Wo rks by the s a me Au thor

ESSAYS

IRISH BOOK S AND IRISH P E O P LE

FOR SECOND READING : A TT EMPTS TO PLEASE

CRITICISM

Tm; MAST ERS OF ENGLISH L ITERATURE

TENNY SON : A Crlti cal St u dy THOMAS MOO RE (Eng li sh Men o fLetters)

TOP OGRAPHICAL

HIGHWAYS AND BYEWAYS m DON EGAL ANi) AN llu s ra ed b Hu h T h o m o T RXM . I t t y g s n FA I R HILLS F RELAND Illu s ra ed THE O I . t t b y Hu g h Th o mso n

THE FA MOUS CITI ES OF IRELAND . llu strated b y H u g h Th o mso n

BEAUTI FUL IRELAN D : ULSTER M I‘ ‘ER E IN . UNS . L

' ‘ sf s n CONN AUGHI . Illu s ra ed b A lex ander . t t y Wi llx ams

P OLITICAL

' JOHN REDMOND S L AST YEARS

THE IRISH SITUAT ION : 1 921

GA RDEN WISDOM

FROM ONE GENERAT I ON T O ANOT HER

By

ST EP HEN GWYN N

' With a Frontzspi cce by Grace Henry

T HE MAC MIL LAN C OMPANY

NEW YORK

1 9 2 2

TO K . S.

Y m s s leas o la d shi acce t a measure ou u t , o p e y u r y p , p ofresp onsibility ; you told me to writ e a b ook tha t wou ld m I nd too k mo e han Ihav e made ood a use you . fIu er r t g ,

erha s it has b een not all m au lt . Yet ime was when 0, p p y f t , u nde an condi ions in an env i onmen I cou ld hav e g r y t , y r t , s s s (3 tu rned you out p a sably amu ing comment ary as fast a N — h s w i was t s t e essence o it . a or e ould trot . T me hat i h f

{E ha e e h i w m in a e a u e I v e r ach d t e po nt hen y m d, sk d to m s , C se S v u o li e a b e an hem rv es up recollections . a o r f f m y t , b ut n t e sha an irs con ac The li le kid ot h rp t g off t t t . tt t ethered ou t side my window wears a v ery different eacpression when clu t ching at green b ranches (a ros e ’ t ee s i ossib le o w i sink in whe edu ced r , fp ), fr m hat t s t o n r to chewin the c g u d. F R Yet i m memorie ma hav e some inte est or the C , f y s y r f 1 w Youn er Genera ion or who a e n ed b w in g t , f m I h v e d y rit g , 3m what use can they b e to you for whom I set o ut t o write — you who are ofno g eneration b u t recru it adoring comrades impartially from the sev enties to the t eens? Will you p erhaps t ake pleasu re in recognising the reactions of a formed ex p eri enced natu re to sudden challeng es which a b olished halfthe v alue ofex p erience and fo rced the whole disp osition to reshap e? You too

u nde wen ou war-ime me am s s r t y r t t orp ho i . Was it the same sel ou came back to— since han Hea en o fy , t k v , y u hav e come back? Yo u thank Heav en a ai not , g n, do

!

32 6451 !i DEDICATION

— b elong to my memo ries ; bu t you r war time incarnatio n

s a a ter all ind somethin ha will make do e ; and Im y, f , f g t t

It shall o in o his dedica ion whi ch at yo u lau gh. g t t t , ss ou We called it— how lon least is who lly addre ed to y . g ag o ?

R THE BUREAUC AT .

The world is most su rprising with duchess And masquerades in khaki o funiformed ’ But the strang est t ransformation we ve yet assisted at m Was When the L ady Kathleen beca e a bureaucrat .

he P ari s s W first wo n rank Go , tell t s tudio , here she her , - a r k A blue eyed barefoot wonder , a g mine, and a c an ; Go tell the Texan cowboys With Whom she roped the

steers , - Or any bold Tahiti an who watched her w ander years .

She came from hig h Bohemia and took the town b y m stor ,

E W a es m f geria , ith n inter t in states en and re orm

An — s f c d then a blue blou ed a tory hand , the idol of her mates ’ no he fke s o m e But w s a s stati tics up f r Parlia ent s debat s .

As as a vag rant tinker , as vivid as the blue Of g entian on the uplands When Sp ring is bursting

throug h , With feet that on the pavement from dancing scarc e fa re r in , S fi m a ain he tempts her r ends to te p t her to be herself g . DEDICATION vii

W u read e spread out flowers before her, young s mmer sp s

the sun ,

We call the world to witness that playtime has beg un . ’ ” D o we firml a d u on t g , plead ; but y, n snatching p

her hat , ” I a w fo r it s must , she s ys , the Bureau is aiting ” Grat .

’ Tw as not so bad before thi s : in w inter and the dark S f P ark he le t the world behind her wi th eter in the p . But no w when Sp ring comes flo o ding throug h windows

and throug h doors ,

P an et a a— w o ffice i y may p ss piping do n corr dors .

’ J ust fo r a demonstration that she s alive and free S ’ w B he ll maybe take the hig hroad ith some austere C. . But till the bo mb explodes there and lays the building

fi at , Oh what a happy Bureau with Kathleen fo r its Crat !

C o nt e nt s

T he A g eing o fa Po e t

A n A rtist and His Wo rk

A Po et u nder a C lo u d

A L o v er o fJ astice

A Scho lar

A n Eig hteenth C ent ury G arderier

GARDEN W ISDOM

G THE AGEIN OF A POET.

m w Y study is a pleasant roo , and its windo looks on to rough g rass in which white

narcissus is growing , and beyond that bluebells show up against the grey stone wall , overtopped b y masses of yew and other deep greens of conifers in the big place next door . But the U m l ks n . roo oo west , and can get no mor ing sun p till now Ihave been well content with a ht e of wood that I cut and brought in myself; but this May mo m

fire ing is no time for a , yet chilly , for even now it is - only eight by the sun ; day light saving gives u s eighty fi v e . minutes extra in Ireland , not a mere sixty So on this day Ihave taken a little table into the garden and set it in the sun , where boughs of blossom ing apple make a few light bars of shadow ; and Iam determined that here shall be my study in future when - ' the skies are kind here in the garden square which , all a ° for that Marvel chose to s y , is no dead and stand l ’ ing poo of air , but simply a place in the lee of 2 GARDEN WISDOM masonry over which and abo ut which swirl air currents - - - from the three miles distant sea , or the three miles distant Dublin mountains—strong enough to keep plenty of life and movement in this ba ckwater So I wrote in the first days of May I come back to the page from which other and more urgent writing m c alle d me ; but I come back in December , after y — first spell for many months of real town life life in

ms f alw a sm k heated roo , li e shut in ys by o y housetops ,

w fo r u l fed by fog gy airs . To n is the yo ng they on y are strong enough to enjoy it . The French are right man when age begins should get out into the country , back

land cra c cu to the , to his s p of soil where he can o py himself leisurely with the processes of nature , free , for

is re er es i s . H a chief preoccupation , to g fi s po re digestion demands it—and again the French are right that is a cardinal matter , not to be overlooked or

u blushed about ; it is the barometer of yo r being , a — notice to yo u that all is well o r that yo u must look out .

These are elderly considerations ; but the first thing which impresses itself on me , returning to a long dis I i I used kind of writing , is that if wr te essays now , w d must rite as the elderly , a g oo deal preoccupied with — this new fact of age coming o n with the new sense that the mind begins to turn backward with interest and forward with a touch of apprehension . The im portance of the present is less paramount than it was ; both past and future seem nearer , and force one , not

4 GARDEN WIS DOM

fictio n Rather , the dealer in pretends that some one else , some invented personage , is what he really dis covers himself obscurely and potentially capable o f being or becoming . Shakespeare , of course , is ff Hamlet , is Falsta , is Lear ; any one can see the kin ship : but do we suppose he picked down Ophelia ,

f o ff ? He Dame !uickly , Goneril rom a shelf had to grow them from some seed that he recognised in his own strange heart—emotional germs that he knew to exist in the circumambient atmosphere , if they were not implanted , though undeveloped , in the very con stitu ti f o n of himsel . What can the novelist , the dramatist tell you but the adventures , the scenes which he passed through , somewhere in the world of his unseen experiences ? But the essayist is no maker of stories or plays ; no historian either , and no real philosopher , for a system is abhorrent to his method he is a critic who tells you the adventures of his soul among the actual facts of existence . And one of the

find main facts of existence is for me to myself again , mu lto s st a nno s po , the occupier of a garden and a piece of land . Twice before this has been my lot in life at long intervals of time ; and with each renewal interest and I delight in the experience has heightened . Certainly realise now as never before that taking over an old garden in winter (so it has alw ays happened to me)is - a huge dip in a lucky bag . My blessings on those who w b b t ent efore me , ut specially in his plot of ground . THE AGE ING OF A so ar 5

Here indeed w ere good forerunners , too proud of what they had created to rob their own work when they

fine o f al o went away . It is a piece courtesy , but s a true service to beauty , to leave intact what has grown together into one harmony . as comes to pass in any - well planted garden . I am talking now about nothing splendid or - elaborate , but a very ordinary workaday half acre , kept for use even more than for pleasure of the eye , where flo w ers are only an embroidery on the edge o f grou nd given over to fruit and vegetables . Yet the beauty here was as distinctive as l have ever known . ln February or March a square of green growth almost - like a grass , at the foot of a big apple tree , puzzled me I when returned from an absence in April , the whole - t was a sheet of blue , as big as a table clo h ; and a belt ‘ ' of the same powder-blue (as women call it)stretched out some ten yards along one of the walks . These were grape hyacinths , which one generally sees scat tered in little companies among squills or chiono

Ho x as , and much less interesting than either but here they were massed not by thousands but by tens and hundreds of thousands ; they must have been there for ages before the tiny bulbs could have so multi plied . And away beyond in the middle distance were other clumps or sheets of them they were the note o f the spring garden deliberately developed ; and before

they had half done their blooming , quantities of

u common cowslips came p through their ranks , an 6 GARDEN WIS DOM

enchanting combination , an afterthought , doubtless . woven into the original idea , which we owe to some later forerunners—blessings on them too ! A long double border of purple iris was another

w as feature , though far less uncommon ; but there dis tinction again in the device of scattering lavishly in borders seeds of the pretty saxifrage , which in May covers itself with blossoms as big as w ood anemones .

The red and the white had been sow n in patches , but bees had crossed the colours , and for some forty yards there was a broad line of it ranging through every — shade of pink the delicate frilly flo w ers spring ing u p elastic from their wide mossy bed of leafage .

Lastly and finally , over and above roses and other

fl w rs n o e that one might naturally count o , we inherited such an array of gentians as l have never seen else w ul here . Capricious things , they take to this partic ar corner as ifit were made for them ; and there would fift be forty or y of the deep bells ablow together . trumpeting blue at the sky : bluer than any sky that

w as l t ever , bluer than al eyes but hose which you may — see rarely and only if you are fo rtu natk u ncler

w l s . r au bro n hair The b une x yeux b eu , to whom

s had es Mu set wrote his po em , cannot have blue ey like

d difier nt ac . these , or his poem would have b a a e cent

nished and finished It is fi , delightful in its suggestion of coquetry ; and the lady to whom li e w rote it had no ' — doubt blue eyes but not the blue of the gentian . n There is a large frankness abo ut that colour , and o ly THE AGEING OF A POET 7

the ocean can match it ; and there is no coquetry in the - ocean . I have seen sea water , indeed , looking coquet

tishly beautiful , shallowly embayed on the South Coast

of England ; but these tones of azure , almost sombre

in their blueness , only some rocky western coast look

ing over ocean depths can know .

There is one gentian , however , which has a blue

v a it all to itself , the little ern and we had one plant of ,

covered with blossom . Yet its blue is less amazing f in a garden than where I know it best . on a grassy blu f

flo w ers that juts out into C alway Bay . There its tiny

u show p among the herbage incredibly vivid , jewels

e e dropp d on a green cloth . Their blue s ems to have no shades in it ; every petal glows throughout with the

same intensity , like a bar at white heat . l That is not a l there is to say about our gentians . They have the astonishing habit of flo w ering als o in - mid winter , and though the bloss oms get spoilt and

battered out of doors , if you pick the buds and coax — them on in tepid water where they sit pointing u p long beaks like young blackbirds— they will come g radu ally out into some resemblance of their summer

a be uty . And indeed the least one can do is to take

notice of their touching gallantry that so defie s the season and unfriendly elements .

All the same , I must admit that I looked very little

at our gentians even when they were at their bluest . l was too busy . What are the new poor to do w ith a garden —especially if they hold that it is indecent to

(D 448) I 8 GARDEN wisoom pay less than seven or eight shillings for a day 's work

o f that before the war could be got for three . One my — - friends who is o r was a gardener , and a strong ' advocate of labour s rights , told me that he had attended a meeting of his fellows and advised them against putting up demands for a pay equivalent to ’ d u s that of other trades . People will o without , he said . I , at all events , decided to act as he thought people generally would ; but financ e was not the sole con sideration which prompted me to be my own gardener . ! f anity counted . All my li e I have been hearing and ’ resenting the phrase We must get a man in to do it . A man . Somebody who can minister to the helpless bourgeois in their primary needs . Well , the war had taught many thousands of u s that one man was much - ' the same as another for a day labourer s job ; endur ance was only a question of training , and I could dig ff indi erent well . The most cherished compliments of l my life have come from working men , and perhaps wanted to prove to myself that l deserved them . — — Perhaps also perhaps chic fly it was part of the mentality which accompanies the turn o flife . One may b e getting old ; but at any rate , by this and by

filled that , one is not senile yet . If while I heavy - barrow loads of manure and wheeled them grimly , there was present in my mind the thought that I knew

r d all subalte ns who could not o as much , why , after , should youth have all the vanities ? THE AGEING o r A POET 9

As to the science of the business , the Younger

Generation could direct . The Younger Generation in this house— whose picture by a delicate and loving hand makes immeasurably the best page of this volume—runs the big garden next door in partnership - with other market gardeners of her age and sex : an enterprise vastly more interesting to me than any of my ventures in literature or politics— and that also is a sign of age coming o u . f Yet perhaps also a sign o the times , forced in on ti me by my double mCUp a o n . Financially . com merc iall hu kst rishl y , c e y , it pays me to neglect my gardening for other business any competent journalist can earn at one sitting as much as even a decently-paid ' gardener will get for his week s work . But economically , in the strict sense , whether is it more add important to increase the pile of printed pages , to column to column , or to produce food for yourself and ? ' others Throw in beauty , too , art s object , and which — should prevail writing essays or growing flo w ers ? I had to trench from end to end the long border over d looke by one of our windows , for the house and the garden enclosure are continuous , the house making ' indeed most part of the garden s northward-facing wall ; and trenching ground properly is a tedious , heavy

. job But I used deliberately to solace myself , as l was digging the double spit and throwing in unsightly refuse , old vegetables , stable sweepings , garbage o fall sorts , by the thought that in this queer way . though at IO GARDEN WISDOM

e l artificer . one or two remov s , was the sure of beauty

That soil , well limed and manured and prepared , with

r that aspect to the morning sun . will , I hope , g ow whatever is asked of it .

This at least is certain . Whenever there was a real

v e et urgency , when fruit had to be saved . or g ables got into the ground , writing had to wait .

o The natural importance of the task ass rted itself . Waste could not be tolerated and the real waste was the waste of material worth shillings—not the waste of time which perhaps might be converted into pounds . Stevenson says something o fthis in his letters from

Samoa , describing the glow of virtue which enveloped him when he had done perhaps sixpence-worth of

ro fitabl work outdoo rs , instead of sticking p y to his — desk ; and he dismisses it as an absurdity which per haps it was . Yet in these times one is not so sure . I think there has been moving through my mind a sense that in this strange new unsettled world new emer g encies may have to be faced ; and that just as any — one of us found the work of war forced on u s him or her— necessities even more imperious may come f f clamouring at our gates , breaking down the ences o our security . I like to feel that the Younger Genera

I it s tion and , if put to , can fend for ourselve and In - . if others a revolution a market gardener , not too highly specialised , would occupy a strong position . Under any form o fgovernment there will be a demand for cabbages , and cabbages will not grow themselves .

