their aspect almost due south, with the large 
 frames and dull bald character usual to such 
 windows. Ugly as they are, they were 
 never altered, for the sake of the fine wide 
 opening made when the sash is thrown 
 up. Covering the entire space of the 
 upper half, and enframing the whole, hang 
 my curtains : green for summer, and in 
 autumn, golden yellow. The pair is odd, 
 for there must be nothing commonplace 
 about the room ! so the one is magnolia, 
 the other chiefly vine. On the right is a 
 bold intricate pattern of glossy leaves with 
 perhaps a great white creamy blossom 
 a chalice of so rich a scent set here or 
 there upon the branches, with blue sky 
 between. The left is all vine, made admir- 
 ably to suit the seasons. In winter the 
 curtain is drawn back, as it were; for a 
 few interlacing barren lines keep out no 
 light. The thin delicate arabesque of 
 spring gives place to summer, when the 
 green comes full and cool and shades 
 the noonday sunlight. And now in 
 
OCTOBER 165 
 
 autumn, my left-hand curtain is all yellow 
 gold, reflecting back gold sunshine of its 
 own. There should be dispersed amid the 
 gold, bunches of ripe green grapes, like 
 clustered berylls. That part of the orna- 
 mental needlework ! has not been well done 
 this year, and the grapes are mostly shrunk 
 and mildewed. To repair the loss of them 
 slender jasmine twigs set round with 
 narrow dark green leaves, hold out little 
 silver stars, peering round the corners, 
 stretching round the window-sills, while 
 across them comes a dash of red Virginian 
 climber. The one fault I find, is that my 
 yellow curtains do not endure. Come a 
 sharp frost, or strong gust of wind they 
 are gone in a moment. 
 
 The failure of the grapes is this year a 
 serious disappointment to the birds, who 
 count upon their vintage at the windows ; 
 yet the shutters opening in the morning 
 discover them some times at work. There 
 is a blackbird, with full black chest, 
 swallowing the grapes as fast as his golden 
 bill can manage it; or a thrush sits in the 
 Vine taking breath between his mouthfuls, 
 
166 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 while the sun shines sidelong on his 
 spotted breast; or a robin shows his red 
 waistcoat for a moment. He is not, I fear, 
 my robin that has hitherto been so con- 
 stant to the window for twelve months 
 past he has hardly missed a day. Bold 
 and familiar in the winter, silent and 
 hurried at nesting time not a feather in 
 his tail, and very shy, when moulting. 
 Gay and insouciant in his new suit, looking 
 as big again, and trilling half a bar at a 
 time short and full, but ( always regular to 
 his meals ' at the saucer of sopped biscuit. 
 Dear little tame robin ! I shall grieve if 
 he is dead ; but I thinkfhe will come back 
 in the winter, when birds are hungry. 
 They say that robins go to the seaside in 
 October ; and another saying would have 
 the young birds kill the old ones at this 
 season. Even this is better than the way 
 my friends the swallows behave. Up to 
 the time when they all left England 
 about the I3th they seem to have been 
 still occupied with late broods of young. 
 It was indeed without my consent that 
 they thus foolishly employed themselves 
 
OCTOBER 167 
 
 here in the north porch. If they could 
 but have understood, I should have per- 
 suaded them to stay a little longer, to give 
 their young a chance. On the i6th only 
 one swallow was seen, and three days 
 after a tragedy happened in the porch ! 
 Late in the afternoon a poor little full- 
 fledged swallow lay dead on the cold 
 stones. The forsaken nestling may have 
 fallen in its hungry efforts for food, or 
 have attempted in its weakness to follow 
 the stronged-winged parents, whose cruel 
 desertion it is hard to forgive. Strange 
 and inexplicable is the migratory instinct 
 with birds. It is then, more powerful with 
 them than even mother's love? and yet 
 love is said to be stronger than death. 
 
 The habits of the swallows who make 
 themselves at home in our entrances, north 
 and south, are full of interest. The red- 
 throated chimney swallows like best the 
 north. On the south side are martins. 
 Both kinds agree in departing from 
 ancestral laws in their ways of house 
 building. The typical swallow's nest used 
 formerly to be neatly built up usually 
 
1 68 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 under the eaves with a hole for them to 
 fly in and out. Our swallows of to-day 
 make flat hasty nests on projecting ledges 
 inside the porch. One nest (re-filled three 
 times last summer) is made up of ugly 
 blackish clay, bearded with long straws of 
 hay hanging down. Is it not a new thing 
 for swallows to- build with hay? We have 
 only one really well-rounded neatly-finished 
 nest, and this is a martin's. The chimney 
 swallows seem to be most hurried and 
 careless. One of our families makes no 
 nest at all, there is simply a layer of mud 
 laid on the ledge. Along the rim the five 
 newly feathered young ones sit in a row to 
 be fed, like five little old owls in miniature. 
 There is one thing that a swallow never 
 forgets or forgives, and that is destroying 
 the old nests. The place remains empty 
 to this day where once we cleared away 
 two overcrowded nests. They love over- 
 crowding. I watched the old birds on 
 their return the following May inspect the 
 place, flying in and out and round about 
 it; but either they forsook us altogether, 
 or nested elsewhere about the house. 
 
OCTOBER 169 
 
 Flowers still are blooming everywhere 
 in the garden. There are still beautiful 
 red roses, smelling as sweet as June. 
 Rosa rugosa has only just ceased to flower. 
 A great clump of pale blush anemone 
 japonica at the south end of the broad 
 walk has flowered grandly for some time 
 past. A clump of white ones from the 
 kitchen garden is to be planted there also, 
 since it is plain that they look best in large 
 masses. Had we room I should like to 
 plant blue salvia next to the white ane- 
 mones. The fine blue of this old salvia 
 enriches now the whole garden in almost 
 every part. The colour is said by some to 
 be in a false key, and as such to be out of 
 tune with the more natural greens and 
 blues around, contrasting ill with the lovely 
 tones of nemophila or of the blue daisy 
 or even with the firmament itself ! I know 
 not how this may be, but to me it is 
 nevertheless a magnificent blue nearest, 
 perhaps, in tone to the deep blue of the 
 alpine gentian, and losing beside the 
 gentian only because it lacks its depth of 
 jetty heart. Pure ultramarine must be 
 
170 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 used in the painting of either flower. Our 
 old walls are all well-furnished with the 
 vivid orange-scarlet glow of tropseolum. 
 It gives promise, too, of lasting on as long 
 as winter frosts delay. I cannot give the 
 name of this special variety of Tropaeolum, 
 or nasturtium is it? Its leaf is bluish 
 and round, and the plant seems to be 
 always in flower, from August until far 
 into November. 
 