12 GARDEN WIS DOM

mellowing touch of age . Perhaps the resemblance is f stronger still in a poem to his in ant daughter , which

was published later , and which puts more explicitly than anything in the collected volume that settled f view of li e which , nevertheless , is the view of t his Responsibili ies as a whole . '

Yeats s work has entered on a new phase , to me not

less interesting , in any case not less assuredly the work

is of a poet . H quality has never been in doubt not even among the group o fu s who saw his beginni ngs partly because of the c o nfidence suggested rather than f expressed by Pro essor Dowden , at whose house that f k collection o young men used to assemble . Yet I thin

o fo ur we all had a conviction own , an assurance that we were backing ; and when his first poems appeared ’ ' o f The Island Statues , The Seeker and

Du bli U i e sit R i w in the n n v r y e v e , I at least stored away

the copies and have kept them to this day . Looking 1 over them now , incline to think that what impressed me was the poet 's personality rather than his achieve

f — firs ment . Two airy songs which b e included in his t — collected Poems and one line which has stayed in my 1 f1885 mind ever since read it in the spring o , Like ' ' — n old men s eyes , the stars are pale were , I thi k . the only grounds on which we could have established

c nfiden our o ce . Indeed , I do not remember that the poems themselves gave me any of the pleasure by n which one knows the real thing . Yet the c o nfide c e w as there ; and it w as not simply felt as c o nfidence rm: AGEING o r: A POET 13

in a youth with possibilities of development . From

first my knowledge of him , there was a poet , not

o f merely the making a poet , recognisable in that long

wisp of a lad , always in black , whom I remember best

with a broken straw hat on his long black hair . He

always looked a poet , far more completely than any

1 u w one else have known , yet nat rally and ithout

pose . Only once have I thought his appearance d ff i touche with a ectation , and that was n the early f days of his London li e , when he was apparently smartening himself up and trying to look like other people—with the result that he looked a little Richard i Le Call enne . Perhaps that impression of Yeats R ' comes from my only visit to the hymers Club , where 1 saw him among the Poets w ith whom I learned

’ C n h my trade , ompanio s of the Ches ire Chees e , to t whom he inscribes and ascribes his Responsibili ies .

Lionel Johnson was of the company , a small clean

fi u r cut g e , pale , with the stamp of Oxford strong on him—but very good company in his quiet way across

o f R the big bowl punch . Morley oberts was there - — too , ostentatiously the rough spoken hard case a 1 n great contrast to Johnson . remember his handi g

Yeats a spill and saying in his overbearing way , I don t mind lighting a cigarette for the only real poet

’ in the whole caboodle . Nobody disputed his sen tence ; they were a most undisputatious group , for l f Bohemians . Yet doubt if any of them di fered from I4 GARDEN wxsnom that estimate— with the reasonable reservation in ' each man s mind for his own best things .

Later too , for many years , my meetings with Yeats were oftener in London than in Dublin ; but my con c ep tio n of him is always connected with that old

- chic fl Dublin group and those far away times ; y . because then and there came among u s the w oman who plays so great a part in these gathered Responsi

tie bili s . I remember well the excitement and the — talk about the imperial beauty of her youth thoug h to me it never seemed then so supreme and indisp u t able as some few years ago , almost on the eve of ‘ the war . Then , as her poet writes , time had touched f ’ her orm , but in touching seemed only to have brought out the stateliness and superb poise of her ' fi ure f g , the strong modelling of the face s per ect lines which underlay all the flush o fyouth . That day she stood for a long while on the terrace of the House o f C f ommons , dressed in black with a black lace scar over her head and falling on her shoulders , in deep converse with the Indian poet . Tagore , who was in his native dress and accompanied by his disciples .

People gazed and passed again to gaze , as well they might ; for such a contrasted grouping of the beauty E 1 of ast and West shall never see again , emphasised all the more by the fact that it was a woman who f embodied all the virility , the predatory strength o the

West . I saw her , too . play the old beggar crone in the ms AGEING or A POET 15

' first presentation of Yeats s Cathleen u i Hoolihan ; and she looked , as old peasant women do , the very embodiment o f age , years less or more mattering nothing in the count o ftheir life , and speaking , as

— a l have heard half crazy old peasant women spe k , in a kind of chanted rhapsody , until at the end , for her exit she drew herself u p under her rags ; and the boy 8 word as he entered after her leaving was only an echo to our thoughts Did you meet an old ? woman and she going dow n the road No , but

I met a young woman , and she had the walk of a " queen . I wonder what Yeats feels now about that

s Re ponsibility of his and hers . The little play was played to an audience of those who even then were extremists , and it took from the audience something of what it gave ; and I came away , thrilled to the fif spine and marrow , asking mysel such things should be played unless you wanted people then and there to face the music , g o out , shoot and be shot . Many l of that audience , think , faced it later , and Cathleen the daughter o fHoolihan gave to them the reward

ff Mr . ? He she o ered in the play But . Yeats never as a poet reached a higher point than in this prose — drama or dramatic idyll and I remember this too , that he told me once he was writing a play about

’ the legendary spirit of lreland , and I laughed at the impossibility of materialising something so abstract — . it he it on the boards But he did did , she helping him assuredly not only in the performance , but as the I6 GARDEN WISDOM

inspiration of his work and what is the end ? There '

has happened to him , with youth s departing , that f t change o mind , change of heart , which be el Words

e o f worth . He , too , is in revolt against these forc s revolt which again after a hundred years are tearing - to pieces old established order . A world in which no privilege should remain standing would be to Yeats

the abomination of desolation . Privilege of intellect , — privilege of art , privilege of beauty these things he

u stifie holds essential , and as an lrish poet he j s them from immemorial irish tradition ; they are part of l ancient custom , ancient ceremony . Yet should say

that his appeal to the traditional , to the historic

imagination , is only an instinctive choice of the most - potent symbol . What he praises to day he praises in truth not as Irishman but as poet ; and what he praises

1 8 now not what he always praised .

M m c s m y ind , be au e the inds that Ihave loved , o f The sort beauty that I have approved , P o f rosper but little, has dried up late .

' ' - 30 also Wordsworth s mind dried u p it is the — exact word in contact with the outcome of that revolution in whose dawn he had found it bliss to be alive ' I These great fermentations of humanity throw i to the top a scum of hate , and the rish poet sees that

To be choked with hate May well b e ofall evil chances chiefl rm: AGEING OF A POET I7

’

Therefore , since an intellectual hatred is the worst , i he prays for his daughter that she may think all opinions are accursed —lest as has befallen to the loveliest woman born Out of the mouth of Plenty 's horn ' she may at last because of her opinionated

’ ins 1 ratio n mind , seek the p of life from an old ll ’ bellows fu of angry wind . The ideals to which the writer of Cathleen ni Hoolihan has come are not far ' remote from Wordsworth s .

How b u t in custom and in ceremony Are innocence and beauty born ? — Custom , ceremony names not much in repute ' - with the lndep endent Workers of the World to day ,

R . whether in ussia , Prussia , or nearer home Yet of f w all the ways of li e I have kno n , the home of a well nurtured lrish peasant family comes nearest to the ' ' poet s desired house where all s accustomed . ceremonious ' and there is no better school of that courtesy m which he would have his daughter chicfly ’ f learned . The new way of li e to which we are coming may be far nearer to the old on which he has fed his imagination than was anything in that capital istic f society , of no ancient derivation , rom which the world is struggling to free itself : a society in which it was accounted privilege to be so placed that all '

o u . work was done for y For Homer s women , as for

E t the Fands and me s of lrish epic , custom ordained customary work ; and after half a century of existence 18 GARDEN WIS DOM one knows that work is the most satisfying thing existence has to give ; and that no work can satisfy which is not at times laborious , as surely as none can be worth doing in which the worker cannot at times feel pleasure . The Younger Generation for whom I am resp o n sible may perhaps help to shape custom for that post

Mr war generation in which . Yeats is parentally con — cerned . It may become customary as it is in a peasant 's house— to feel shame in the knowledge that — — you could not man or woman earn your o wn living , if need came . Custom may not decree that w fi htin u s hen g g is needed , each of , man or woman , must be able to step into the necessary duty ; but if the phantom of war be exorcised , there are still elemental needs that may have to be met ; and just now society , fresh from the war and its discipline , could meet most of them . I do not know why we should not take o ff our hats to a miner when we meet one , for he alone is apparently i rreplaceable by society . It gives me a great satisfaction that we here are much less dependent than most people , for we burn our own wood—and are to that extent literally independent workers . Even in a garden it seems one cannot get away — from the war atmosphere with its anticipations o i a struggle for dear life ? Many times I tried during the years from l9l5 onwards to think myself in a world in w b hich war would not e the dominant fact , and l

I W RK AN ARTIST AND H S O .

HAT is a country life ? Ho w does one know it from the suburban existence ? And where again does that shade o ffinto the town ? I hnd these questions con fronting me because here at three miles from College Green (which is the true centre of a city with nearly half a million inhabitants) I live a country life , whereas a year ago , living at almost precisely the same distance from the same centre 1 never thought of my self as being even suburban . Yet there we had tilled

fi u elds in front of s and behind , and were in the outer

o f . most belt continuous dwellings It was , I suppose , suburban in a sense ; but I always think of suburbs as provided with some great commonage like Willesden C H H ommon or ampstead eath , or the sea and its shore in the Dublin suburbs , which stretch ten miles At continuously along the salt water . all events , I - there always felt myself a town dweller . The only thing that gave some uncertainty to my feeling was the presence o fcorncrakes in front of our house and i t . behind But when one day , coming out on a tram . I saw a corncrake slip from under a paling and run - out on to the main tram line . giving me full view of AN ARTIST AND ms WORK 2! its uncouth shape before it took wing clumsily into

— s some helds why , then my criterion seemed to lo e its value ; this queer secret bird might be found , it seemed , dodging in and out wherever there was

u nco u ntrified shelter , no matter how the surround ings .

Yet the bird test is a real one , and by it we here w come out country . It is negative as ell as — positive w e have no sparrows except hedge

l first fiv e sparrows . have counted and last about and-twenty species of wild birds in this place and the allied establishment next door—sparrow-hawk rank

first ing . Yet I have seen him also from a tram , working along the backyards of houses right into I Dublin . The white owl , though , that saw once flitting past in the dark is no town-dweller—nor the - - little tree creeper , nor the golden crested wren ; and it was many a long day before I came here since I had - hnd I seen green linnets , let alone their nest , as did - in one of our pear trees . But the real proof lay not in the occasional appear

o f ance birds ; it was their constant presence , and the

u s sense of nesting going on all about in the Maytime .

A o f big clump Portugal laurels in front of the house . dark and ugly , got a reprieve for one year anyway it because it had already three or four nests in . One ' cha flinc h s of them , a , led me to much tribulation , fo r it was hard to reach , at the end o fa complication of crossed boughs through an aperture in which one had 22 GARDEN WISDOM

to scramble . as scramble I did , to show one of the

fledged nestlings to a girl who delighted in them . I

difficu lt did not bring it down without y , and mean w hile the parent birds were attacking me with heart rending desperation ; and the fledg ling had to be put n back with more trouble , when sudde ly , on being f t replaced into the nest , out it lut ered and three others ' with it . I suppose it was an hour s hard work to get l a l . H u them stowed away again owever , on the p I shot , I fancy that got a good name among chaffinches , fo r a little cock of them is the boldest bird on my w - indow sill , and by his suggestive appearances there k i established brea fast crumbs as an institution . H s mate is much shyer : perhaps she is a stranger to the place and does not know my reputation . Chaflinches were nested too in several of the apple trees in the garden , much more accessibly ; but when I set a ladder for the same damsel and let her climb

- fiercel n k to inspect . the hen bird sat y o , and pee ed at her visitor , who retreated in disorder .

-r As for thrushes , missel th ushes , and blackbirds ,

I literally never saw so many anywhere . The garden

full is of raspberries which they like , and red currants w hich they adore , and one seemed to put up a squawking youngster from every bush . Wood pigeons bred too next door . and they came for the gooseberries ; I watched one evening a loaded bush shaking under the heavy birds pulling as if a pu ppy t were at i . Next summer perhaps a cartridge o r two AN ARTIST AND HIS WORK 23

o f will have to correct that , and also the profusion

o f fifteen magpies , whom I see or sixteen assembling every evening in one of the big trees next door—and the Younger Generation 's partners keep poultry next door . One can have too many reminders that one is f in real country . But a ter all it is a pretty good indi cation that it would seem quite natural to take out

I am a gun . and just at present the only person avail able to do that for my garden and my household are involved in an experiment which belongs entirely to the new order . It is an attempt to convert to new uses a property created to meet the needs of the old pre war society . The place next door to us consists of a very big and rather ugly house , built after people in Ireland had ceased to build well . Its front faces south to the

o hills , and behind it is a garden containing ab ut an —- acre and a half of ground and half a dozen green

u ho ses . There were also a couple of helds in grass . Such an establishment demands a staffof servants and gardeners that hardly any one nowadays can afford in I reland , and it was fast going derelict the garden was just barely kept from becoming a wilderness . The

e Younger Generation , aft r two years of training at

to b a school of gardening , had decided e a market gardener , and persuaded one of her friends to join they were lucky enough to complete the partnership by including one of the teachers under whom they had been trained This combination of young women

(D 443) r 24 GARDEN WISDOM cast their eyes on the big derelict garden for an ex peri ' mental start , and a year s working showed that they could sell easily more than all they had to offer to private customers ; there was a large public ill supplied . But to develop their enterprise , security of f tenure was needed , and they ound that they could only get it by buying the entire place . on which the big house hung like a dead weight . It occurred to ff them , however , that if they could o er sets of rooms - within easy reach of Dublin by tram , with well kept - flo w er~ g arden and shrubbery and tennis court to enjoy , the house might be no longer a white elephant , but quite a p ro fitable possession ; and the possibility of providing rooms in it for pupils would increase the attractiveness of their establishment to learners .

Briefl — y , then , they bought and the issue is on the

dis t knees of the gods . But part of the result is in p u able . The big garden is already utilised and worked as probably never before in its history ; the glass w hich was falling to pieces is repaired and modern ised ; where there was waste there is now production ; and the people who are doing all this are a dozen young women—the three partners and their pupils or — apprentices the like of whom , ten years ago , w ould

u as soon have thought of setting p a boot factory . Our ' neighbours and the garden s customers have grow n used to the appearance of a sort of Robin Hood chorus , comely damsels in doublet and hose o fall

ff a d stu s n colours , but strang ers are still liable to sur AN ARTIST AND HIS womc 25

b prises . The other day , in one of my a sences from

u e home , the Younger Generation had shut p our hous and gone to stay with her partners in their bothy . But a part o four basement had been made into a class room , and here a lecture was in progress when one of - my friends , a very well known divine , came to call

is on me . H persistent knocking and ringing (for in truth I had promised to be there)reached the class

o . room , and a senior student decided to g to the door

O t She pened i . and beheld confronting her a large priest with humorous eyes , who with undisguised amazement scanned the unexpected apparition from its cropped black hair to its corduroy knickers and its business-like high boots In the name of good ’ w ? ’ I ness , he said , ill you tell me what are you b should like to have heard the explanations , ut they t t ended in a great en en e . If over and above utilising the old garden and all its costly apparatus , this same enterprise can , in the present famine of houses , convert into a comfortable abode for some twenty people what w ithout their aid would be a tenantless and mouldering barrack , is there not a good deal to be said for the new order ? I heard a speaker say not long ago at a public discus ” sion . Everything is rationed ; why not ration houses 1 nf And I co ess that to see how all these great buildings , of which this one next door is only a type , stan d - empty , while decent house room is the urgent need of thousands , makes me at least very thankful that one 26 GARDEN wrsoom

cause of resentment is removed , and that we have had it a hand in removing .

As for our own small establishment , accommoda A tion here assuredly does not run to waste . family with six children lives in the tiny gate lodge—ill accommodated , but the alternative would be one room in some Dublin tenement ; and the old stables we let to a cabman . I never knew a cabman in private life

f hnd be ore , and it an agreeable extension of my

He experience . is a young and prosperous cabman , and we have found occasion to do each other some good turns . This complexity and variety of relations is part of I the country way of life . n the country , you cannot ignore those who live nc ar you ; you must be on some

am terms with them , quite possibly on bad terms . I not on good terms with one neighbour who owns goats and likes to keep them on what we call in Ireland ° the

’ ' long meadow , browsing by the roadside s grassy C I banks and hedgerows . oats , observe , have a keen f eye o r the open door and a taste for the bark of shrubs . I Still , it is all part of the country conditions , and never yet knew a blessing that had not its accompanying reminder of the complex shades interwoven in our mortal lot . Marauding g oats may be only the salt in f my salad of country li e . At all events it would take more than two of thes e bearded intruders , with their rather engaging kid , to put me out of conceit with the dwelling to which we

28 GARDEN wisoom

I k ho w The test of a room . thin , is pictures look in it ; and those now in this house have hung on many walls . but never before found themselves bestowed ! with such advantage . ery few possessions are so much to be desired as pictures that are good to live t with . Often , too , they have a secondary attrac ion A and interest . n old picture that you have found , ' a new man s work that you have discovered , pleases

o r something in its possessor besides the artistic sense , , I — perhaps should say , stimulates that sense just as ' one is more aware of a salmon s flav o u r if one has ' t caught i . I, however , have none of the collector s pride in my pictures , they are not proofs of my virtuosity ; but secondary interest of a better kind is theirs , for the best of them remind me of my friends ; indeed , I am often humiliated by a sense that this household has taken gifts for which it could make no m comparable return . All other kinds of artist i measurably exceed the writer in power to be generous .

The singer , the pianist , still more the painter or n sculptor , co stantly give , and are enviable in that they

ff o f can a ord to give , what is right so costly to buy . because it is unique ; they are the most really lavish people in the world ; and the only return that we can make who p ro fit by such bounty is to enjoy and enio; I constantly . n this way only can writers hope to redress the balance where there is exchange of gifts ; we can offer them more appreciation than they can

w e p rofess to feel for what give . Apart altogether from AN ARTIST AND ms WORK 29 the comparison betw een a mere copy and the thing f itsel , possibly a real poet , but assuredly no other craftsman in letters , could hope that any book of his would afford to any possessor o fit so frequent and so I lasting a pleasure as that which , for instance , have — ow ed to painter friends of mine but above all , to one . No day passes that I am not reminded of Walter Osborne ; and there has been no man in my life whom

I would sooner call to mind , and assuredly none to whom I am more consciously in all ways a debtor . But at least I never valued his gifts less highly than now ; thoug h I find that some of his contemporaries who thought him successful while he lived now begin - to ask if his work was not always under estimated .

For my part , I think that he stood in his own light : his w k e nk or varies greatly in quality . H could , I thi , b t have done more of his best , and perhaps etter han w the best he ever achieved , if he had been a some hat ff di erent kind of human being . '

I turn back to Mr . Yeats s characterisation of his ° tavern comrades ' in the Rhymers ' Club

Yo u had to face your ends when young ’ w w w m T as ine or o en , or some curse But never made a poorer song T i hat you mig ht have a heav er purse, Nor g ave loud service to a cause T t hat you mig h have a troop o ffriends . ’ Yo u kept the Muse s sterner laws A n f nd unrepenti g aced the ends .

t ll That is one way of looking at i , and we should a 30 GARDEN wrsoom agree that the artist who does inferior work simply to become rich is a poor creature . But what does the stern Muse lay down when , because somebody has f to be looked after , a man eels himself called on to

ri sac fic e his own artistic instinct , and even his preference fo r the less p ro fitable way ? That is a practical question which presents itself to many

o f . artists , and Osborne was one these The end it which he had to face came of his answer to , and though I am sure there was never a struggle in his in mind , yet the result emphasises the moral issues volved in such a choice . No one was ever more completely an artist ; he was marked out for his art by nature , and entirely in love

is with what fo r him was the hereditary craft . H father transmitted to him the trick of hand , and also that feeling fo r animals which made the elder Osborne almost exclusively a painter of dogs and horses .

These , however . were studio pictures . Walter Osborne painted animals always in the open as a part of landscape ; but he painted them with a sure eye fo r their points ; he was knowledgeable in all kinds of ff live stock . The country which he most a ected for

En hsh a considerable period was the g downs , and it was a grievance of his that pictures with sheep for

f difficu lt their chief eature were to sell , and pigs com mercially quite impossible : I think some black Berk

u shire yearlings rooting about in a golden st bble , w H stayed , unsold , ith him to the end . e was not the AN ARTIST AND HIS WORK 3] kind of person to be exasperated by this fact into paint ing pigs and sheep only , being quite content to take ' account o fa possible buyer s probable preferences , so long as he could paint things that pleas ed him and — follow the life of his choice living , that is to say , in the open air all day , painting from morning to night , and lodging sometimes in a cottage , sometimes in a

He village inn . boasted to me once that he had got down his rate of living to twelve shillings a week . though cheapness . he admitted , was the only attraction of that particular lodging . and it was chosen because nothing else offered in the village he had pitched o n .

But everywhere he lived with extreme frugality , and his way of life kept him in hard training— as strong and active a man as could be found . Even when

s t getting clo e on for y , he could come on to a cricket

field , without practice , and get both runs and wickets ; indeed , he might have been vastly better known to fame if he had taken cricket seriously , for he was by - nature the most destructive kind of left hand bowler . That also he enjoyed ; he played cricket whenever he if got the chance , he were living in a town ; but in the country I doubt if it tempted him for a day from his

. He easel liked company , he liked games , he liked a good dinner as well as any one , and he liked the sense that he could drink as much and smoke as much as the most convivial and be not one hair the worse next morning when other heads were sore . But there was nothing on earth that he liked so much as paint 32 GARDEN WISDOM

o f ing in the Open air . The simplest way life and the way of his own art was the way he preferred to all . When I knew him first he used to appear in Dublin - f towards mid winter , a ter sheer cold drove him to

d He shelter like some creature of the fiel s . was part

rs of the group in which Yeats fi t became known , and he was somewhat inclined to complain because Yeats

He fo r not only was a poet , but looked a poet . , his part , was studiously normal . Neatness , indeed . was part of his general dexterity , and his tall , broad shouldered fig u re made matters very easy for his

s tailor . Yet in the country , the artist in him u ed to b U reak out . I have seen him hanging p his ties out of doors to get the colour weathered ; and in his out door life he always wore some kind of picturesque soft hat , though never on any account in Dublin or in

London . His home in Dublin was a pleasant centre at all times , and more so when he came home ; yet the life and soul of it was his sister . She was the youngest child , and the father and mother , who had married

o f very late in life , left all the direction their hospitality

—s f- to this brilliant girl o helpful , so sel reliant , bright with so varying a beauty , whose voice had ripples in it like a running stream . It was their delight to stand . as it were , in the background and watch the young f — li e about them the old painter , with his heavy grey moustache and humorous face with long downward it folds in , a little like those in the brown water AN ARTIST AND HIS WORK 33

spaniels which b e specially affected : Mrs . Osborne

Her f . very grave and quiet , but with a riendly silence

o f son painted her many times , yet I feel more her presence suggested in the reproduction which he gave — ' me o f a famous picture that he loved Whistler s

! ’

Portrait of my Mother . She had wonderful wide eyes o fa greyish hazel , and her daughter inherited them ; but the colour that in the old face was fu ll o f brooding melancholy shone with glowing vitality in the young . One felt always that this household was held together by unusually close bonds o faffection .

o f They were proudest , I think , the eldest son , whose strong personality found itselfdrawn out o fIreland to work with Dolling in English slums ; but the pivot o f

50 the household life was the daughter . , when mar — ' ri e ge came for her marriage to every one s liking there was necessarily derangement . But this was more than a common leaving o fthe nest ; it meant accompanying her husband to Canada . Already be fore this Walter Osborne was to some extent arranging his life in a fashion that involved his being more in Ireland . He had got his training in

Antwerp , had spe nt before I knew him a certain time in Northern France ; later , his choice of country had E — led him to the South of ngland Worcestershire , the

x He Berkshire Downs , O fordshire villages . had no diffic u lty in selling more than as much as su ffic ed for f f himsel ; but his ather in any case was growing old , and moreover felt the backwash of a great social 34 GARDEN wisoom

change . The landlord class who gave him commis sions to paint their terriers and bounds and hunters ' were hard hit by the land war of the eighties , and had to retrench in all directions . Walter Osborne , like many Irishmen , was impenetrably reticent about the matters that concerned him most nearly , though without the least suggestion o fconstraint or reserve ; and he never talked of such things ; but undoubtedly he felt the need to earn more , and portraiture was the obvious resource .

is it H natural bent had not drawn him to , and I think the earliest of his portraits hangs in this house .

A r re re g en e picture rather than a portrait proper , it p sents a very young man smoking a pipe while he reads , seen u p against a studio table littered with brushes and palettes , and a wall roughly papered with sketches . All this detail is ingeniously suggested ; and finally the gold mount of one sketch is so placed that the rep re sentatio n o fits gilding lies u p against the gilt of the — frame a little touch of swagger whose success amply

ifi s i u st e t . fo r j I can date this work , the book was ' Ethi s l885 fo r Kant s c , which in I was reading my degree ; and from this time on he painted a good many f— heads and hal lengths , often in pastel , and one on - which he piqued himself was a study of a fellow artist , his friend and mine , whose bounties also adorn our

. 1 l walls think , however , that this picture , for a l its charm of composition and colour , does more justice to the grey teag o w n which the sitter had brought back

36 GARDEN WISDOM - the shawled and red petticoated fishw iv es over their baskets of herring , were wrought by him into sym ' phonies that spoke o fWhistler s influence strong on him at that time ; and there is nothing that I covet more than one of these products of a passing inspira

o f tion . He never worked again in Ireland outside

o f county Dublin , perhaps because a bad welcome in

C e the West . The laddagh wom n hunted him , and he could only sketch them by stealth ; among the Irish speaking folk it is still thought unlucky to have your picture taken . 892 That must have been in the summer of 1 . With

‘ His the next spring came tragic news . sister had died in giving birth , prematurely , to a girl child . Oi all the pitiful objects that my eyes beheld , none ever affected me so strongly as one poor relic . Mrs . Osborne showed it to me when I went to see her—for she counted me among her friends . It was a white baby 's robe that lay all stained and crumpled on the lap of her black dress . She told me its story . Two

u strong sons were growing p in her house , but she was not satisfied without a daughter ; and when for a third time she was to be a mother she determined that if her wish came to be granted , the baby girl should be wrapped in such a garment as might be coveted for ' a king s daughter . She had in those days wonderful

fineness o f of sight and touch , and she wrought on cambric with delicate tracery of almost invisible needlework , helping the slow months to p ass . Yet AN ARTIST AND HIS WORK 37

infinit o f so e was the division her design , so countless f the stitches to be reckoned , that her time came be ore the embroidery was brought to an end and the work

u fi 50 1 t had to be put aside n nished. lay by for a generation ; but when she heard from across the seas ' news of her daughter s expectation , and once more months of waiting had to be worn through , she took out again the old robe and set to work on its comple tion . Yet her eyes had lost not only their lustre but the best part of their sight , so that the wide , uneven stitches disfig u ring the earlier marvel of needlecraft made in themselves a pathetic record of a life wearing ff out . Then , even they , too . broke suddenly o ; the fi i n shed . robe was never , never worn But the child that had been born into the world

all t untimely . with the chances against i , throve and

w as grew , and brought back across the ocean to the w home from hich her mother had gone out . From

fix ed that day Walter Osborne was in Dublin . He was daughter as well as son to his parents , and nurse rather than uncle to the child . He who lived always by choice in the open air became now a dweller in a little , cramped , overshadowed house in the town . ' ' His w father s death hen it came , his mother s increas

all ing blindness , tied him closer . There was nothing to repine about ; he had friends by scores; if he had an enemy , I never heard of one ; he had his art , and his success was steady , although not brilliant . His

work in portraiture , with all its technical dexterity , 38 GARDEN wxsoom

with all its charm of colour , lacked the essential gift .

He could put breath into a landscape , he could give f you the living atmosphere o a sky , but he could not make a human being live on canvas . For a couple of months each summer he moved to some cottage — oftenest at Portmarnock , a few miles north of Dub lin-and there got back to his painting in the open

fi ures and in Dublin also he painted g in the air , with always increasing power and breadth of treatment . But the public which buys pictures likes to get from a b man the sort of thing it knows him y , and in the last years of his life he found few buyers fo r his work out side o fportraiture ; and this necessarily kept him closer to his commissions . if Still , one had thought about the matter at all , one would have said he had plenty of time before him ; no man could have seemed more likely to live down all his contemporaries , and the notion of his dying never crossed any of our minds . Yet when I saw him last in

’ his studio in Stephen s Green his aspect certainly lacked the untroubled vigour which one normally associated with him . He looked indeed much as he

tu looks in the pic re of himself which , at Sir Walter ' e Armstrong s instanc . he had painted shortly before this for the po rtrait collection in the Nati o nal Gallery of Ireland thin , his fresh colour concentrated on the - high cheek bones , now more than ever prominent on the long oval face—intent with half-closed eyes on the k canvas , the right shoulder thrown far bac , the left AN ARTIST AND ms WORK 39 -for he painted with the left hand—forward almost ' ' like a fencer s ; there was much o fa fencer s poise

o f and spring in the movement his erect body , sway f ing a little on the eet . as he approached his easel and

He receded with each touch . had trouble enough on his mind just then his mother was bedridden , and he told me that day he did not think she could last out the E week , and he had telegraphed to ngland for his

i e brother . H s brother came , and within ten days ther was death in the house ; but it was the young strong man who died and the old blind mother recovered . She told me of it herself ; he had gone out and worked , as was his custom , in the little scrap of garden , seek ing exercise for his body . had overheated himself . and . run down as he was with much anxious watching by - a sick bed . pneumonia struck him . The two , mother l and son , ay in their separate rooms , and neither could be brought to see the other , each knowing the other ' at death s door . Is it wonderful that she should have

o ff cried out on the irony ate that , disregarding all her prayers , took the man in his prime , and left her long years to weep in with eyes that could do nothing else So was lost to the world much o fbeauty ; and there have been many artists with less than Osborne 's gifts who would have held all through that their art came '

first . m That estimate of art s value , I a sure , was never his . In all that he did , he worked as a thorough and conscientious artist he never despised . never

o n in scamped , the work he was . and even when it

(D 448) n 40 GARDEN wisoo m terested him least (for he could not choose his sitters) he enjoyed painting . But plainly he set the end of providing comfort for others above the end of creating

— o r beauty . There are those who will blame him at least think him the lesser man for this . Like Scott . he followed a vocation clear and unmistakeable , but like Scott he made light of the best that he could do — even o fthe best that any artist could do in compari son with simple primary human considerations . Balzac stands to me for a type of the artist who will ' sacrifice anything for art s sake , and hold himself ' j u stified in so doing by art s paramount and sacred ' ' value ; Osborne s avoidance of the traditional artist s pose as one of a race apart was a symbol of a very - deep seated conviction , which he followed at the ex pense not only of his art , but of his life . Was he wrong ? The matter is at least arguable ; fo r the artists who have art 's supreme egoism are those who advance the art they practise . Who is prepared to regret that Balzac was not a more model citizen ? or to affirm so that , had he been , his art would have been as great ?

am Yet when all is argued , I glad with all my heart

o f to have things that remind me a friend so manly ,

u nselfish so , so entirely loveable , whose presence was I always like sun and a clear breeze out o fdoors .