 In the entrance court the old use- 
 less green gages and golden drop plum 
 trees against the walls are dressed out in 
 these gay flowers, climbing, streaming, 
 creeping, clustering about all over them, 
 branch and stem. The vivid colouring 
 is splendid ; it seems but a few days 
 since it mixed in many places with the 
 purple of Jackman's clematis. At this 
 moment the blossoms intermingle here 
 and there with tall, yellow helianthus. 
 The aged fruit trees are doomed, and 
 flowering climbers are to cover the walls 
 in their place. The standard cherry tree 
 between the pyramid yews is to be cut 
 down, and a broader flower border to be 
 
OCTOBER 171 
 
 made. It is hard to sentence the cherry 
 tree ! In spring it is so like a great 
 round nosegay of loveliest blossom, and 
 when the cherries begin to redden a 
 thrush so loves to build its nest in it, 
 and at evening to perch on the top and 
 sing the lingering day away. Yet the 
 cherry tree must go. These kind of 
 changes which at intervals have to be 
 made throughout the garden cause us 
 a thousand regrets. When the young 
 trees and shrubs thrive and grow all 
 round as Nature intended, the very suc- 
 cess and growth of them overturns all 
 our plans, and changes are inevitable. 
 ' The Fantaisie ' has changed its character 
 and is not the same in any way as it was 
 when first laid out. Then, flowers and 
 evergreen shrubs grew together on either 
 side the turf walk, and each enhanced 
 the other's charm. Twelve or thirteen 
 years later the cryptomerias and aucubas 
 and berberis have grown so large, that 
 nearly all the flowers are crowded out, 
 and a new aspect takes ipossession of the 
 whole. The law of change which thus 
 
172 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 rules the garden has lately forced us to 
 remove a large English yew from the 
 spot which it has occupied for many 
 years. It was pushing its dark growth 
 right into the beautiful grey foliage of 
 an Abies amabilis. So last month the 
 grand move had to be arranged. 
 
 To watch the transplanting of a tree is 
 a choice amusement of autumn in the 
 garden. The work begins early in the 
 morning. Two, three, four hours or more, 
 according to the size of the tree, is taken 
 up with digging round and throwing out 
 the earth. The roots and rootlets have to 
 be carefully separated : not cut or severed 
 more than is necessary. The tree is tied 
 close with strong cords : all its lower 
 branches bound up together. The head 
 gardener watches and gives his orders 
 quietly, jumps down into the trench, and 
 lends a hand himself with spade or pick : 
 walking round, returning again and again. 
 Silently, cheerfully, the men work. A 
 wholesome fragrance of new earth spreads 
 upwards in the air. The labour is severe, 
 but at last the tree stands free, with a great 
 
174 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 ball of earth round his roots. The bell 
 goes for the men's dinner ; powdered all 
 over with brown mould they scramble up 
 and shake themselves, throw an old mat 
 over the roots, and depart for their hour of 
 rest. The men return refreshed, and set 
 to work again with a will; and now three tall 
 stout poles, the ends meeting at top in a 
 triangle, are set up and fixed, with ropes 
 and pulleys fastened to them. It may take 
 long to adjust all right, but at last the tree 
 swings high in the air, dangling from the 
 summit of the triangle. The excitement 
 of the moment grows intense. Two or 
 three men in the pit below steady and 
 guide the ascending mass ; four or five 
 pull the ropes with might and main. The 
 tree swings fair above the centre of a 
 trolley, wheeled up to the edge ready to 
 receive it. The Gardener holds on to the 
 strong shaft or handle of the trolley, his 
 eye fixed anxiously on the swaying tree, 
 encouraging the men, directing every 
 movement. The ropes are tight; the tree 
 is well up. * Now let go ! slacken the 
 ropes ! gently so ! ' Gently the tree is 
 
OCTOBER 175 
 
 lowered down upon the platform of the 
 trolley, and the ball of earth once more is 
 wrapt in mats. 
 
 Now begins the dragging, and pushing, 
 and pulling; there's a shove and a tug all 
 together, and the tree is fairly off on its 
 journey. Toiling along the gravel- walks, 
 the triumphal car rolls slowly on. The 
 progress may be short or long; somewhere 
 it ends, at the edge of a big hole prepared 
 in the special spot designated to receive the 
 tree. Soon he slides safely down into the 
 bed ready made in the hole. There is a 
 merry shovelling in and stamping of the 
 earth, leaving a little ditch all round to 
 hold the great watering which is the ending 
 of the work; and there the tree is left, 
 looking as if he had been there all his life. 
 Unmoved the neighbouring trees and 
 shrubs stand round, and not a green leaf 
 flutters welcome to the new-comer; it is 
 henceforth as if the transplanted tree had 
 never been anywhere else. Should the 
 tree we have to move be larger than 
 usual, it may take to do it twenty-six 
 working hours or more. 
 
176 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Men of old time planted trees for pos- 
 terity. With far-seeing wisdom they 
 planned many a stately avenue, which 
 still remain the ornament and pride of our 
 fine old country houses. We do not in 
 these days seem always to look so far 
 beyond the present. When a few years 
 ago I planted a row of young limes (in 
 old books they; are * lines ') as a continua- 
 tion of the lime avenue, with arbor-vitae 
 between each tree, and parellel to these a 
 double row of larch, and a beech hedge 
 along the walk between the limes and the 
 larch I did not foresee the dilemma that 
 has ensued. A decision must before long 
 be made between the selfish enjoyment of 
 the present, extending perhaps to a few 
 uncertain years, or the future and lasting 
 improvement of- the place, ' which I shall 
 not see. While we hesitate the trees grow 
 on. The stems of the limes grow thick 
 and smooth, and their branches spread ; 
 the beautiful green arbor-vitae flourish, 
 and are rapidly making handsome trees ; 
 my favourite larch send up strong tall 
 shoots every season threatening to over- 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 177 
 
 whelm everything ; while the beech 
 hedge is so luxuriant that I am tempted 
 to sacrifice all to it. Which is it to be ? 
 
4 WHY should we sorrow, 
 That summer's dazzling ray 
 So soon has passed away ? 
 Whilst we can borrow, 
 From Autumn's yellow light 
 A scene more purely bright ? 
 
 ' Where'er the eye can wander, 
 The garden and the field, 
 A richer prospect yield. 
 Earth seems to squander 
 Her plenty in the sheaf 
 Her gold in ev'ry leaf.' 
 