u have lived enough with his pict res on my o wn walls , and in two or three other houses , to be sure beyond I yea or nay of their quality . n the room where I write . AN ARTIST AND ms woax 41

three hang together , two of them mere sketches . the — third carried as far as he could carry it each rep re senting roughly a stretch o falmost featu reless hill and a strip of sky above it . The sketch on the left is of sunset ; it is the stillness of autumn evening ; corn stacks are on the hill . But in the little green picture - on the right , the stillness is of mid summer ; a line of Berkshire Down rises beyond a turnip field which a boy is thinning , and beyond are little vaporous balls - f t of cloud , white edged , that loa without apparent

tw o motion . Between these stillnesses . painted in oil , - - is a water colour sketch of cloud drifts hurrying b y , beyond a brownish purple shoulder of the Dublin mountains ; the wrack is grey , thinning to cold white . and in the rifts of the whiteness there show Up two

u patches of a blue so intense that this pict re , for all its roughness , is the one I love best , for the very breeze is in it and the spring sun . For another aspect of his work I can g o into the - - next room . where hangs the sketch of a four year old boy—suggesting delightfully the coltish clumsiness — and yet the charm of a rather shy child a thing full f of li e and an admirable likeness . To that extent he was always a portrait painter . He could hit o ffan impression in an hour or two , and the perfection o fhis eye for colour made the suggestion vivid—as in this ' little study o fthe peach bloom on a fair-haired child s cheek . The best example of this gift I ever saw was a portrait of himself , dashed o ffriotously ; there was 42 GARDEN wxsoom the - strong carmine of the face . the orange red o fhis bushy , horizontal moustache . the keen look in the A eyes , and above all the sense o fvivid virility . year

° tw 1 o I . or later looked for it in his studio Oh , that ' I ’ he said contemptuously ; used it for priming . I swore at him hard for having painted out one of his

s b e . be t works , ut he only laugh d He could do it

o f again any time in two hours , he said . But course he never did ; and he will be remembered by the anxious , scrutinising face of his later portrait , looking as if a deep trouble in the sub conscious mind under ' lay the su p erfic ial play of the hands and brain s activity . Yet it is a true and subtle piece of work H the best of his portraits , I should say . e was a little too courteous in the fib re of him ever to set down his impression of any other human being with entire unreserve . That does not matter to his reputation ; it is by landscapes and studies of fig ures in the open that he — l will live not soon to be forgotten by u s in Ire and .

o f E Much his best work was painted in ngland , and has the peaceful charm of English country the rich glow of English twilight . What he painted i n Ireland — was no less distinctively lrish but Irish with the subtlest distinction . He was never a painter of scenic landscape ; the lovely lines of mountain beyond seas . the swirl of a river through clifty wood , can be seen in many places within easy reach of Dublin , but he never drew these . What made his p ictures lrish was

44 GARDEN wxsoo m stronger in Ireland than in England because o fthe dominance here of a peasant stock . People and soil are part of each other everywhere in Ireland , as they are only by exception in England . Osborne loved the country with a feeling that pe r — vades all his studies of its beauty things that are

had p oems of Nature . But I do not think that he the instinct which keeps the born countryman uneasy till he can attach himself in permanence to some par i ticular corner of land . H s relation to Nature was the same in one place as another ; it had nothing posses s it ive in , none of that desire to own , to tend and to enjoy , which sooner or later seems always to asse rt - itself in the country bred .

s Later , in many case ; in myself , for instance , it did not appear till I was well on in life . Other ventures and adventures were more urgent on my youth . But every time I have sat down to live upon real country .

u that desire has come p with increasing force . The

- u Younger Generation here is country bred too , tho gh most o fher years have been spent in towns ; but I think that for this purpose the early teens make the time that matters , and she spent six of them solidly on the f land , en ranchising herself , at the stage when only one ' w a can be thoroughly enfranchised , of the peasant s y f ' of li e . From the peasant s standpoint , land is the f chie of all posses sions , and has a kind of sanctity attached to it it is the mother of all things . A friend much versed in this matter said to u s when we thought AN ARTIST AND ms WORK 45

k of coming here . that in buying land we ought to thin — of the buildings on it as almost a detriment so much

waste of space . Where we thought of a house . he instinctively thought of land and it seems to me that

if we feel ourselves in the country here , it is because , f owing to the way of li e which the new order imposes ,

his view answers to the truth . Our conditions of existence in this household are entang led with the

enterprise of the Younger Generation who , with her

partners , is seeking to make her living out of land land used intensively ; and the big house that stands on their ground is properly to be regarded as an in F cumbrance by them . or although by ingenious adaptation of its possibilities , and helped by the dearth o f - house room , they may turn it to a source of con side r l f ab e pro it , yet if their primary venture goes w ell , it would be better for them to have the space under it and its surrounding pleasure-ground available purely

ro fit for their gardening work . It would be more p able , in short , under glass than under brick and mortar . Still the best quality that I know in Irish people is their gift of making things serve a turn for which they w were not designed , and this pleasant cre of market gardeners illustrates it admirably in their attempt to improvise this typical town-dwelling in the midst of our country conditions , among people employed on the land . Put at the lowest , it is an amusing gamble , and moved me to express my feelings in verses (o fa 46 GARDEN WISDOM somewhat telegraphic style) for the nativity of the ' H firm s senior partner . ere they are

May 1 920 bring you plenty Weather just arranged to suit Every root and flower and tru1 t Lots o ftenants for your fl ats (Sort that wipe their feet on mat s) And a riddance from the rats Do w tc g that a hes , cat that purrs , And the pearl o fhousekeepers P t t w n upils smar and s out and illi g , T omatoes steady at a shilling , Part ners not inclined to flop M b riefl ay you , y come out top . S M - t -a unday , onday , sky day , ear h d y B i t r ng you still a better bir hday . A E UN ER A L D PO T D C OU .

NY man who follows a sport or a game

strenuously , seriously , and prayerfully

as l, for instance , should like to follow — fishing will hnd that it takes u p a great

o f - s deal not only his time . but his sub consciou thought ; and experience is teaching me now that to try and combine my profession with manual work about a house and garden means that the new pursuit — either because it is new , or more attractive . or really — f more important jostles o r precedence , and comes f tramping on the heels o my writing work . On the whole , I think it good for literature to have its heels so trodden . Burns , no doubt , was a bad farmer because he was a poet ; but he was surely the better poet because he was a farmer . Suppose he had been always an exciseman ! It is true that many of the poets in our day have been , if not quite excisemen . at least o fficials of some kind (there was at one time

o f o f a whole nest them in the Board Trade), following an occupation out of which their muse could suck no possible nourishment . Might they not have done better , perhaps , as market gardeners ?

47 48 GARDEN wxsoom

At a stage in these reflec tio ns I had nearly con v inced myselfthat I had discovered a recipe for the f — true literary li e . Primitively and poetry is a primi — tive business your poet is also farmer or herdsman , and probably soldier as well . We propose to abolish war , so soldiering is ruled out ; farming , in modern conditions , is too complex and exacting to combine with anything else ; but gardening ! Then it occurred to me that the discovery which I it had made belonged to the age at which I had made .

It may , I hope , hold true for the elderly essayist , but

o f is not likely to be much service to the writer , the in maker words , if he is young . What use should I myself have had for it in that distant past ?

Chance provided me with a test of my theory , for I number among my friends of the younger generation one poet fo r whom I hope greater things may be claimed some day ; but it may be claimed already that

flo w er H no living poet has written so well of s . ere is a passage of descriptive phrases , as exact as they are beautiful The fields were loud with bees A w w w - - nd dro sy ith the ind tossed meadow sweet . From bowing trees F l e l chatter , and above the g arden wall Wide sunflo wers beamed at spearing hollyhocks That dared the wind and scorned the clustered stocks A nd bore their laddered blooms hig h over all . And here again is a piece of decorative fantasy which catches just as surely the essential character of A POET UNDER A CLOUD 49

every flower woven into the pattern o f chiming

m But , cli ber , b eware Oi L -ia -a- t o f ove mist in a ang le hair, Oi T Sw P thistly eazles and winged eet eas, With tentacle tendrils that strang le with ease Oi b u tterfl O hi a- fo r y rc s clamour bees , Fo r D S ou Su w ou ragon may nap y , and nde may trap y f o u f Be ore y have started , be ore you have parted T t m he g rass at the foo of y Hollyhock trees .

ff Dearme r Yet I cannot see Geo rey , this poet of the

flo w ers , settling down to drive his Pegasus pony in ' a market gardener s cart . My prescription is by no

o f means general application .

All the same , there is more than concerns mere bread-winning in Scott 's saying that literature is a A ' good staff but a bad crutch . writer s life is saner t and stronger for having two strands in i . The big — — concern of sex always present , to help or hinder is a preoccupation rather than an occupation ; and nothing but a regular occupation can supply to the mind something intimately familiar , yet extraneous , to mix into the web drawn sp ide rw ise from its own N entrails . o greater strain can be put on human nature than that of trying to be purely and solely an artist in literature ; and that strain in our mo dern way o f existence falls almost inevitably on poets . Tenny son and Browning endured it successfully through long lives ; but I have seen a man with powers as great as theirs totter . stumble , and fall . dabbling in the mud 50 GARDEN WISDOM

w w saw the torch he as given to carry , till the orld

flarin only its smoky g , and forgot how superbly it once shone . There is a wise word of Swift 's No man was ever

’ written dow n but by himself . I quoted it to Stephen Phillips when the flood-tide of his success began to

e turn , and when elements in the critical pr ss had t become venomously hostile to him . It was not hey

His who wrote him down . Swift was right . death , i wh ch in the war passed almost unnoticed , would , in th l e du lest peace , have been no event ; he had long — — sed though still under fifty to produce anything but a reproduction of his mannerisms and the deadliest of all parodies is when a man parodies him self . f Yet , though an artist may su fer an eclipse which

o wn he has brought upon his fame , nothing can alter the quality of work in literature when once it stands achieved . The best that Stephen Phillips did is not surp assed by anything written within the longest living memory ; you must seek before Tennyson to t better i . If I try here to recall the personality and the

o f career a man whom I loved , it is in hope to modify a neglect by which the world is the only loser—for the dead are past caring . w We were naturally thro n into contact , because he and I came to London in the same year to seek our

t . w first for unes in letters When e met , his little paper

v hrist in Ha s co ered volume , C de , had already been

52 GARDEN WISDOM last days o fhis long life than to assist at the rise o fthis fi new star . and there never was an editor who had a ner or more sensitive touch in the task of wise directing

r St His M . . encouragement . younger colleague , Loe

Strachey , not less eager to help , took wholly unusual pains that the p o et might increase his earnings by reviews and so forth . But it was no use . Stephens Phillips had a wide knowledge of litera ture , and on the technique of verse was the most interesting man to talk with I have ever met . To him

Milton was the supreme and unapproachable artist , so bold , so varied , so subtle in his devices . I remem ber his saying to me that Milton would have scorned to reiterate and overdo a piece of sound-suggestion as

Tennyson , he thought , had overdone it in the passage , ° Dry clashed his harness on the icy crags and barren ’ th d chasms , with e rest o fit . But among the mo c rns his cult was for the one who had least artistry in metre .

The rush , volume and passion which he found in Byron more than atoned for technical defects ; and he thought contemporary poetry by far too much c o ncen trated on some brief and exquisite perfection . Yet he knew that the greatest poets were recognised not only by the mass of their work , but by their supreme f elicities , their jewelled wisdom ; and only after long search could he find in Byron his example of this quintessential poetry . It was the line ,

What else should joy be but diffusing joy ? ’ A POET UNDER A CLOUD 53

There you had , he held , the perfect expression of a deep and surprising thought— the central word diffusing so set in the line that its sound-quality

seemed to convey the very gesture .

I recall this , for the sentiment of the line was even

a nd more characteristic o f Phillips than of Byron , though I doubt whether Byron either then or ever in - his life thought of sound suggestion , it was a constant f object with Phillips , and most success ully pursued

witness a line , taken almost at random .

’ Or some repulse of the invading sea .

Cannot you feel the pushing ? But such talk with him as I am thus disjointedly recalling had to be talk between two craftsmen ; I never

heard him take part in any general discussion , and for

exposition in print he had neither interest nor aptitude . So the way o fhelp through the chance o fwriting

literary articles and reviews led nowhere for him . It mattered nothing ; he succeeded in his own way with

1898 first dazzling rapidity . When in his volume of

° ' ‘ '

collected Poems appeared , including Marpessa 1890 ‘C H ’ (written in )and hrist in ades , but containing also much that was quite alien to and distinct from

al f the Tennysonian tradition , l his own cra t went out

to take him by the hand . Mr. William Watson and

Mr Le G l . a lienne were outspoken in their praise , and

r veteran critics like M . Frederick Greenwood endorsed the verdict of his contemporaries . Then came a piece 54 GARDEN WISDOM — of fortune Iam not sure whether good or evil . The

a H Ac demy , then owned by John Oliver obbes . had the idea of offering a prize of a hundred pounds to that book of verse published within the year which a jury of critics should select as best . The experiment was t never repeated , and it was a strange coincidence tha it should have been made in the year which saw the appearance of so outstanding a volume . The award ’ which made Phillips thus cou ronné par l Académie opened the way for a somewhat indiscreet campaign of advertisement , and the novelty of the incident , together with the manner in which it was exploited . set not a few backs up . That would have mattered ' little . had it not been somehow in this man s nature or his fate that even his luck should always contribute to his damage—as was to be demonstrated on a very much greater scale . It must have been about this time that he asked me — — Io r we were seeing a great deal of each other ii I w ould collaborate with him in a play . I laughed at the proposal . and said that I did not know which of

us fitted . was the less for that It was a stupid answer , fo r it took no account of stage experience , which is of very great practical value . Yet , essentially , I think my instinct was right . The best of his work is in his plays , but it is in their quality as poetry , not as plays . If he had treated any one of their subjects in dr amatic narrative—whether you call it epic or dramatic idyll — makes no matter his w ork w ould have gained more A POET UNDER A CLOUD 55

His s likely than lost . plays retain their intere t on the d stage . they o not become a new thing when acted fE ff but I have seen a drama o uripides , indi erently

o ff - mounted and played , shake all the mummy clothes

of dead centuries and suddenly , even through the veil f of a translation , blaze into vivid li e . Yet to succeed in bringing poetry on to the stage — was essential to his purpose . That purpose which then seemed almost fantastically impossible—was

dictated by his whole attitude to poetry . Thinking E Byron the greatest of modern nglish poets , he aspired to do with poetry what Byron had done—to make it H popular , not esoteric . e wanted , in short , to reach not only those who read contemporary verse (they - were , I think , fewer twenty years ago than to day), '

Mr. . but those also who read , say , Kipling s stores k If any one thin s this a vulgar ambition . let me

n Mr. refer to the case of that austerest amo g artists ,

am Yeats . I thinking now not of his ventures in the it theatre . which has drawn him no les s strongly than ff — drew Phillips , though in a di erent direction but of a poem in his Responsibilities . He goes to Galway

R s ace , and he comes back with the reflec tio n that

Here where the course is T t k o o n he spor ma es all fthe ne mi d , T l n he riders on the g a lopi g horses , T w he cro d that closes in behind .

Poets , too , had good attendance once , Aye . ' horsemen for companions ; and he dreams of an age

(1) 44s) 56 GARDEN wisoo m

s when that time shall come back , when poetry hall stir the blood again like a great game

And w e find hearteners among men

That ride upon horses .