NOVEMBER 
 
XII 
 NOVEMBER 
 
 ' Change and decay in all around I see, 
 O Thou who changest not abide with me. ' 
 
 J. Newman. 
 ' The spirit culls 
 
 Unfaded amaranth, when wild it strays 
 Through the old garden ground of boyish days.' 
 
 J. Keats. 
 
 NOVEMBER 30, 1887. November is going 
 out with all the soft warmth of a summer 
 month. On such a day as this, the gum 
 cistus gives out its sweetness, and the 
 aroma of its leaves floats past upon the 
 milk-warm wind. I found to-day upon 
 a grass walk a wind-snapt branch of it, 
 and holding it in my hand as I walked, 
 the garden seemed all wrapt in delicious 
 airs as from some sweet southern clime. 
 There are roses too : real pink roses in 
 
182 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 the garden, full blown, and full of summer 
 fragrance. And tea-roses are showing 
 large firm swelling buds which look as if 
 come what might, they were resolved to 
 open. Little white blossoms shine amongst 
 the wood strawberry leaves under the 
 south windows. Ferns still are freshly 
 green : only here and there they are 
 changing colour in groups of orange, 
 russet-brown and gold. Growing among 
 the * rocks ' on the Roman Walk, a plant of 
 yellow Sysirhinchium which has flowered 
 persistently during the past six months, 
 still points with primrose yellow its narrow 
 reed-like leaves. The glory of the garden 
 is the Christmas rose. Our one great 
 healthy clump is, in the heart of it, 
 silvered all over with the promise of finer 
 bloom than it has ever been known to 
 show. It means to bloom rather earlier 
 than usual this season, and as yet has no 
 bower of fir branches built over it to 
 ward off the frost. Scarcely the least 
 tinge of red in any one of the score of 
 well opened blossoms mars as yet their 
 perfect white. 
 
NOVEMBER 183 
 
 Beautiful as they are, we do not often 
 gather them for the house, for when 
 parted from their own dark foliage, 
 Christmas roses lose always a part of 
 their life and spirit ; and yet the leaves 
 look too coarse when cut, and besides 
 being difficult to arrange, to cut them off 
 from the plant will often seriously wound 
 it. I have tried to arrange with them 
 sprays of flexiosa honeysuckle embrowned 
 with winter, but nothing really answers. 
 Chrysanthemums on the other hand, seem 
 made for 'decking up the house' just 
 now ! They are brilliant in white and 
 yellow and chocolate brown and all the 
 indescribable tints we know and love so 
 well. But our dear Christmas roses are 
 best left among the dead leaves, growing 
 in the earth where they love to be, and 
 there they gladden our eyes with un- 
 looked - for joy, when summer's flight 
 makes the heart sad. The purple coloured 
 and green Hellebores that were sent us 
 from the north, hardly do their best 
 here. They are budding well, but 
 they are rather unwilling denizens, and 
 
184 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 wear the look of existing here only as 
 specimens. Notwithstanding the unusual 
 warmth, the garden in these late Nov- 
 ember days is dull and sorrowful. Broken, 
 blackened wrecks of past delight, strewed 
 over every part of it, seem to impart a 
 more than common gloom. The sense of 
 1 change and decay/ pervades the very air 
 about us, as we traverse the garden paths, 
 along by the ruined shrubberies and borders, 
 or pass near haunted, grassy ways. 
 
 There is always a certain charm in the 
 curious mosaic of autumn leaves, lying as 
 they fall, this way and that, across each 
 other on every side. Leaves are mostly 
 sure to fall picturesquely, and to die off 
 in fine shades of brown and tawny 
 red. And yet, unless in frosty weather, 
 when they rustle deliciously under foot, 
 there is a feeling of damp discomfort 
 about them ! the leaves of Occidental 
 plane and of American oak shew the 
 most variety of colour : while, the large 
 foliage of polygonum, when withered and 
 scattered about like huge fragments of 
 brown paper, is, I think, downright ugly ! 
 
NOVEMBER 18$ 
 
 How surely does autumn give a tinge of 
 melancholy to a garden reverie ! and how 
 the feeling grows with age ! But it is not 
 like the ideal sorrowfulness of youth, that 
 dwells so marvellous sweet in our 
 remembrance. It is simply that we 
 listen now to the shortened step of the 
 years to come ; it is only that now, we feel 
 and we know, how for us the days are 
 numbered that will bring back the flowers 
 in their season. Even the lilac bunches 
 of autumn crocus, both double and single, 
 which arise here and there on the bare 
 earth without any green about them do 
 not make much cheer. My pleasant paths 
 are all forlorn ; the singing birds are flown 
 or dead, and unbroken silence reigns in the 
 unleaved thickets they once loved so well. 
 There are no delightful surprises now ; 
 quite plainly and bare of all disguise we 
 see the empty nest in the fork of many a 
 leafless branch ; nests, to discover which 
 in the green June days, we used to peep 
 about and part the leaves or peer into the 
 heart of the yew hedge, so very unsuccess- 
 fully ! 
 
r86 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Never do I remember the pinched and 
 hanging stalks and blackened mouldered 
 ruins of summer, to have made the garden 
 look more drearily disconsolate. Yet even 
 now, in the mournfullest wreck-encum- 
 bered borders, straight slender stems appear 
 already full of greenest sap and of * all the 
 wonder that's to be.' As the saying goes, 
 'when one door shuts another opens.' 
 And so though a thousand regretful 
 memories cling round the autumn garden, 
 and rise in the heart with the scent of 
 dead and dying leaves, there is no time to 
 dwell on them. Winter's happy working 
 day begins. Now is the time to play all 
 manner of new invented games with flower 
 beds and borders, lawns and shrubberies. 
 The laying out of lines in a garden is not 
 perhaps so easy as might be thought. 
 Your design may look well on paper but 
 when actually cut out in the turf, most 
 likely it will come all wrong ; and the 
 clearest head will find too late, that essential 
 details of surroundings have been forgot, 
 or not sufficiently taken into account. 
 The work of remodelling our entrance 
 
NO V EMBER 187 
 
 court has in this way been a lesson. It 
 was so hard to get the curves and angles 
 right, and to make the lines fit in, chiefly 
 it must be admitted by reason of irregularity 
 in the old walls. A cherry tree, a straggling 
 old apple, and some worn out greengages 
 against the wall all taken away, have made 
 the trimmed pyramid yews look larger ; 
 each yew now stands out in solid blackness 
 from his setting of rounded turf. And now 
 lovely clamberers must be chosen for the 
 old brick walls denuded of their fruit trees. 
 There must certainly be blue ceanothus 
 and a passion flower, and above all a 
 scarlet pyracanthus. 
 