Byron had that attendance , and nobody since

Byron . Phillips , seeing this , held that if any poet is again to stir men at large with poetry , poetry must come on the stage to reach them with the thrill of its passion . I think he was right ; his attempt to achieve that object was the most interesting that I have ever watched ; and for a time I believed that he was going f to win . What had affected mysel so powerfully and

ff r so unexpectedly must , I thought , a ect a vast numbe of people in the same way . Yet they never quite shared my experience . It must have been in 1898 that my wife and I were asked to hear him read his Paolo a nd Fra ncesca in a house of many literary associations . Sidney Colvin had transferred to the new poet all that devotion and will to serve which Stevenson 's death had left barren of employment . No one else was there but the present

a C L dy olvin , and only Colvin had seen the manus c fip t Stephen Phillips was then in the flower of his age — and strength just turned thirty , big and powerful

f t ro hle - with regular ea ures , the p rather hatchet shaped , i . H s but the jaw broad and massive eyes , though deep set , were very large and of a limpid blue . Some A POET UNDER A CLOUD 57 thing heavy in the make of his shoulders and whole

body , something heavy and almost sullen in his

countenance , would always have prevented one from

' f u speaking o fhis beauty but his ace could light p , and about him he carn ed one indisputable beauty — his voice . I have known no other man and only one — woman read so perfectly . It seems to me that we did not stir or speak that whole evening , from which my eye keeps the memory ' fi u r of this man s g e sitting there , massive yet tense , and reading on with that voice of deep and unforced - resonance ; incidentally , too , I keep a mind picture of one of the other listeners looking quite literally over whelmed . It was the strongest literary emotion I ' have ever known , and one s inclination was to be R silent about it coming away . eading the play over again aloud within these last few days , I do not say that I was moved in the same degree ; but the passion and the beauty held and will always hold me , and held , too , my listener , the Younger Generation , to

. th whom it was new As a whole , I think that this , e earliest , is the best of his plays ; but it is not the high - water mark of his achievement in dramatic poetry . I saw that (probably in the next summer)when I went down to spend a day at the little house where he lived f in Ash ord , near to Staines ; and he read me the third

H d— first b act of ero which was the to e written . Beyond that achievement he was never to attain but how few have come within sight of what he reached 58 GARDEN wxsoom then 1 This was no casual lucky hit of a few lines or verses , such as comes once or twice in a lifetime to most competent artists in verse . It was a great mass f f of poetry , ervid and glowing ; beauty drawn rom the famous past , visions of barbaric splendour , memories - of that wonderful meeting between two world forces ,

R a- Judea and ome ; yet all thrill with hopes , fears , dreams , and imaginations that move our questioning minds in this passing moment of time . Beyond that

u mark he never went , p to it he never came again it was top of his tide ; yet the cause lay in no failure of powers , but in other quite assignable reasons . Here I think lies the chief interest and the warning ' of his life s record .

He had already , so to say in principle . achieved his object ; Pa olo a nd Fra ncesca was accepted by

George Alexander . But that famous actor was man o fbusiness no less than artist , and had many things to consider , many commitments to meet ; there was no getting him to name a date for production , and the fruition of hope always receded . Phillips chafed , as any poet ever born would have chafed , under this

At all delay ; and perhaps he was in undue haste . events , before his new play was complete , he went with his third act to Beerbohm Tree , and met a very different reception . Here poet and artist were as naturally congenial as in the other case they were alien ; and Tree threw himself into the venture with

60 GARDEN w1soom

Hero d , the third act is all of one piece ; it is the fabric ' o fa poet s invention ; the first and second read too often as ifa poet had sat down to write up to order old - and often used pieces o fregular stage contrivance . Only one passage in them really catches fire through out , and it has reminiscences . but of no modern drama it is the scene which renders by varying utterances from the crowd on the walls Herod 's furious and lonely ' approach as he hurls himself across the plain b ack to Mariamne . This , I think , with its inspiration f rom the Greek use of the chorus , shows how Phillips , working in isolation , would have handled the whole , had his imagination got entirely free play— as it had

u done p to his composition of the third act . Beyond that , he held success like a great bird by the wings ; ' each hampered the other s free flight . 1 What he had achieved by the summer of 900, H d when ero was in the writing , was no less than extraordinary . Within four years of his arrival in

London , an unknown penniless young man , he had publishers competing fie rcely for the right to publish his work , and he had two tragedies in verse accepted f by the two oremost theatres in London . The pub lishers alone represented every prospect of a modest competence ; the theatre held out much more golden — hopes and not gold only . Literary reputation brought him flattering opportunities of public rec o g ni i tion , but this he abhorred ; he refused absolutely (n spite of much friendly pressure) to g o to the Royal A so ar UNDER A CLOUD 6]

Academy banquet and reply for the toast of Literature . Society in the ordinary sense was distasteful to him he was both shy and bored in it ; but he delighted in

o f Hero d the world the stage , and his work on pushed him into close companionship with the great actor manager who was in many ways the extreme example — of his type lavish , whimsical , variable , and brilliant company . Both men , poet and actor , belonged to that country o fBohemia into whose citizenship some

ffinit are born , but more acquire it by elective a y and

o f adoption . Tree was the latter class ; and , though he never penetrated below what may be called the

o f bourgeoisie Bohemia , yet Bohemian he was , as cer tainl y as Sir George Alexander was not . But Stephen E Phillips , child of an nglish cathedral close , scholar by instinct and heredity , was of Bohemia utterly ; like

Dickens , whom alone of novelists he worshipped , he knew Bohemia to its depths ; like Dickens he loved humours even more than humour itself ; he revelled in queer company .

o f For instance , one his most valued acquaintances was a policeman who had previously served in the detective force , but now rusticated at Ashford . This man , with a penetration schooled in Scotland Yard , discovered who Phillips was , and proposed collabora H tion . e claimed to have rendered great services to

Mr C . Nat ould . Phillips and he had much talk upon f li e and crime . I think it was this friend who took him to play a cricket match with a police team . 62 GARDEN wxsoom Refreshments appear to have been the main feature of the day , and there were cards in the train . Phillips with his usual preternatural solemnity suggested that this gambling m a public place might expose them to

’ penalties . Sir , he was answered , on an occasion like this , we are in a manner of speaking above the

0 law .

E On ven his cricket was Bohemian . his merits as a performer any club about London would have been glad to enlist him ; but cricket taken seriously is a strenuous business and he preferred to play fo r the most u nc o n v entio nallocal elevens on the most astonishing pitches there were more humours about the game . Still . he was too good at it not to be tempted by a decent ground and he joined a competent club near by his home where I watched him get a lot of runs very handsomely one day , though bowling , not the bat , was his talent .

o f - He Then one the instances of his ill luck occurred . broke his leg and it did not set well ; lameness put an end to cricket . and deprived him of an occupation and a way of exercise—almost as good as market garden f ing . The lack of it le t his days empty of anything that was not his writing work , and for his subsidiary interests and pleasures he was more and more com

le tel p y thrown upon the theatre and its surroundings . !ery long ago I chanced to be a fellow-guest with f the Bancro ts . then just retired , and I have never for ' gotten Lady Bancroft s eulogy o fthe theatre as the most - regular and health giving of occupations . What she A Post UNDER A CLOUD 63

I r who v said was , believe , t ue for the actors ha e to do the same thing at the same hours daily and nightly . it who have to keep fit for doing , and in doing it get b a strong tonic stimulant . But to e somehow attached it w to the stage , of it yet not on , is ithout these w advantages . Where the other people are orking in a very odd yet exacting art , the dramatic author or other attendant personage has no function but to hang

He can about and watch them doing their business . share only their idleness ; he can be party to their

t t a ass i s ambitions . heir quarrels , their r c er e , their

k o f gossip , their jokes ; but their wor , the element b reality in their lives , he cannot share . To e an author and keep yourself reasonably sound is not the easiest business ; but to be a dramatic author would

fi r try the moral b e of an archangel . I do not refer to what Dr . Johnson expressed so plainly when he said ' to Garrick , I ll come no more to your green room ,

he Davy , t white bosoms and white stockings of your " actresses excite my amorous propensities —though no doubt this is an element in the matter . But to see your own play acted is , I fancy , the greatest delight and the greatest torment known to literary mankind . Every actor has an interest in his own part and can at least hope to please himself ; the author has an interest f in every part , in every change o the scenery , every f shi t of the lighting , and cannot hope to be pleased in

. Co nfidants hic fl all receive c y lamentations , and ' from these years of my friend s triumph I remember 64 GARDEN WISDOM

for the most part his growls . Sometimes he had the

Ul sses solace of an epigram . When y was being played , Tree , who in his exhausting part was acting f f almost from the rise o the curtain to its all , chanced to lament to Phillips about the distractions and worries

‘ ’ f f o f o . his li e Ah , said the poet grimly , but think

’ It the rest you get when you are on the stage . is not - every actor manager who will bear to be so accused o f walking through his part ; but Phillips knew that Tree loved a good thrust too well to resent one . Besides , f there was a real riendship there , and a real admira tion ; the dedication of Herod was sincere To H f f erbert Beerbohm Tree , in li e a true riend , and on

’ the stage the Herod of my dreams .

Yet for Phillips , being what he was , this very f His riendship was a source of danger . short career on the stage had marked him profoundly ; he had that

s restlessne s after lights are lit , that disinclination to stay indoors o fan evening which affect theatrical folk ;

He and like every actor he was gregarious . frequented ' His Majesty s Theatre as other men frequent a club ;

o f and when cricket was struck out his reckoning , there were many hours to be put in between rehearsal

Be in the morning and some show in the evening . sides , London streets always drew him ; their under

f The W a n with a D a d S l world ascinated him ; om e ou ,

The Wi and fe , tell what symbols of pity and terror he

f h is f . o C t in a s f ound there The idyll r H de is beauti ul , but not equal to that other idyll of a drink-sodden A POET UNDER A CLOUD 65 - woman in a gin shop . And he did not concern him self with symbols only .

Moreover , the run of the plays when they began At caused him many heartburnings . the worst these productions brought to the author sums which a couple of years back would have seemed beyond the possi ' b ility of a young poet s earning . But he was living now with people who spent largely , and his hands - were ill constructed for holding money . Yet money was the least thing involved ; essentially , his dream

d f financiall ifPa l a nd was at stake . If Hero ailed y , o o

Fra s a nce c made a loss , his dream of bringing poetry to popular acceptance was deeply imperilled . That is the true reason why he craved a success for his

He plays that could be measured in money . never

su fficient got it . Money for his own needs he did get no doubt to have established him in a frugal inde p endence ; but frugality and such as he were never f bed ellows . - Once more , too , a fantastic stroke of ill luck hit

His him . son had been born . and was a great delight , though the engrossment with his plays never allowed this infant to get such a hold on his heart as did the little girl . But his wife and he were happy ; they had decided to house themselves more comfortably , — and were full of interest in their new abode a little

and - spick span red brick house , detached , but stand

o f E ing in a long row others just like it , at gham , f f across the river rom Ash ord . Herod was in pre 66 GARDEN WISDOM

p aratio n when the move took place , and Tree , who chanced to be going to Homburg , insisted that the poet should accompany him , to continue the discus

fo r sion o fdetails . Phillips was away some ten days and came back expecting to sleep for the first time in i the new house ; he was met at the station by his w fe , who explained that she , her sister , the servants and the baby had been driven out by ghosts . It was the best authenticated case of haunting that I ever met and in the unlikeliest surroundings ; the person most seriously

ff hts f a ected was the baby . who got strange o terror and seemed as if it were being strangled ; the symp toms are graphically described in a passage of The

’

f . Sin o David Anyhow , the rout was complete . Phillips had to g o back to Ashford and pay rent for

He a house he could not inhabit . spent a night there with a representative o f the Psychical Research

Society , some retired Indian civilian but they got no dd result . It must have been an o vigil I wonder if dd the retired Indian civilian knew how o . t This was a se back to his prosperity , but things

fo r looked too well then any one to worry about them . Both Herod (which was the first to be played)and

Pa l a nd F a s a fo r o o r nce c ran a considerable time . though from a strictly commercial point o fview they

u n ro fitable . were p Tree , however , continued to back

Ul sses fr his venture and y was chosen o a new subject . f Into this Phillips threw himsel with his whole heart , and I have a letter from him in which he says he thinks

68 GARDEN WISDOM it be any satisfaction to the writers of the various — diatribes . I think they injured him spoilt his nerve .

He had the temperament that can be predisposed to

o f f failure . But the cause his ailure at this crucial period of his career lay elsewhere ; it is to be found

! in a grotesque and stupid law , which forced on him

he a choice ruinous to art . Either must avoid the subjects which his imagination desired to handle , or he must write plays which could not be produced in any public theatre .

f n u en e Stephen Phillips , who was pro oundly i fl c d by the examples of the Greek drama , desired to ~ attempt plays on subjects like those which the Greek

o f tragedians found in a mass legend , history or fable , familiar in advance to the audience for whom the play w as u s t designed . What to is their my hology , was to the Greeks either part of their religion or its back ground ; and Phillips saw that the equivalent for an audience of to-day can only be discovered in the

Biblical narratives . The greatest of all stories to him C was the story of hrist , and the chiefof his desires was

Hi Chris n a to attempt that subject . s t i H des and

H r d H passages in e o , where erod speaks of the rumoured King that is to come and rule by gentleness , show the continuous bent of his mind . Yet he realised that it would be impossible to handle that theme on the stage without shocking so many real susceptibilities that an active prejudice would be created , and the artistic purpose obscured . The sub A POET UNDER A CLOUD 69 j ec t on which his mind settled at last was one in itself poignantly dramatic , familiar to all who have the least acquaintance with the Bible , and intimately connected with the Founder o fChristianity ; for the descent of Jesus of Nazareth is traced from the union— achieved — through so black a crime o i David and Bathsheba .

But by the law , or rather by the traditions which govern the licensing of plays , any play which draws its subject from the Scripture is barred from rep rese n ' R Atha li tatio n in an ordinary theatre . acine s e or

Es ther would be impossible o f production on the

British stage .

Here then was the dilemma . It was rather that he could not than would not write on any other subject ; subjects , in so serious an art as his , impose themselves rather than are chosen . The question was how he t should handle i . The natural way was the way of imagination— into which invention enters only to a

as very minor degree . The poet tells an old tale it t shapes i self to him , giving to it the symbolism , the

si nific ance . g , that he attaches to its images All poetry must depend on instinctive knowledge o fwhat is in the mind o fhumanity ; memories and associated feelings which the race or some group of the race

e shares are chords on which the po t strikes , knowing how one touch , the evocation of a name perhaps , will

w o f s set a hole series image in motion , will stir into f f li e vague and beautiful shapes . Agamemnon o Argos died many ages ago and at best was a petty 70 GARDEN wxsoom king beside Menelik of Abyssinia in our o wn day yet

Agamemnon not Menelik is a name to conjure with . E With an nglish audience , conceive what greater power to evokethere is in the very mention of David and Solomon . One has only to read Herod, to see what this man could have done with this subject in the mere use of all its background of story , where every incident is already a symbol . But the essential for him lay not there . though these were colours such as none be tter knew the use o f; it was in the amazing picture of saintliness rising out of sin and permitted to f -ff oresee the divine far o issue of that very sin itself . This way of treating the subject was the way of f imagination , con orming to the true nature of the theme ; but it was incompatible with the purpose , the ambition , the dream , of a material success on the stage .

a I u It is easy to be wise fterwards , and am s re now that he would have done best to write his play and

Had publish it simply as a piece of literature . he done s o , his fame would have stood higher than it does and the world would have gained much beauty . But in fairness be it remembered , his object was to w rite plays to be acted . I saw another artist , Mabel Dear

s h mer , incomparably le s of a poet t an he but with fi ht t far more instinctive gift as a maker of plays , g his same archaic law and find her way stopped by its

i r Her blank b an e . brain was full of other scriptural subjects that she wanted to handle . as she had handled A so ar UNDER A CLOUD 7 I them in The Soul o fthe World and The Dreamer ; but if the plays could not be produced , she would not

fi hts write them . and turned to other things . Yet her g helped to force this door a little way ; another ] o seph if than hers was licensed . Phillips , he had written such a play as it was in him to write on such a subject f as possessed him , would have gone far to raise a eel ing against the arbitrary restraint . But he was advised by prudent people and by his own weaker nature ; he departed from the way of imagination and sought through invention to tell the story o fDavid and Bathsheba , as it were , in disguise . The result proved that the beauty and sig nificance of a theme resides not in mere incidents , but in their relation to a whole complex o fthings which make u p

tu their na ral setting . But , above all , the central si nific anc e— g the link with Nazareth , the foreshadow ' — ing of the Christ s story was irretrievably gone . The concession which he had made was antagonistic to the

f o f f Sin a id li e art , and art revenged itsel . The ofD v

f o ff marked clearly a alling , not an advance ; it failed even o fits immedi ate purpose o fsecuring production on the stage , though that came later . But the sense o ffailure struck home upon a nature untempered to stand it ; and all things went ill with my friend from this forward . - I do not think that after this tu rning point he wrote d anything that will be remembered , though he live and wrote for another fourteen years . But in the work

(D 443) 72 GARDEN WISDOM

— s New P s of his prime his Poem , his oem , and his — three first plays there is a great body of noble poetry , - comprising in it a far greater extent of first rate work

f fo r than that on which the ame of Coleridge , instance . really rests . And it contains one poem to which those should turn at once who desire to judge this poet ‘ Ne w P s a A as a man . It is in the oem , and is c lled ' ’ f Poet s Prayer . Written in the days when ame was like a ball at his feet , it shows how in the fullest con scio u sness of his gift there was deep premonition of the danger . There is dread even in his recognition of the power bestowed ; his prayer is , in all passionate

fo r — sincerity , guidance , for support not in the moments of creation

N r w ot then I need thee fo delig ht is ise, not f o f I err in the reedom the skies .