 I know not what curious thread of far- 
 off association gives this common wall-tree 
 its fascination, at least for myself. I only 
 know the peculiar thrill that invariably 
 startles me whenever I see one covered 
 with ripe fruit. There is a pyracanthus 
 trained up the common wooden paling of 
 a little roadside dwelling that I often have 
 to pass. Familiarity affects not the kind 
 of shock of satisfaction which the sight of 
 its orange red berries never fails to bring. 
 
188 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 It is something like, when in music a minor 
 chord drops at once into the full major 
 harmony. So without doubt a pyracanthus 
 must be planted. Only now, in the gloom 
 and damp, we seem to know the full value 
 of scarlet geranium. There are a goodly 
 number of them grown under glass in the 
 frames, and never in the hottest days in 
 August have such scarlet splendours shot 
 from the blossoms. They absolutely flash 
 red rays of burning fire from the glasses on 
 the table. Fireball we find the best for 
 cutting in November. Henri Jacobi is too 
 sombre. Vesuvius is gaiety itself, but 
 Fireball is best. A few starry gold-eyed 
 marguerites, should be mixed in, and there 
 must be no leaves ; the stalks of tender 
 green showing all criss-cross within the 
 clear glass, are relief enough. A glass full 
 of such brilliant colour as this, will illumine 
 the dulness of the gloomiest mid-winter day. 
 
 Thus far goes my garden diary of 
 1887. This 3oth of November four years 
 after, is cold and damp and shrouded 
 
NOVEMBER 189 
 
 in a thick white fog. There have been 
 troublous times of wet and wind with 
 alternating frosts. The earth is saturated 
 with moisture : so much so that the very 
 worms are made uncomfortable in it, and 
 wriggle up to the outer air, making tracks 
 across the wet walks where they lie at last 
 all pale and watery, and somewhat un- 
 pleasanter than usual. 
 
 Change and decay in the garden have 
 gone on the same. The passion flower 
 and the blue ceanothus were planted, 
 bloomed and flourished for a season, and 
 then last winter perished in the frost. The 
 red pyraneanthus planted with them is in its 
 place, all scarlet, and netted from the birds. 
 About the middle of the month a great 
 south wind raged for all one night and 
 day, and our one young American oak 
 fell, snapped close to the root : so there is 
 an end of the rich autumnal foliage which 
 had been a joy each year while it lived 
 with us. A yet greater loss is one of the 
 mighty elms, in the house meadow. It 
 broke right in half, and fell with such 
 violence that big limbs of it dug into the 
 
1 90 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 tennis lawn and there stuck fast several 
 feet deep. The tree measured (half of it 
 standing firm and half stretched on the 
 turf), over 120 feet, and all of it fine sound- 
 hearted timber. It must have been soon 
 after that, I went out to enjoy the tre- 
 mendous music of the storm, raging in the 
 tops of the elms, and watched the old 
 accacia rock and heave up and down from 
 the very roots. It seemed as though 
 every heave might be its last. For on 
 every side but one the roots had entirely 
 given way. It did not altogether go that 
 day. But the poor old accacia tree is 
 sentenced, and before winter ends the axe 
 will have laid it low. Yet one cannot 
 but feel sorry for the nuthatches ! no 
 other tree will afford them with such con- 
 veniently rough bark, for the cracking of 
 their nuts. Up to last week the garden 
 has been full of roses. Pink and crimson 
 and creamy tea-roses, all sweet as summer, 
 and quite unheeding of the weather. 
 Even York and Lancasters have tried 
 their best to bloom, and made some sickly 
 little flowers, which were picked off the 
 
NOVEMBER 191 
 
 moment they appeared. We have had 
 bowls full of my favourite china roses, 
 both pink and crimson. 
 
 NOVEMBER 30* 1893. Last summer 
 our roses did well, although some other 
 gardens told a different story. A new 
 long border was cleared and planted with 
 a great many of the best new roses : very 
 choice and wholly uninteresting. For that 
 new border I had been very anxious to 
 procure what some one just returned from 
 New York, described as 'Jack roses.' I 
 was told they were of a fine crimson red 
 and very profuse bloomers. But these 
 turned out to be nothing but the well- 
 known old General Jackminot, which with 
 the usual love for abbreviation in the 
 United States has come to be simply 
 1 Jack.' The disappointment was soon for- 
 gotten in the many rose treasures we have 
 since possessed. Socrates, a lovely rose that 
 hated the border is removed to the green- 
 house, where is a healthy Camellia Rose, 
 making vigorous shoots both long and 
 strong. It takes a very large flower pot 
 
192 A GA RDEN OF PL EA SURE 
 
 now; early in March the lovely white single 
 blossoms will begin to open all over it, 
 their fragrance exquisite and unlike to any 
 other rose, and the perfume seems to live 
 within the centre of its yellow stamens. 
 Then we move out the great pot with its 
 load of loveliness, and it is placed in the 
 shade well sheltered from the wind, to be 
 a joy and delight for full three weeks. 
 This spring, she stood out side by side with 
 a fine pot-plant of Fortune's yellow. The 
 sister roses were both so beautiful one 
 scarce knew which to admire most. I do 
 not think the Camellia Rose (Japan) is 
 often seen in English gardens, but on the 
 Riviera it has long been familiar. At 
 Cannes, the Villa Grand Bois is half 
 covered with it. And in the gardens of La 
 Mortola between Menton and Ventimiglia, 
 memory recalls with delight long lovely 
 garlands of it enwreathing the low thickets 
 of rose and aloe. In the frames we have 
 nearly half a score of charming little 
 shrubby roses grown from Indian seed. 
 The flowers as yet are very small, but 
 highly scented and deep in colour, keeping 
 
NOVEMBER 193 
 
 their rich pink when dried. Lucille, an old- 
 fashioned climber famous for the charm 
 of its bud promises well on the wire rose- 
 arches. To these have been lately added 
 the long-desired old Celestial rose and the 
 Jacobite white rose. This last is a gift 
 straight from a garden in the Chanonry, 
 Aberdeen Old Town, where * it has always 
 been,' as one says. It is the very rose 
 they loved and wore for Prince Charlie. 
 Rosa cinnamomea (the Willow rose), 
 grows most luxuriantly with us, and even 
 threatens to become tiresome. Its flowers 
 are marked by the lovely peculiarity of a 
 little round pink pointal. Yet even as I 
 write, a doubt arises whether after all it is 
 really cinnamomea ! or whether it be not 
 rather rosa pomefera major, the great 
 Apple Rose of Parkinson. Portions of his 
 description of each would suit in part either 
 of these two roses, while a third ' the 
 rose without thorns,' or the 'marbled 
 rose,' is still more like. 
 
 I would not quarrel with my Parkinson; 
 but certainly his descriptions of the roses 
 of his day, are perhaps somewhat involved. 
 
 N 
 
194 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 Our Willow rose might in these days be 
 thus described : * Smooth long stems with 
 infrequent thorns at intervals set singly or 
 in pairs, tufted with narrow willow-shaped 
 leaves in the midst of which appear the 
 flowers, five-petalled, of a full pink colour. 
 In the centre of each flower a little round 
 pink button or pointal surrounded by 
 yellow stamens. The hips are dark red 
 and round like little russet pippins, and 
 these tiny apples being hairy while young, 
 become in time quite smooth and shining/ 
 There exist no doubts, however, about the 
 Velvet rose (Rosa tholoserica simplex et 
 multiplex). A few plants of this neglected 
 rose, survive in our older shrubberies, the 
 flower is neatly made and small : semi- 
 double, of a deep, black-crimson colour, 
 and velvety with yellow threads. The 
 velvet rose is not very good for cutting, 
 as it never lasts. Yet by its so great 
 abundance in the season of its bloom, I 
 am always tempted to gather of it. The 
 Ayrshire rose has been added to our store, 
 but as yet the rooted cuttings have not 
 left their nursery. 
 
NOVEMBER 195 
 
 In all the garden there are but two 
 bushes of pink Cabbage rose. The North 
 seems to greatly favour this old beauty. 
 All through August last and a part of 
 September, roadside cottage gardens on 
 Deeside were ideal, with a perfumed pink 
 profusion of them. Everywhere rows of 
 large untidy bushes were seen hung all 
 over with round and heavy roses. Just 
 one remnant of a Crested rose (once so 
 fashionable), survives, I believe, some- 
 where among the Rhododendrons in the 
 Boccage. I discovered it by chance two 
 years ago ; but somehow it slipt away again 
 before that summer ended, and it has never 
 since been seen. The little Rose de Meaux 
 too -joy of our childhood has disappeared 
 from the border where once it grew, and 
 so has the Fairy Rose disappeared from 
 the kitchen garden. I have heard of little 
 hedges of the Fairy rose instead of box 
 edgings. But amongst all the roses of 
 other days, the Celestial rose is surely 
 queen ! The little round Burnet Roses, 
 white and yellow, are sweetest of all. 
 
 In the east border, under the wall, two 
 
196 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 grand old Baron Prevost, are covered with 
 a second bloom, or rather their bloom has 
 never ceased all summer long. These trees 
 are over six feet in height, having been 
 originally worked on a stem as tree roses. I 
 have known them for upwards of twenty- 
 six years. But the name of the Celestial 
 sets me dreaming of the loveliness of many 
 a half-forgotten rose of our grandmothers* 
 gardens : and musing, appears before me 
 like a dream, an old Scotch garden as I 
 saw it on a July day a year ago and hope 
 again to see it summer by summer. 
 
 It is just an old-fashioned Scotch kitchen 
 garden within a beechwood full of fine 
 potatoes and turnips and berries, and 
 flower borders. Two acres gently sloping 
 to the south, enclosed within lofty grey 
 granite walls which are almost hidden 
 behind ancient cherry, pear, and apple 
 trees. The granite walls enclose three 
 sides, and the fourth, the south side, is 
 picturesquely fenced, though the fencing 
 may be unpropitious enough for a kitchen 
 garden. A low stone wall with narrow 
 tall brick pillars rising above it at intervals 
 
NOVEMBER 197 
 
 and a woodwork trellis of faded green 
 between each. The trellis is heavily over- 
 grown with great masses of ivy and 
 honeysuckle white honeysuckle just 
 now in richest bloom and fragrance and 
 is partly hidden by the wild growth of a 
 neglected shrubbery border where tall 
 white campanula and Aaron's rod, 
 Solomon's seal, and weedy Turk's cap 
 lilies, struggle to the light through a 
 wilderness of guelder rose and spindle, 
 and holly and gean trees. 
 
 Pushing open the door, between the 
 heavy granite door posts quite over- 
 canopied with honeysuckle, and with the 
 gooseberry and raspberry and snow- 
 berry, that for many a year have seeded 
 and grown up in unheeded luxuriance 
 from every cranny in the stones the plan 
 of the garden is disclosed at once. It 
 is very simple : a long straight walk 
 between borders of turf and flowers and 
 two hedges of cotoneaster, leading up to 
 a green door at the other end ; a walk 
 all round, and four cross walks. After 
 the true old Scotch st) 7 le, each walk is 
 
198 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 bordered with flowers and gooseberry and 
 currant bushes, roses and columbines, 
 with a thousand other less familiar 
 plants beside. But the old - fashioned 
 roses are the glory and the charm of 
 the garden. Long before La France was 
 born, or Gloire de Dijon's name was 
 heard, these beautiful gay damasks and 
 York and Lancasters, grew and flourished 
 here. And strange to say, here their 
 old titles also have survived. 
 
 Two tall sweet briers guard the entrance 
 of the brier cross-walk. To-day they are 
 covered with little pink roses, like nothing 
 I have ever seen since Masaccio's fresco 
 in the Ricardi palace at Florence, where 
 rose-crowned angels kneel in a row beside 
 a low rose hedge. One knows not on 
 which side to look, so splendid on either 
 hand is the array of roses, red and white ; 
 heavy-headed cabbage roses, roses of 
 Provence and pink moss roses in the 
 wildest profusion. The crimson damask 
 are so 'brode'as old garden -writers say, 
 so vigorous, so replete with colour and 
 with fragrance, they literally glow like 
 
NOVEMBER 199 
 
 crimson lamps of fire, whenever the sky 
 is overcast. Broad roses, indeed they are, 
 for the least of them will measure five 
 inches across with ten great petals and 
 smaller ones besides, around the centre 
 diadem of bright gold stamens, from the 
 midst of which rises the stiff, thick column 
 of clustered pistil. It is difficult to see or 
 smell or to write of these damasks with- 
 out an enthusiasm that seems to carry 
 one awiy ! Fine clumps of English iris 
 vary with their exquisite tints of lilac 
 or viobt and speckled mauve, the all- 
 prevailing rose-red pink and white. This 
 iris is r ar more Scotch than English, for 
 there is scarce a cottage garden round 
 about in Aberdeenshire without its iris 
 clumps. I know a little garden there, 
 that grows them in a wonderful double 
 line, milk-white. 'Aye,' responds the 
 gudewife when the great number of her 
 ivhite flowers is admired, * I just slice 'em 
 like ing'ons (onions) and digs them in.' 
 And beside the irises, thrives in deep 
 fiery crimson, a certain double dwarf Sweet 
 William the gardener's pride and the 
 