He dreaded , and he wisely dreaded , the hours when inspiration flags

’ Tis not in fl esh so swiftly to descend A f w t to nd sudden rom the spheres ith ear h blend , A w and f nd I from splendour thro n , dashed rom dream , r Into the fl a e pursue the former g leam .

So Dryden might have written ; and there was ' f ' much of Dryden s railty , as well as of Dryden s large

. d accent , in Stephen Phillips I o not think that any one who has the sense o fpoetry can read this poem without recog nising in it that something more than natural which touches g reat poets , which sets them A so ar UNDER A CLOUD 73 apart from the men who can merely write well and even at times excellently well ; nor that any one who has the sense of humanity can fail to be moved by the awful pathos which later years stamped upon the two closing lines

f f Else shall thy dread ul g i t still people hell , f And men not measure from what heig ht I ell .

What is the use of saying that a man like this would have been much happier and saner if he could have - combined his work of poetry with some health g iving , — useful , and not too exacting occupation say , a ' > — market g ardener s i It is a truism and absurd ; for . if he could , he would not have been what he was one of such creatu res as are born now and then into

difi atio n the world , not assuredly for our e c , and still more assuredly not for their own happiness , most assuredly of all not for the comfort of their families

— u s and dependents who yet enrich life for , making beauty out of strange material , seeing beauty where it n we should never have found , and pierci g , with a wisdom not given to the more wisely conducted , into the very core of the world .

If I have written harshly here . it is of the artist , who went wrong . I hold , as an artist , being led (though by ambitions natural and proper for an artist) into concessions which an artist should not make . But that does not alter the fact that he was a hundred times a greater poet than others who have at all times 74 GARDEN WISDOM been impeccably g uided by a sense of what was du e - . I to the dignity o ftheir thin lipped art ought , per haps , to reproach myself for not having dissuaded him

Sin Da vid from the compromise over the of but that , b I think , would e impertinent , overrating the import ance of my advice . I have , thank heaven , only one thing really on my conscience about this friend of mine —whose last book came to me with the friendliest of inscriptions , though we had not met for long years . Yet I am sure that he had never forgotten or quite forgiven how once when , by a trick so ingenious that it was almost a practical joke , he had persuaded a

- U good batsman , well set , to put p the easiest kind of

u s catch , I missed the catch , and the batsman kept all f ! the afternoon in the ield . Twenty years ago And he was a very pleasant human being to be with in those days . If it be true , as his mind was most prone to believe , that souls of the dead press about the living

hO e and share their sensations and emotions , I p that f his has long ago orsaken the valley of its humiliation , and turned back to renew its youth among the young k - and clean and keen on a cric et pitch . Some of the lines in which he embodied that belief

u cannot easily be judged by me , so bound p are they

first f with associations of my hearing them at Ash ord ,

. f in those cricketing days Yet surely these , rom one of his experiments in accentual unrhymed verse . are beautiful

76 GARDEN WISDOM appropriate to the new period : and that if these do not engross so great a space in life as their earlier - - equivalents , fruit trees and flower borders are well fil able to l u p the interstices and leave no void . f But be ore you have a right to be so philosophic , you must , I think , have committed a good many strenuous follies before you can be so peaceable you It must have fought . warms my heart to remember what I had completely forgotten— how I quarrelled with that editor . ! A LO ER OF JUSTICE.

F you are writing essays of memory , you must— and I have already pleaded guilty — to egotism write about yourself: but the

best part of yourself is your friends . Friendships are the rewards of Iife—its decorations

o f they are what one has most right to be proud , and .

infinitel in such a case as mine , y the most interesting ' expression of one s existence , the bright colours in

’ memory s web . These are confessions of a literary man who has been , and , it seems , must still be a politician ; for politics come and jostle their way into a scheme of life which was to be divided most rationally between writ ' ing fo r writing s sake and working like a happy labourer in my plot of ground among pear-trees and

- reflec t currant bushes . Yet I keep leisure enough to

f u r t on the acts which memory brings p , and I see fi s of all that I was a politician always ; that when I was writing on all manner of subjects and trying to make w my riting as good as lay in me , there was always at the back o fmy mind the sense that I was forging and hling and polishing a weapon which could be put to

77 78 GARDEN wisoom

o f e practical u se in politics . Politics meant , cours .

ff o f o wn for me , being an Irishman , the a airs my country ; but , perhaps because I was a literary man , the same problem , or the kindred problem , interested me wherever it presented itself—the fundamental problem ' o f also of our time , the trouble Ireland and the world s

— o f trouble clash of nation against nation , struggle race against race ; which is really in its essence the claim fo r development on lines of diversity against the claim to impose upon great tracts of the world the formal unity o fone governing type .

fo r Now politics all that is said against them , have

l1 terar this merit for a y man that way of work is richer , if not in friendships , at least in personal associations . f than the purely literary li e . Politics involve team work ; you can get nowhere in politics by yourself alone , whereas in literature the best must always be — done in solitude solitude of the brain , solitude of the heart even . The writer is the sower , as is also the politician ; but the pure writer and thinker flings his

tu seed abroad as a tree does , exercising his na ral function from a natural need , and leaving to other natural forces the accomplishment o f i ssue . The politician , more consciously the propagator , sows too ; ' o f ff but a great part his e ort is like the gardener s , for whom the act o fsowing is only one of many activities All in preparing the ground , watering , and weeding .

—o r it this work of propagation , call , propaganda needs help , and I owe my best decorations in friend 01: ame 79 A LO!ER J s.

ship to the chance that l hav e been privileged to help

better brains and better hearts than my o wn .

True political thought is of universal application , fo r it is grounded deep in the nature of man ; and I realise far better now than when we worked in this same field how wide w as the wisdom of one friend whose memory I have been in these days reviving . If - I wanted to explain to day what has been from the first ' England s just and legitimate purpose in Ireland , and in what wise England had outrun and disnatured that true purpose , I should turn by choice to a passage in ' s Mary Kingsley s West African Studie . The dif ference between Ireland and England in the twelfth century was no greater than between the Germany and - Russia of to day ; the difference betw een England of to-day and West Africa is scarcely to be measured — though Mary Kingsley thought so b y centuries o f development ; yet her principle applies to both cases . In the last resort her power rested on her wisdom , her deep political insight . But wisdom will not carry you ff to political achievement . She was the most e ective propagandist of our time by virtue o fher unique per so nalit y ; she succeeded because she was herself . H ere a word must be said by way of apology . Man — is by nature a propagandist and so is woman . Your acquaintance who presses on you the merits of a dentist or a watering-place yields to this common impulse , which so often brings the yielder to the brink — of tedious impertinence yet impertinence ho w trivial 80 GARDEN WISDOM

' compared with the full-blown propagandist s assump

o f tion which is , in nine cases out ten , not only that he or she knows better than his fellows , but has a more virtuous mind . Save by the grace of God , every propagandist is either a prig or a bore ; and the mercies

infinite o f of providence , though , are not universal application . Mary Kingsley accomplished great

b ad thing s . not because she faith , not because she had sincerity—qualities which she shared with hundreds of honest and perfectly ineffectual missionaries of this or that belief—but because she had strong common f sense , a genuine human instinct of air play . and because , having humility and having humour , she was the very antithesis to either a prig or a bore .

It is twenty years since she died , and twenty years back is a blind spot in most minds ; what happened then is not universally in memory , and has not yet got into history books ; so perhaps a word of explanation is needed . She was the daughter of George Kingsley , C less famous than his brother harles , yet well known as a scholar , a traveller , a sportsman , and scientist .

Till she was thirty , she lived at home , helping her mother with household duties , and in the periods when her father was at home giving comradeship to him f ' in his work . A ter his death and her mother s , which fell close together . she set herself (as she has explained)

’ u n to complete a great book , which he had left i fin shed. For this it was necessary to study native

African ideas and practices in religion and law . There A LO!ER or JUSTICE 81 being little written literature which she could consult ‘ o s she decided to g to We t Africa , where all authorities

’ agreed that Africans were at their wildest and worst .

It w as no desire (she adds)to g et killed and eaten that made me g o and associate with the tribes with the worst fo r sacrifice reputation cannibalism and human , but just because such tribes were the best fo r me to study from w in hat they meant b y doing such th g s .

Common sense taught her that the w orst way to find out about a country is to g o avowedly in search of

f r in ormation . I have known st angers learn much about Ireland by coming there to buy horses , to hunt ,

sh— to fi o n some business , in short , which explained their presence . But the tourist in search of the truth

I u s about reland causes some irritation , some amuse — ment , not a little suspicion and I never knew him to acquire knowledge . In Africa , the only thing that would account for Mary Kingsley 's presence— short of being a missionary , to which there were objections was that she should trade . Accordingly she provided

o u tfit herself with a trade , and began to buy and sell , so that relations naturally formed themselves naturally . she was told that certain things might be

e— done , others not don and , naturally , she could ask why .

She went , of course , at her own risk , exactly as the old traders had done from the fifteenth century o n w ards—and these were the men whom she admired 82 GARDEN wxsoom

exploring unknown unhealthy country among savages . w You can read her travels , and read bet een the lines that she loved perilous adventure ; but the most danger

o f ous of her experiences never got into print . One heard them through some chance turn of talk . Once I remember it was a question o fhow dangerous croco diles were . She said that in some places they did not

if v e rified attack human beings . Being asked she had the fact , she proceeded to explain that in a certain river with a very swift current it was the usage fo r a local steamer to land stray passengers by setting them adrift on a log at a point where a back eddy took the log in near the landing stage . I never felt comfortable

’ ° about the ankles , she said ; for the crocodiles were

’ all there right . She had suppressed this because it might injure her reputation as a trustworthy traveller . — I hope I shall not injure it now nor if I recall her defence of the opinion that leopards are frightened o f a white woman . One had attacked a dog in the yard

u behind a house where she was ; she seized a water j g , ' dashed out , and broke the jug on the leopard s head .

Whether it was , as she maintained , the startling t apparition of her skirts , or the cold water that did i , she could not be sure , she said , but the leopard went . Such talk gave one sidelights on a history for w ' hich , to say the least , the narrator s personal appear ance would not prepare you . That appearance was entirely in keeping with her steady refusal to risk her s elf on a bicycle . and with a limitation which she once

84 GARDEN wisoo m can see her with the bonnet on in a good photograph

W st A i a Studi s p refix ed to her e fr c n e , but the medallion - ’ engraved on the title page of the African Society s

Jo urnal keeps some vision of the Dii reresq u e beauty . What did hit you at every moment was the inc o n

i Her g ru ty of her speech . voice and accent were charming , soft and cultivated ; what she said was generally ungrammatical and always slangy— not with f the slang o society . but her own selection of choice idioms . collected in the most miscellaneous company . and from the most varied extent of impolite reading .

Words amused her , especially bad words . I never

o f heard her use any the hackneyed verbs , adjectives or nouns , by which less inventive people seek to colour their talk ; yet her expression was always and in all senses unconventional ; and she wrote exactly as she spoke . Slang with her was as natural as with a Texan cowboy , and as picturesque . Yet when her mood demanded she could utter her thought with a noble strength and dignity . That thought always centred about one idea— the

idea of justice . She loved courage : yet this , she

be always felt . might only a human weakness , a woman 's delight in a brave man she was prepared to

b o laugh a out that , to be slangy ab ut that . But of justice she spoke always with grave lips ; she wor shipped justice . If I could have a statue of justice made , it should be like her austere yet not grim , grave — yet not unsmiling rather with eyes that can see folly A LO!ER OF JUSTICE 85

r w n and laugh when laughter is due , and can g o ster

as a sword when folly is criminal . E She used her humour , after the nglish fashion for she was intensely English— to cloak the serious

ness o fher purpose ; but she was never of those who

like Swift , or in our days Shaw , put their passion of

resentment at injustice into a bitter laughter . She was

no satirist , she used no irony , and though she hated k preaching , she was never shamefaced about spea ing out simply and directly those things which she had

Her e most at heart . humour bubbl d over with gaiety ;

it had the sweetness of gaiety even at its slangiest . She was disorderly in her methods of expression—as dis

orderly as Lord Fisher , in whose writings she would have recognised the only parallel for her prose style ;

su erfic ial but the disorder was p , it covered trained and

disciplined thinking . When she has facts or recorded

judgments to refer to , she sets them out ; if the con

clu sio n o nfident , no matter how c , is merely her own

e d duction , you will be carefully warned of the fact . ‘

I have no authority to forti my position with , so it

’ is only me . But why should I seek to describe what I can so much better illustrate (as I am permitted to do)by her letters to me ? The first of them dates her establishment in the house where I most often saw — 32 St her , . Mary Abbots Terrace , Kensington . It 1898 was her home from August , , till March , 1900. when she left London for her last io u mey ; less notable memories are recorded by tablets and this one should 86 GARDEN wisoom

x be so recognised . While she lived there , e ternal distinction was unnecessary . She had a large and very ugly idol with a deep collar of coagulated blood . stuck over with rusty nails , each representing a votive ' — offering for some one s demise and . as she said

u u grimly , the j j men had always their reputation to consider and were bound to show a reasonable pro portion of results . But the grimmest thing about the

first idol was its odour . When I visited her she was in a flat at the head of long stone stairs . As I climbed

. Ou them , I was aware of something unfamiliar my

r I St next visit (when fi st came to . Mary Abbots Terrace)what was now familiar met me on the door I step ; later , I thought I could detect it whenever H R passed along the ammersmith oad . The idol was the salient feature in her very miscellaneous collection N of furniture . o wonder that she says her house ’ moving was a lively representation of chaos .

I refer you (she adds) to the p rofessional gentlemen who did m the oving to b ear me out in my statement , con — cerning the severi ty o fthe strug g le they were very nice it about , but my parrot and myself have picked u p new b ad w w several ords , hich w as unnecessary fo r either ofu s am f , and I eeling like an uninsured wreck from my i t various anx eties and exer ions .