A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 clear amber-yellow of low-growing ceno- 
 thera. Here too, is Sauguinaria Canadensis. 
 A faint scent of bergamot leads you to 
 a plant or two of purplish Fraxinella. 
 Pass your hand across the leaves, and the 
 perfume will cling to it ; or come again 
 after dark and strike a match under its 
 nose ! and the flowers will blaze up and 
 crackle and be none the worse. Purple 
 Canterbury bells as big as coffee cups with 
 saucers too, contrast beautifully vrith the 
 almost ethereal purity of the great white 
 Cabbage, or Provence, roses, which toss 
 themselves in singular confusion of crossing 
 bud and bloom. I believe this last 
 came out anew last year as the York rose. 
 Years ago, it was the Neapolitan rose. 
 Could she but open her petals more tidily 
 she would be supreme. Great bushe; of it 
 alternate in another walk with old pink 
 cabbage and moss roses. The former ha 
 such a heavy head that one needs must 
 hold it up to look within at the round, 
 pink, bird's nest. And then it strikes one 
 at once, that this was the type of the rose 
 of ancient sculpture of the Cathedral at 
 
NOVEMBER 201 
 
 Amiens : and also of Mary Moser's crayons, 
 and of the once fashionable papier-mache 
 tea-trays, and card-board painted hand- 
 screens, and all the rest of the flower-art of 
 that period when the century was young. 
 But now the brier walk leads into the 
 broad side walk, and here begins the reign 
 of Velvet roses, sweetest of them all, 
 though they last for but one brief day or 
 so. The flower is made of real silk velvet 
 leaves, full of delicious fragrance, wine- 
 dark in colour. The learned dispute about 
 which was the Velvet rose. But the 
 guardian of this old Scotch garden has no 
 such doubts ; * This ' he says * is the Velvet 
 rose.' Just for the pleasure of hearing 
 them, I like to pretend ignorance, and ask 
 him for the name of this or that rose. 
 Quite naturally, and without hesitation he 
 will answer, 'the Velvet rose,' or 'the 
 damask,' or 'the white cabbage,' etc., as 
 if they were the modernest roses ! 
 
 Here and there the finer pink of a care- 
 less, semi-double flower, marks an un- 
 named variety, nearly allied to the crested 
 rose. On the shady side of the garden, 
 
202 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 among the potatoes, distinguished by its 
 grace of growth, by its bluish-green leaf, 
 and its half single snow-white flower, we 
 know the ancient Jacobite rose. Until 
 I knew its name, it used to seem so 
 strange, that in some parts, never a road- 
 side cottage, or little muirland dwelling, 
 if no more than a ( butt and a ben,' but 
 has its white rose bush growing by the 
 door, or straggling across the dyke. It. is 
 the old Jacobite rose, and its presence 
 thus surviving still among us, is a living 
 link with those far off troubled times, 
 when Prince Charlie was the darling of 
 the people, and his rose, the ' rose that's 
 like the sna',' was planted by every house- 
 wall in that north land of loyalty. They 
 had their white rose always near, though 
 they might not dare to wear it. One 
 other forgotten rose of beauty, the 
 oft named Celestial, is recalled by the 
 shapely oval bud of the Jacobite. Every 
 old rose has its special attribute or 
 character. The attribute of this, is an 
 exquisite neatness, combined with the 
 most consummate loveliness. Though 
 
NOVEMBER 205 
 
 impossible to paint it in words, it is like 
 this : Leaves cold blue-green, evenly 
 serrated. The bud, packed as if by hand 
 (a fairy's hand !) opens slowly, leaf by leaf. 
 The open flower is almost flat, and forms 
 into a perfect circle, suffused with a deli- 
 cious pink, which is like no other pink. 
 They did well who named it rose of 
 Heaven, for other roses come not near to 
 equal the fairness of it faultless in its 
 purity of shape and colour. 
 
 How few remember now that lovely 
 flower : like many another sweet old thing 
 it has gone out of fashion. New roses 
 give so little real pleasure ! They are so 
 often without scent ; and is not the fra- 
 grance of it, the rose's soul ? But I know 
 little of them, and incline to rank them 
 with exhibition chrysanthemums, which 
 one loathes. Sometimes, however, it is, 
 I confess, love at first sight. It was so 
 when first I saw 'Lady Folkestone' 
 and the so-called 'white La France.' 
 These two came to live in the garden, 
 and I hope never to lose the charm of 
 their fair beauty. Once in a vision I saw 
 
20 4 
 
 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 a rose ! I believe it has never bloomed on 
 earth ; but perhaps it may come some 
 happy day among the newly invented 
 briers. It was a single-flowered white rose, 
 the petals delicately edged with pink. 
 
DECEMBER 
 
XIII 
 DECEMBER 
 
 4 The steadfast mind that to the end 
 Is fortune's victor still, 
 Hath yet a fear, though Fate befriend, 
 
 A hope though all seem ill. 
 
 Jove can at will the winter send, 
 
 Or call the spring at will.' 
 
 William Watson (Odes of Horace). 
 
 DECEMBER 24*. There are roses, real 
 pink roses, full blown in the garden still. 
 Tea roses also are there, showing large 
 firm buds which look resolved to open. 
 There are little white strawberry blossoms 
 shining among the wild strawberry leaves 
 in the south border under the windows of 
 the house. 'All is seeming, nothing is, 7 
 at the season of this nigh two thousand 
 year old anniversary. And thus in the 
 days long gone by, a dream like this I 
 dreamed : 
 
208 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 XIV 
 
 ON CHRISTMAS EVE 
 A Mother's Dream 
 
 CHRISTMAS was with us, almost before we 
 were aware, and the Christmas tree had 
 not yet been cut in the Fir wood. Soon 
 it would be carried home to be decked in 
 burning lights and tinsel toys. And the 
 children began to ask, * Mother, where are 
 we to have the Christmas tree ? ' and she 
 made answer quietly, 'In the wood, to- 
 night.' But the elder children were dis- 
 pleased ; and one said the night was cold, 
 and another said the way was slippery, and 
 none of them would leave the warm fire- 
 side. And so the children agreed they 
 would not go out to find the Christmas 
 tree in the dark wood. Only the little 
 one, the boy with the fair round face and 
 the flowing hair he softly stole his hand 
 into his mother's, and looking up in her 
 eyes, he said, ( I will go with you ! ' So 
 they went out both of them together 
 
DECEMBER 209 
 
 into the still starlight. The night was 
 clear and cold and the little one must 
 have his fur hood, and the warm cloak 
 must be closely wrapped round him. And 
 they went down the steps into the garden 
 and so across the lawn through the narrow 
 gate into the wild dark wood. And the 
 child's eyes were full of wonder as he saw 
 the great golden stars above the trees, and 
 knew not they were God's eternal word 
 written in the heavens. 
 