Such incidental observations decorated all her corre s o ndence p with me , though its purpose really belonged to her propaganda . I was one of three or four journalists who knew enough about West African

88 GARDEN wisno m

disagreed with , and , much worse , sometimes attributed to her views which she did not hold . Once f already I had tried , wrongly , to in er positive support of a certain proposal from her rejection of the only proposed alternative ; and she no doubt feared a repetition of this when she wrote to me as follows

a ck I heard with cold chills going down my ment l ba , last nig ht saying something to you about my

Op inion on this g overnment ofNative races . I pray you — until you have in p rint that opinion judge it no t no f ’ f human being knows yet what it is , o r I don t mysel . I m t n f it f definite a ryi g to ormulate , and ormulating a in i f d to w i is the op ion s g rie an ang uish me, h ch w fi reason I have so few o f them , and I ould a n w fo r f to be ithout those I have , they are no com ort M i f f t t me . y p resent state s per ectly set orth in ha valu t able scien ific stanza The Centipede w as happy qui te , the f in fun W le f until rog inquired , hich g g oes a ter w ? S s ri w w u hich he upon con ide ng hich , orked p her f n to la in fo r eeli g s a pitch , that she y helpless a ditch , ’ ho to g etting w run . In my attempt to tackle government o fNative Races

in re W. A the find . , all holding g round I can is along the commercial anchorage . I know I shall catch it from the relig ious and imperial party and from the educated f H w i A rican . o ever , I th nk I have successfu lly collared Afi the educated r can , thoug h he kicks a good deal and H f n M says, umane eeli g s are not to be expected from iss Ki ’ ng sley . If the educated African not only said but thought — — this which I doubt he was far mistaken . The essential virtue in her w as her width of human sym

er pathy . H heart w ent out unreservedly only to tw o A LO!ER or JUSTICE 89

natlv e and classes in West Africa . the unsophisticated E the uropean trader , both of whom were , as she it might have put , in full harmony with their environ ment . But she was the only person I ever knew who , ff loving the bush native , had a ection and admiration for many educated Africans ; the only person also

who , championing the traders , was the devoted friend

o f many missionaries . She could sympathise , she f could be riends with you , though your motives or

ideals were to her only intellectually comprehensible .

r . Your limitations , or hers , were no bar to f iendship

I say hers , because of one letter in the series that I

keep which has nothing to do with her propaganda ,

yet which , in her usual way , through jest and earnest

mingled , explains the whole shaping of her life . I had sent her an early novel of mi ne which quite

evidently she did not like . Most people would have

equivocated , some would have frankly avowed dis

like . She with her instinct for the friendly thing

began by saying what she did like , and then apologised — for the reservation by a c o nfidence entirely character istic in the fashion after which she turned upon herself

sc ientific the microscope of analysis , and reported the results with accuracy but with a p ervasive humour

I make the confession humb ly quite as I would mak e f of n f n w the con ession bei g dea or blind , I k o nothing

fo f . t mysel love I have read about i . I see from men ’ and women s actions that the thing exists just lik e I read t s b u t abou it in book , I have never been in love , nor has b e in w anyone ever en love ith me . It is an imperfection 90 GARDEN WISDOM — — - no doub t it only g ives me a second hand sort o f understanding ofthe reason why your people do these — thi ng s ; it has its compensations no doubt it saves me from being bored w ith thing s that would heavily bore most people .

° She went on to state her belief that this was due to the reckless way in which my relations have drawn on the

’ family account , and to explain how her limitations had been utilised from early days by certain cousins (and uncommonly pretty girls they were

When a young man w as rather distracted in his mind i h w a m inv aluable to o wi him as to wh c , I s si ply g out th — a sort o fpause in affairs I am useful occa i nall u i — fl w a few t s o y, b t that s all very use u I s a mon hs ag o when on calling in on a friend she asked me to g o u p — to her bedroom and see her new hat a sug gestion that w ni o staggered me, I kno ing her opi on f mine in w flun f t e such matters . But I ent , and she g hersel on h ’ ’ W 1 O H is bed in tears . hat ever h , said she, arry ’ ’ ” the f. W H I w f on roo ho s arry ? said , hich roo ? ’ ’ ’ W O i to o hy h , don t be silly , she sa d ; he had g .

The letter did not complete this adventure of an

ia e unauthorised f nc , but I have no doubt she got him o ff the roof and enjoyed the experience riotously . If all this indicates low tastes . I can only say she would have been delighted to claim them . She replied to some observations of mine concerning a town of the extremist gentility

There is something about Clifton which is inexpressibly wf hi a ul . Not ng enables me to survive even an afternoon

92 GARDEN wisoom A letter like that does more than show the nature of her purpose ; it gives the secret of her power . Everybody knows the natural scorn of one who has experience of a foreign country at first hand for the book student ; and this woman had travelled and lived in the most dangerous places o fAfrica , in districts unvisited by white men , while I who was criticising her had never set foot on the African continent . She was the author of a singularly successful book ; I was

Ho w a journalist of unestablished reputation . many human beings could have kept the irony of that con trast out of their thought if out o ftheir sentences ? Yet

I can see no faintest trace of it in that lovely candour . She was too good a comrade for anything b ut the fairest dealing ; and , wise by instinct not by calcula tion , she bound one with the supreme gift of comrade ship , giving herself in the frankest revelation . That ' — is really the leader s faculty to bind by giving ; and fi h she needed comrades . The g t was uphill , we were

field 30 few in the , and even , working in the anony

o f mous way journalism , often in some stray collision . Another letter begins

Oh Hevins w as that you 1 !she had come down in p rint upon something I had written] I thoug ht it w as — at it ag ain ! Shade of my dear dead friend but w o t i w a the I ill not g in o deta ls , he s purser . I s w a apolog i e , you ere rig ht , I m entirely Irish , and I do believe I am the one and only Irishman f in fo r le t a desolate world . I will take out a patent f H - mysel . ere I am just like that well known man who A LO!ER OF JUSTICE 93

— hit at heads throug h a tent sheet they look so tempting — and then I find it is the head o fthe last person in the world I would have said anything harsh to I r G — do no t o thi k But seriously , M . wynn g and n me i l wil sensitive about anyth ng I pub ish , or you l drop me , g ive me up as a puzzle no t worth solving or bothering - wi th and you are the only person I know who so far has shown sig ns o f understanding me underneath in this African affair and I do work so hard to be fai r and clear and I so very rarely succeed in making myself either . Nor do you I pray rush into the other extreme and think f i I have no eel ng s at all . I have plenty , but I keep them out o fprint just as I keep them out o falmost all my conduct and hi de them from the eyes o falmost everyone w T no t t I kno . here are more han three people in all w fo r n hom I dare let see them , they are savag e thi g s that w who i ould make people , have not g ot that sort o ffeel ng f — inside them , shrink rom me There I That is the reason ’ wh am w W y I hat so many people call elusive . hen I ‘ ’ am w i f t elusive I kno it and it s malice a orethoug h . T is w ff here only one man connected ith this W. A . a ai r who n w me w and k o s and hat I think entirely about it . That man is Sir Georg e Goldie and I know he thinks me i a dev l . We had a talk the other nig ht concerning justice in the abstract and the meaning o fpain and misery and w e f fo r fc ound that , all our seeming sur a e ag reement , in n n i w e w thi g s , u derneath th ng s , ere absolutely different and the humour o f the thing w as he w as the gentle m r f inded me ci ul one . But I must not worry you wi th is n w a o f f this ; it o ly my y being g rate ul . I am very lonely and worried in thi s African affair and I care about w w t it bitterly, but not about hat I have ritten on i , fo r w is f I kno that not good enoug h , and I eel I damag e a good cause b y my v ain attempts to g ive an absolutely fai o f hi i r just picture the t ng as it s.

ex o si No one , I think , has any right to attempt an p 94 GARDEN WISDOM tion of what her views might have been on the meaning of misery and pain ; but this much is certain , they

c would have been the views of a Darwinian . Scien e to her was truth ; to work according to science was to work according to knowledge , according to the light U o fthe spirit . pon justice , as between nations , her books are a full commentary . There was a certain

t u stified ruthlessness in her conception of i . She j

o f conquest , the taking lands , by the stronger and more

c hiefl developed races , and y by her own race , even though the result should be the deterioration and disap p earanc e o fthe native races ; but j u stifie d it upon one condition . The lands must be lands which the conquer ing race could use better than the dispossessed . Science would have told you , she would certainly have said . how to deal more wisely w ith the black fellows in

Re d Australia , the Indians in America , than they were dealt with as a matter of history . But the greater necessity , the stronger plea in justice , was that these lands should be used to the full . The problem which f f ff she aced in West A rica was di erent in kind . Here the white man came in among the inhabitants o f a land which he could never use as its occupier .

Justice in her sense demanded , and Science agreed , E that the nglishman must get freedom to trade there . Access to the country was of immense importance to his race , a race of people crowded in a small country , living by the export o fmanufactures ; in West Africa were millions of folk living in a climate which ° eats

96 GARDEN WISDOM

ack w ri tten to him , saying in my haste that they were a p ’ n X s w all o fidiots to thi k that good old . soul anted that ’ fillab o o f ss w and oolishne , and that it don t matter hether — s R. C. as X . has been consig ned to paradi e stamped he no w is—o r fo r undoubtedly no , I do not believe that the ’ M M A rs i s X . s et erchandi se arks ct runs o v e k e , and soul g t ’ confisca ed for false labelling and declaration .

r I have left one of her lapses in g ammar here , though bringing the punctuation , here as always , into some conformity with usage ; but grammatical or u n grammatical , she was always a writer , and would on occasion argue about that subject , as about any other . Once I had felt some resemblance between her way of ' writing and Stevenson s more colloquial manner , and told her 8 0 . She wrote back

m ’ w i I im ediately went to Stevenson s letters , h ch i w i s ! p rov dentially ere n the hou e ; and , alas I can identify no similarity in exp ression ex cep t it be the ’ w of w wh f whi hisper a shado , ich I have o ten used , but ch , w e s f co m bet een ourselves , I hav really tran lated rom a M w S m fo r mon pong e exp ression . o eone, you choice , oug ht to wri te a paper on the rankly obvious as a cause o f G N t plag iarism . iven outside ature, and g iven a cer ain o f n make human mi d , a certain observation is the in ev it t— w i m f able resul least ays that s y eeling .

I told her then that , knowingly or not , she had ' o f annexed Stevenson s phrase , the bright eyes

’ danger , which indeed might have been invented for

who : her loved them so well . She answered A LO!ER OF jUSTlCE 97

o w It sound s as ifone had heard it long ag . Someho all poetry that I love when I first read it seems not a new w k o f w thing , but the rea a ened memory something I kne

l w ul w . unte lable ages . I ish I co d rite poetry I should ’ ul it have some faith in having insig ht ifI co d . But isn t to w t o f in me, and I never even tried ri e a line verse ’— except The nig ht we left Canary homeward bound the only existing copy o fwhich I w as fortunate to secure the it T o da other day and burnt . he song may g on some y to imp rovements no w it is unfettered b y a text it w as popular because you could g o on making new verses to it tu all the time ; it w as as elastic as the British consti tion . — All these thing s are reflections of her mind mis c ellaneo u s it wherever you dipped into , slang and poetry jostling each other , allusions drawn from heaven knows what stratum of knowledge and ob ser vation ; they are sidelights , but they reveal much of ' the woman s nature ; her laughter is in them , and her deep love of whatever had beauty and vitality . But the main stream of her being was now carrying her into new regions . The letters which I have been n w 899 quoti g ere written in the last weeks of 1 , after the Boer war had begun , raising questions of national policy and national thought which divided many f fi r e riendships . I was e c ly in revolt against the

Imperialism of those days . She , like all the bes t in E ngland , was much discomforted , not being , she sa id . ° conceited enough to regard the Anglo-Saxon as per ’ fec t .

If o w m other pe ple ould not abuse hi so much , probably we would do the abusing ourselves ; b ut it is a dire mess 98 GARDEN WISDOM

L k o fhis b as it stands . Good old ec y, in spite copy ook

o f . A style, has lot s solid truth in him But the ng lo S o hi m now axon requires some g reater prophet to physi , ’ s set he is suffering from to o much beans . Mrs . — have no chance with him they lash hi m and he kicks ’ t am ul instead o flistening . I can t do any hing . I v g ar , k so the A . S. understands me, but the superior soul shrin s ’ ’ o from me and laug hs at L ecky s copyb ok .

u 2nd 1900 And again , on Febr ary ,

I am deeply g rieved and worried about the thing as it M o wn so w is. y creed in the matter is narro and so hard ,

w n i at . so much lo er at some poi ts , so much h g her others fo r I love my o wn country . I have seen years it must if t o sa six g o smash it sticks the creed it had , y this day hi to s f months back , but do anyt ng save the cra h I elt I O f w l i in could not . ne hal the people ou d shr nk back f f horror from hal the thing s I would do , the other hal say , ’ ’ T too fine f n o f fo r l hat s a eeli g honour p ractical po itics . No w they have g ot the raz z ledaz z les with the failure o f the t l thing hey thoug ht practical , perhaps they wou d listen even better than ever before to a leader free from the lower part o fthe creed ofhonour that there is in me Wi a — and stronger , ser , and more persu sive above all , a ro w w hi man . I had a most distressing ith w ch s me— it was w a e g rieve but still comic , there s he the J w D f w and I the ane , both equally eeling e were Eng lish to — the backbo ne and rig ht in our divergent views both o f u s t m o fE w e unlike the g rea ass nglish as , or they , are to C C w a it hinese . omic s also to listen to people last Sunday — in the inner government circle going round and round thing s and finally deciding that a merciful and loving providence had g iven u s these reverses as a lesson 1 Good in w a if nk P idea its y , but they thi rovidence is coming w to a o f afi airs W do n t ke charge , the ar Offi ce fo r m W s m exa ple, or estmin ter at large , I a certain they are

100 GARDEN wisoo m

' Her could was amplifie d by a further note on something I had said of British rule '

f u w s . I No , not rule , but our ve try system our r le ere — L t J what it mig ht be but is not ii it were iber y , ustice — we shou ld Rep resentation have the right , the divine ’ t to f it it isn we not rig h , en orce , but so long as t have , we are t aking unto ourselves the right ofGod when we are an idol .

’ She signed that letter yours gratefully , to signify her agreement with what I p reached . My article found no home , for its line was not popular ; the main f t gist o i , however , was published three years later in E R an essay , ngland and the Black aces , which con ' tained also a hostile estimate of Sir Frederick Lugard e work in Nigeria . Now , twenty years after Mary

u s Kingsley left , I think that the part of Africa where her views have been most effectually expres sed was '

e . Nigeria , under Sir Frederick Lugard rule And , f broadly speaking , I think , too , that there is no part o tropical Africa under British rule where there is not f some e fort to conserve , develop , and purify that image of justice which for the African is , as Mary Kingsley f i taught , to be ound n his own institutions . The organized attempt to preserve her influence by the foundation of the African Society was as honourable a memorial as could have been devised . and it has . I

u believe , borne fr it . There has been peace in West

Africa since her work , and , I think , progress in civilisation . A LO!ER or j USTICE 101

Her end , as perhaps not all remember , was what she deserved . The work she chose in South Africa was that o fministering in responsible charge to the typhus-stricken Boer prisoners in the camp at Simons f f town . It cost a great ransom , her li e ; and a ter her

fu lfilled death her wish was , that she should be taken out at sea and buried where lie so many of her ancestors in blood and spirit , the old merchant — adventurers explorers , traders , and buccaneers .

- am Good bye , and fare you well , for I homeward

’ bound , were the last words in her last public lecture ,

fittin delivered , as was g , in Liverpool , centre of the

African trade . She was jesting in the very sentence before she spoke them ; yet with her the change was always swift and easy to that grave dignity of utter ance . We who survive have known in the years already behind u s experiences in which she of all creatures would least willingly have foregone her part . Yet in the thought of her , I at least have known no trace of - a feeling that she belongs to a pre war world ; it is as if she had come with the rest of us through a time in w hich the country that she loved , the country of her f 1899 pride , su fered things beside which the losses of 1900 f and shrank to pinpricks , yet in su fering them had never fo r one instant to endure what she saw it — writhe under the discipline of humiliation . The portrait of her which I have tried to construct from her letters , helped by my memories , may tell the 102 GARDEN WISDOM younger generation in this house and outside it what a great Englishwoman was like . It explains to me , m looking back in memory here from y Irish garden , e far b tter than any recollections of Westminster , or of — Flanders even yes , even , in spite of some of those — recollections it explains to me why England was not

a defeated in this war . The truest tribute I c n pay to the country that she loved is to own that Mary Kingsley could have been nothing on this earth but an

Englishwoman .