 Silently we went on our way. The 
 green moss under our feet, the bare black 
 stems of ancient forest trees rising up on 
 either hand, till we came where two paths 
 crossed, and there, at the entering in of 
 the wood where the fir trees began stood 
 three Angels. They were clad in moon- 
 white raiment, and crowned with roses, 
 pure roses of Paradise, whose far off fra- 
 grance stirred our very heart. 
 
 The countenance of the angels was but 
 dimly seen, by reason of a dazzling glory 
 round their heads yet, it seemed as though 
 they smiled, and beckoned to us with the 
 hand. A gentle wind arose and swayed 
 
 o 
 
210 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 the branches over head and there was 
 the sound of murmurous music amid 
 the pines. And deeper and further into 
 the deep wood the child and I passed 
 onward, silently hand in hand, and many 
 fair trees we passed by, but found not the 
 tree we sought. And about the middle of 
 the way, the three angels parted from us, 
 and afar off shone a beautiful light, and it 
 seemed to me that we saw very nigh the 
 light of the Christmas tree ! But as we 
 drew more near, behold it was not the tree 
 but a bright star shining low in the wood. 
 And now I knew not any longer where we 
 were, for the trees were about us no 
 more, but only a wide moonlit mountain 
 land. 
 
 Cold moonbeams whitened the flocks 
 upon a thousand hills, and the Star had 
 paled its light in the glory streaming forth 
 from the open door of a lowly ruined hut 
 beneath it. The radiance grew and grew 
 until there was not any more night. And 
 then, with our eyes we beheld the Virgin 
 Mother ; and her Holy Child lay beside 
 her in the manger ; and the ox and the 
 
DECEMBER 211 
 
 ass were there. The shepherds also were 
 kneeling at His feet. 
 
 Then we two in the outer blackness 
 drew very near and trembled. And filled 
 with joy, and with rapturous awe, we 
 knelt with the shepherds of Bethlehem, 
 and we gazed at the babe through tears 
 of love and holy fear. And while we 
 gazed, a note of utter sweetness rose and 
 swelled until it became like the solemn 
 sound of an organ, until it filled all the 
 place where we were, and shook the 
 walls of the lowly cattle shed bursting 
 and shattering up through the roof. And 
 there was a rushing sound as of innumer- 
 able multitudes of angels' wings, and they 
 were like sharp-pointed flames of fire 
 thronging all around and upward. In our 
 ears we heard pealing and echoing, and 
 dying away amidst the hills, the words 
 of the ancient song of Peace, 'Glory to 
 God, and Peace on earth.' We hid our 
 faces in our hands, and so the vision 
 departed from our sight, and the fir trees 
 closed in once more around us. So dream- 
 fully we wandered on, the child's face 
 
212 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 all glowing yet, and bright with the 
 shining of the heavenly light that we had 
 seen, his cheek still wet with happy tears. 
 
 Low in the valley where in spring we 
 found the subtle-scented primroses, and 
 where snow-drops make soft moonlight 
 under the trees in early days of March, 
 there, in an open space at last we saw the 
 Christmas Tree. 
 
 Alone under the starry sky the Tree 
 burnt with a great glow of golden fruits 
 amid the living fire of myriads of pre- 
 cious stones, all glorious from the lowest 
 to the topmost branch, making in that 
 shady place so great a splendour that 
 we could see the little birds with their 
 heads turned under their wing-feathers, 
 sleeping in the winter trees. The light 
 awoke them not, but round the trees soft 
 wild furry creatures, with merry, jet-black 
 eyes, peeped here and there. And here 
 and there crept from underneath some 
 stone or withered leaf, the slow toad, with 
 a glittering jewel in her head. In and out 
 amongst the shining lights played little 
 flashes of emerald green. 
 
DECEMBER 213 
 
 Strange wonder with a delicious surprise 
 held the child's lips that he could not 
 speak. And the mother gently led him 
 by the hand up to the beauteous tree, and 
 pointing to the ripe living fruits that hung 
 thereon, she whispered : ' They are yours ! ' 
 They were of such kinds as ripen not in 
 earthly gardens. The radiance and the 
 colours of them shone from a heavenly 
 land, where grow unchecked the fruits of 
 love and joy and peace, of wisdom and of 
 eternal life and innocence. Wreathed 
 about the branches were garlands of the 
 freshest flowers, pure flowers of meekness 
 and gentleness and long-suffering and truth. 
 And amidst of these immortal flowers and 
 fruit, half hidden by their bloom, far far up 
 beyond our reach, hung many crowns of 
 divers kinds jewelled crowns of delight, 
 and rainbow crowns of fancy, white cold 
 snow-crowns, and royal crowns of fire, and 
 pale crowns of fear and silvery chains 
 festooned with pearls which are tears ... 
 But on all these we set not our eyes. For 
 near the very summit of the green pyramid 
 of glory, hung one beautiful flower-crown 
 
214 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 rose-hued and fire-hearted even in that 
 clear midnight, the Crown of Love out- 
 shone the very stars in heaven. And I 
 cried, 'Oh my little one, let us reach 
 down to us the Crown of Love.' And 
 then they stretched out their arms, 
 though the love-crown hung so far 
 above. . . . And suddenly the sky was 
 overcast and heavy clouds hid all the stars. 
 And a shuddering blast swept past through 
 the wood spreading wide the child's long 
 hair .... and the fair fruits and the 
 garlands fell from the Christmas Tree, and 
 the rose leaves were blown away and 
 scattered, and the place was filled with a 
 wild storm of sweetness. 
 
 One only diadem remained, while all the 
 rest had faded, even as an evening mist 
 shimmering through the ruined roses; and 
 the wind shook the trees, so that the 
 Love-crown floated down to us. But even 
 then as with eager hand we seemed to 
 grasp them, the flowers were not ; but the 
 thorns of the Crown of Pain pierced 
 through the mother's heart as she clasped 
 it close, and the rose leaves became drops 
 
DECEMBER 21$ 
 
 of blood. Then I turned in anguish 
 to my child. But he had folded his 
 hands unhurt upon his breast, and gazed 
 smiling, with joyful eyes upon those sharp 
 naked thorns. And she knew that the 
 little one perceived only the Divine and 
 pearly radiance, which for her, shone as a 
 dim halo of tears around the crimsoned 
 wreath .... Gathered in her arms 
 the mother held the child for a moment, 
 there, in the dewy twilight of a green 
 Christmas dawn : while far-heard Christ- 
 mas bells awoke the day to love and holy 
 joy. And the night had departed like a 
 by-gone dream. And there, with tender- 
 taken breath slept my little one beside me, 
 and a pure white rose-bud lay upon the 
 pillow. At the window a robin sang a 
 short, sweet carol to the breaking day. 
 
2i6 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 XV 
 
 CHRISTMAS DAY 
 EX UMBRA* 
 
 4 IN twilight while I walk alone 
 
 A strange voice calls me, clear and low ; 
 
 A shadowy hand that seeks my own, 
 Cold as the wind and soft as snow, 
 
 Still leads me, leads me as I pass 
 Across the grey December grass. 
 
 ' The village windows beckon still 
 
 With glow of amber and of gold ; 
 But my way lies along the hill, 
 
 My road must cross the frosty wold ; 
 And still I feel and still I see 
 
 The darkness round me deep and free.' 
 
 IN the dark, clear, early morning, the 
 thrushes are singing with soft under 
 voices. At this early hour before sunrise 
 they are not afraid, and many a dear 
 speckled breast and swelling throat is 
 plainly to be seen in the elms and limes, 
 on branches overhanging the road. 
 
 * By permission of Editor P.ill Mall Gazette. 
 
DECEMBER 217 
 
 A white Christmas is beautiful, but I 
 think I like almost better the soft warm 
 grey which the wild birds love. There is 
 a feeling that underneath the dim grass 
 comes then a stirring of life : that the 
 snowdrops and crocuses are feeling up- 
 wards and are ready to break through to 
 the light. 
 
 Poor birds ! Poor little flowers ! It is 
 all a dream, and the worst of winter is to 
 come : soon or late it has to be, and 
 January will have no pity. 
 
 What would life be without Hope? 
 How should we endure the melancholy of 
 the Iris ground at this moment, covered as 
 it is with apparently decaying roots and 
 broken rubbish of wet, dead leaves, did not 
 the mind's eye see it in its glow of summer 
 bloom, as we hope to see it a few months 
 hence ! Beside the narrow aqueduct that 
 runs down to us from the village ponds a 
 mile distant (and which is always dry 
 except in winter when it is not wanted) a 
 plantation of Japanese iris Kcempferi has 
 been made : that is, they were meant to 
 be the Japanese, but when they arrived 
 
2 1 8 A GA RDEN OF PL EA SURE 
 
 from Holland they turned out to be mostly 
 another sort, with narrow leaves and 
 smaller flowers. Nevertheless they are 
 very charming with their varieties of pure 
 white and lilac and purple, and some of the 
 white have broad petals, although their 
 leaves are narrow. The place is too dry 
 for them to succeed perfectly : the Koemp- 
 feri should grow close to the water, by a 
 lake or a stream. I have laboured hard 
 for them, however, collecting stones and 
 wheeling them (in an old perambu- 
 lator) and planting them about the roots 
 to keep whatever moisture there may 
 be. 
 
 In stones, I have the greatest faith. I 
 like to arrange them with my own hands, 
 round the roots I love the most. It may 
 be fancy, but yet a pleasant fancy dashed 
 with truth, that many a lovely favourite 
 has been thus saved from withering death. 
 The moss-roses love these stones ! So 
 does a curious red-brown iris which made no 
 flowers for three years after being trans- 
 planted from its own old home in the West. 
 Yet there are several plants who refuse to 
 
DECEMBER 219 
 
 be comforted, or to believe that the stones I 
 give to them are bread ! Iris Susiana 
 grand, melancholy, bizarre, half-mourning 
 iris ! once flowered magnificently in the 
 garden. But that was five or six years ago. 
 Since then, excepting in the greenhouse, 
 she has shown no sign of any wish to bloom. 
 No careful choice of situation, no sheltering 
 with glass during October and November 
 has yet availed to move her rigid self- 
 reserve. Ground up lime-stone mixed 
 well with the soil might be a help. The 
 strong mixture of granite in the soil of 
 Scotch gardens may be perhaps the secret 
 of the vigour and strength of colour and 
 larger size of their flowers, compared with 
 ours. In Riviera gardens, the black iris 
 luxuriates. Long ago in one of these 
 gardens by the sea, groups of it in full 
 flower grew on the green margin of a little 
 pool of water. Half hidden among the 
 great leaves stood a low stone sun-dial, 
 whose motto round about it went thus : 
 ^Vado e vengo, ogni giorno, ma tu andrai 
 senza ritorno/ The music of the words 
 still seems to haunt the soul in opal 
 
220 
 
 A GARDEN OF PLEASURE 
 
 tinted dreams, whose colour somehow 
 does not fade with the fading light of 
 other days. 
 
In crown 8vo, vellum or cloth binding, price 55.. post free. 
 
 DAYS and HOURS in a GARDEN 
 
 BY E. V. B. 
 
 WlTH HEAD AND TAIL PIECES DESIGNED BY THE AUTHORESS. 
 
 A beautiful book in a beautiful dress. Academy. 
 
 How much to interest the cultivated mind, and to charm the 
 eye trained to the study of nature, may be found in a garden of 
 even moderate size, is strikingly shown in these pages. Literary 
 World. 
 
 This is a delightful little work. Athenaeum. 
 
 Whoever is blessed with a love for flowers will relish this 
 delightful book. Ecclesiastical Gazette. 
 
 The head and tail pieces aie a delightful addition. -Graphic. 
 This most fascinating book, from the study of which one must 
 rise wiser, happier, and better. Morning Post. 
 
 Tastefully printed and bound, price 6s, 
 
 A Book of the Heavenly Birthdays 
 
 EDITED BY 'E. V. B.' 
 
 Author of ' Days and Hours in a Garden' ' Ros Rosarum,' etc. 
 
 This book of the 'Heavenly Birthdays' is one to be prized. 
 Spectator. 
 
 The passages chosen are all of a remarkable impressiveness, 
 and the book stands out as one of the best collections of this kind 
 ever put together. Scotsman. 
 
 This daintily-bound and prettily printed book is a gathering 
 together of thoughts upon the end to which all things draw. It 
 is meant for comfort. No more exquisite gift to a bereaved 
 friend has been yet compiled. ' Solemn thoughts are they, not 
 all of sleep or of triumphant bliss beyond the grave,' yet these, 
 too, have their music for hearts that still thrill to the beloved 
 who have passed across the seas to the sun-rising. It is the 
 artistic product of love's labour. Christian World. 
 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62 Paternoster Eow, London 
 
-a. 
 
U-C. I