104 GARDEN WISDOM both was how they might help or hinder designs upon the summer fruit .

first Still , it is long enough since I had real associa — c o n . tion with gardeners that is , not merely as a lo ker ' A man s life has begun and ended . When the Irish ' Brigade was forming at Fermoy i n 1915 a little recruit came to me , his company commander , asking for

His leave home . rather common name had suggested nothing ; but now the address he gave made me look — up at him and behold he was the tubby little image of his tubby little father ; and he had been born in my d house . Next spring I helped to bury that poor goo little soldier boy , killed in a big shelling of our lines at

Ho w o f Mazingarbe . inconceivable that evolution 1895 destiny , for him or for me , would have seemed in , when his father was growing flo w ers for u s with great ' zeal , and , with less zeal , vegetables . This man s talent

fo r flo w ers was ; yet like nearly all Irish gardeners , he was no specialist ; he taught me the possi b ilities - f of pig keeping , something o the charms f o buying cattle . I began under him the educa tion which ten years later , when I returned f for a time to country li e , another gardener took seriously in hand . This other at first did not bother about me . I was simply his employer ; and probably f his only concern was not to be inter ered with . But we had concluded our agreement on terms that he approved ; my mother , than whom there never was a better judge , knew him and knew that he knew his A scuo m 105

t w work I soon found tliat he took a pride in i . It as w k a big garden , long out of cultivation hen he too it

n - it w as n o n , and he was si gle handed in ; there one lo g border with a bad exposure which was still a jungle ; trees had been blown dow n Upon it and remained "

it . still uncleared . I proposed to ready You " could do no harm anyway was the most encourage

su erficiall ment I got . When I had a piece p y cleared , he came and dug in a contemptuous spade to show me it was still full of every ould weed . Perhaps the

He o . nettle ro ts nettled me ; anyhow , I wrought hard inspected me from time to time , with diminishing contempt ; and w hen I had finished he spoke his

' approbation . A labouring man wouldn t have done " it better , he said . From that time out he treated me as a spare hand . There was never any nonsense allowed about my writing . If a thing needed to be it done , and he had not time to do , I had to fall to . What I liked best about him was his openness to conviction ; though he always resisted a new idea . My mother , exulting in the chance of another garden to

fo r plan , came over and proposed the abolition of many small beds , and the creation o ftwo long deep her b aceo u s ' borders . I lis opinion , repeatedly expressed , was that them beds could be made lovely with ’ geraniums . But when he saw the result he c o nfided to me in a moment o fexpansion that it was a hell of a fine improvement —intending no doubt that his 106 GARDEN WISDOM conversion though not his version of it should be con v eyed to my mother . I conveyed both . This man probably was and is as good a gardener as there is in Ireland , for what we want in Ireland . He knew every branch o f its work in an ordinary garden and greenhouse ; he could keep all running . f Yet ifgardening is an art , I have never elt that he

He was an artist . would be just as happy and almost as competent in charge of a stock farm ; if he had land and garden of his own , the garden would yield crops , but I doubt if it would be worth a journey to see . I have since added to my friends another professional gardener , for whom gardening is not merely a trade it is an art or a science ; and it is not conceivable that he should be happy in any other occupation . '

His . A standards are exacting , an artist s gar

t dene to be a gardener , according to him , must be as much at home in an orchid house as in a cabbage patch . This implies a conception o fthe art rather like a physician 's than a decorative artist 's and he has quoted to me a well-known doctor 's conversation with him . You claim to know whether a vine is in good i health by simply looking at t , and , if not , to detect the disease and apply the proper treatment . What " ? do they pay you Thirty shillings a week . And I get twenty pounds in an afternoon for going out to give a diagnosis . That doctor had some idea of values ; yet the sense of disproportion might be heightened . Medicine only claims to cure . to cor

108 GARDEN WISDOM — garden being so constituted that he w ould never ' He enter any man s service . would not depend on

he i the chance that , and his w fe , could continue on ' good terms with any possible master , and that master s wife ; he deliberately chose to have many employers A but no master . gardener born overlooks that very i real inconvenience of his lot , in the desire to ident fy himself with one particular field of work which to him

s is my garden . Yet it is not really o ; and that is why the gardener as we know him is not really artist . The garden on which he works does not express him ; it is his attempt to carry out some one ' else s idea . To my thinking gardening is most really E an art in those nglish cottage gardens , which are in - horticulture what folk song is in poetry , the simplest , f reshest , and in some ways most delightful beauty of I them all . n these gardens nothing grows but because the grower so desired it ; every flower is the expres ' sion not only of the gardener s skill but of his feeling

flo w ers for .

Once , and once only , I have seen a garden which ' was in all senses and quite literally an artist s work . - A well known flower painter had fo r many years lived

C o wn in that old otswold farmhouse , working his orchard and garden as well as following his craft .

ce Much has been done since , and under skilful dir

b e tion , to enrich and enhance the beauty which handed o n ; yet as I look back on my first enchanted v ision o fthe place it seems to me that something has A SCHOLAR 109 been destroyed— the perfect adjustment by which the artist while keeping the necessary utilities of his plot , and the indestructible charm of that old house and bearing fruit trees , wrought in just so much embroidery of flo w ers as made a harmony o fthe whole . If it prove to be true , as I partly anticipate , that gardeners of the old type disappear from the lives of the new poor , and the example of my painter friend in Cotswold grows common , not exceptional , why hnd then , people of limited means may themselves living in a more beautiful world . Most gardens , like

n sim lificatio n most livi g rooms , would gain by p ; with everyone his own gardener there will not b e , as there fl w o ers . so often are , too many to the square yard The flo w ers too will escape from the misdirected impulse o f f the pro essional gardener , who , not having the choice to grow so many flo w ers as his sense of beauty demands and no more , works under the instinct of competition and puts his mind merely into outdoing — his neighbour forcing plants beyond their nature , and against their nature , often spoiling their natural charm . Where I write now is one of the best gardens that I know , a knoll of ground by a beautiful great river , i fl given over to orchard ch c y , yet with vegetable beds

fl w rs ff . well distributed , and o e di used over the whole ' Here fo r the moment the professional gardener s — — triumph he is a very good professional is a bed of daffodils planted round the roots of a big spreading apple with grass outside them , so that the blooms show 1 10 GARDEN wisoom

against the green . yet , growing in tilled soil , grow stronger and taller than any daffodil can grow in turf

o r hundreds of them are ablow t eg the , and the very robustness of their splendour makes them almost ' ff e rm r deserve Geo rey D a e s epithet , truculent daffodils that fling their trumpets down the wind . No poet could ever have felt that about the wild daffodil w ith its delicate quivering feminine grace : and the true distinction o fthis garden by the Shannon lies in a flower which the professional gardener has not yet taken in hand to stiffen and straighten and disnature . Fritillaries are blossoming there in low-lying sward — which the river floods perhaps just a little bigger than they grow purely as wild flo w ers in Magdalen H meadows . ere the directing intelligence has done what will always be done by the flower lover who has to carry out his own manual work the right flower is ' put into the right place and left to multiply : man s labour is ended , nature takes on the work .

o f In the garden the future there will , I think , be an instinctive effort—under nature 's compulsion— to get f the most o beauty for the least of labour . With the hoe or the mowing machine you are working agains t nature ; she will assist you in many ways but not with gravelled walks or shorn turf . Already those gardens are pleasantest to live with which have this character — o fa wise economy a character that I can trace from - that far o fi place in Donegal o fmy childhood down

w e to the abode . long d elt in , where tw o long liv s

1 12 GARDEN WISDOM clear grasp of its principles and with a wealth of details held in his amaz ing memory ; and this gave to many

flo w ers a charm fo r him apart from their decorative value When the rest of u s would g o round w ith my mother to see daffodils in companies , tulips rising - - through a mist of blue forget me not , crown imperial displaying its strong splendid design of leaf and diadem in the border , he would carry one away to see - ho w the New !ealand walking stick tree had con descended to put out its almost imperceptible blossom ,

fl w rin o e g as if it were at home . The berries on the yew , the rare fruit on the arbutus when it came , were I think a keener joy to him than the masses of red thorn and of lilac which made this last o fhis gardens so — lovely in their season . And of all things but — specially as old age came on him he loved the first — ' faint signs o fthe stirring year the coltsfoot s grey ' dusty spike by the roadside , the wych elm s scaly ' Ieaflike f blossom , the hazel s aintly red flower , dearer to him even than the crimson catkins or the larch because it was of earlier advent . I should like to hang a votive plate with grateful verses on a big flo w ering

o f currant just outside one our windows , that was

’ always among spring s harbingers , and always a play

fo r ground the tits that he loved to watch , and to pamper with cocoanuts . They also were tiny and exquisite details . I think that love of detail is the scholar 's hallmark and he of whose memory I would fix some outline was A SCHOLAR 1 13

above all thing s a scholar . but assuredly not a scholar

s only . Hi was one of those equally developed brains which are good for all uses ; it enabled him to study mathematics with the same facility as he acquired

a a He l ng u ges . might have been a great lawyer , or a great civil servant ; but he followed in the track of his

first tradition . For ten generations , since the of them came over from Wales with a bishop of Derry (and lived there to see the siege and eat half of a pair o f leather breeches) nearly all his forbears had been schoolmasters or clergymen ; his father was both ; he l - himse f , a prize winning pupil , was pushed hard at school ; then followed Dublin University with its perpetual round of examinations and finally the fellow

His ship , which meant an establishment in life . youth was too laborious to have many pleasures ; but flo w ers

is w s were always chief among them . H father a a

grower of carnations , and he himself sought to main

o — tain that tradition als unavailingly , for he never had a garden which lent itself to this as had the sandy soil

near the Portstewart beaches . We used always to say that ifhe and my mother ever came to a divorce it would be because she insisted on cramming anemones or the like into some choice corner which his coveted

carnations refused to fill . - IIis youth was spent absolutely in country condi '

tions ; he had a countryman s eye , noting instinctively anything uncommon whether tree or plant ; but no

fo r care country sports , whether shooting or fishing or 1 14 GARDEN WISDOM

a riding . Late in life , however , fter he had watched the extraordinary successes of his younger sons in cricket and football , he said to me , You know I think I could have played games if there had been games " w hen I was at scho ol . And it certainly was not from their mother 's side that these lads got the precision t of hand and eye , the combined dex erity and judg ment , which made one of them in particular so famous that nearly twenty years after his early death his name is still on the lips of those who talk cricket or football . ' f My father s early li e , indeed , had little to do with ' young men s sports ; it was overshadowed with young ' u o f men s deaths ; he grew p under a cloud calamity , his mother drowned while bathing , his brothers and

He sisters perishing away of disease . himself was f never robust , and with the family history be ore them

His no insurance company would ever accept him . vital energy , or whatever one should call the nerve force that carries certain people through must have been prodigious . Whatever else in him weakened and flagged , however his body wasted , this central

fi r el ht e e c . burnt , never y but steadily Perhaps it was simply his courage . Once when I was in Donegal he sent fo r me ; the doctor had decided on a very grave ope ration to relieve w hat had for years kept him in "A — - — . t a e fiv e he torment my g seventy wrote , "

one cannot expect to survive such a thing . I came up and found him in hospital for a preliminary twenty four hours . Instead of talking about his illness he

I 16 GARDEN WISDOM

school in Trinity , he had a whole world of the young to choose from—and he chose by no means only from the divinity school . Two of his closest friends were laymen , afterwards distinguished in letters , and one

' of the tw o was in those days conspicuous for political ' opinions quite other than my father s . Indeed that friend led to strange confusions , for he was habitually seen about either with my father or with ' a - John O Le ry , the old Fenian ex convict ; and the tw o - - fi u res re hawk nosed , spare , grey bearded g we easily mistaken . They met one day in the Hibernian ' '

B. O Lear . Academy , where was J . Yeats portrait of y

Now , Dr . Gwynn , in view of this likeness that is

u s said to exist between , all I can say is I hope neither of u s w ill ever do anything that can in any way com promise the other . It was a delightful speech from the ex-rebel to the professor of divinity—pervaded by a subtle humour o fwhich both men were equally conscious . But though my father 's attention and affection con centrated itselfalways on one or two chosen (and beauty in young men was a great attraction to him) I think the whole body of divinity students felt his personal interest in young men , his delight in their companionship . Sometimes he found a gardener among them and that was a great joy . But all their ff — a airs interested him their examinations , their pro fes sio nal start , their marriages . He talked no doubt to his special intimates about his own work but theirs A SCHOLAR 1 17

made the engrossing topic . Perhaps he realised that

r the best he could do fo them , the most that he could

give them , was through this personal intercourse . Yet I think that here his instinct rather than deliberate

choice directed he had a true vocation . Teacher he

b e was , but indirectly far more than directly ; had '

none of the orator s gifts . I have never heard any

o f e one speak his l ctures , though hundreds have spoken

o f with veneration of their professor , and what they

His e learned from him . students represent d his o ffic ial work , the duty he was paid for , and they had always the first call on his time . Yet always the work that was distinctively his own , the work of his scholar ship , went on with the persistence and tenacity of a natural force . By choice he was a Biblical scholar working in the

field A of Oriental languages . competent Hebraist from his college days , he took up Syriac when he was turned fifty and great part of his achievement in scholarship grew out of it . While he was still in his - remote Donegal parish (w e used to drive tw enty fiv e miles to the train on a journey to Dublin) he had given much help in scholarship to his bishop , Dr .

a Alexander , the famous orator , fterwards Primate and he had edited one o fthe Pauline Epistles in the ' C Speaker s ommentary . But the change o flife which came with his election to the chair of Pastoral Theology meant facilities and leisure for much that had been impossible in Donegal : and through his 1 18 GARDEN wxsnom

study o fSyriac he added more stones than one to the

building up of real knowledge . Textual criticism

seems a cold unfriendly kind of study , barren of

human interest . Yet in history at large , Christianity is not without importance ; and the history of its documents is no small part in the history of Christi i an ty . We desire to know how old really is that collection of writings which we call the Bible ; ho w

first and in what form they were written ; how edited ,

s ho w diffused . To uch questions as these the answer is laborious ; and such men as my father construct it — bit by bit and sometimes their work is not solid . It w as once said to me by a famous scholar that no piece of textual criticism which my father had undertaken b w need ever e handled again , except in the light of ne

knowledge ; he worked once and for all . ' I People talk about the artist s passion . have known no artist slave over his work with the same

v I fer our as have seen bestowed , and sometimes by n l young men , on the task of comparing infi ite y small

variations in two ancient manuscripts . One great scholar who w as kind to me in old days twice brought himself to death 's door in Spain by labour for endless t m k hours wi hout food or co fort . Ofthis , I am than b ful to say . my father would have een incapable . He would have done his work swiftly yet patiently , with unerring precision : but at reasonable hours he w ould have issued for his meals' and taken a reasonable ' educated human being s interest in the flavour of the

120 GARDEN wxsoom

o f promiscuous erudition , while at the same time leaving none of the manifold topics short of due com

Infinite mentary and illustration . patience was needed that nothing might be omitted which was necessary ;

finish yet not less needed was the will to , the constant vision of the finished whole .

He had carried the work far , with still flagging f f health , in the year be ore the operation when I ound him in the nursing home settling a point in the ' chronology of St . Patrick s apostleship ; yet the com

le tio o ff p n was still very far , and the end seemed to

fi u re recede further and further , as the light spare g

o e grew more and more tenu us , the long b ard and long — curling locks snowier they never lost their ab u nd ance—the white skin more and more like wrinkled f . He ivory Year a ter year passed and we thought , i h fin s . will never Yet the will remained , the work ,

infirmi interrupted again and again by ty , went on till at last all was done , even the supervision of printing - and binding to the last detail ; and in his eighty fifth year he published a volume which he could scarcely f li t , yet in whose pages you would look long before hnd you could one word redundant . He had never learnt Irish and the sense of its value brought home to him by this task heightened his

. u regret I thought about taking it p , he said to me one day , but at eighty it is rather late to begin a new language . Perhaps : yet had he made the attempt few young men could have kept pace with him . For A SCHOLAR 121

the work on the Book , he was assisted , on this side by

C . one of his sons , a eltic scholar Another , in another department of the work , was among the numerous

o f band of helpers . But in neither these two scholars , nor in any o fu s eight sons o fhis who grew to man

o f hood , did I ever discern so much his peculiar gift , ' the scholar s impulse which can be a passion , as came f to one o fthe younger generation , the eldest o his many grandchildren , who brought to the study of Irish language and Irish records my father 's patience and accuracy , with perhaps a more sensitive literary per c e tio n p , and with whom the old scholar spent many delighted and delighting hours , explaining intricate details o fhis still uncompleted task .

Old scholar and young , both are gone now ; and

first though death came to the old , he was working f for months a ter the boy had gone out to Australia , on a forlorn hope of recovery , which meant abandon ment of all the work upon Irish scholarship for which he really lived . Yet it was in an Australian paper ' that he wrote after my father s death the account o f

B Arma h f his work on the ook of g , rom which I have ' few quoted a words assessing the Book s importance . The terrible courage of the young in facing death 's approach is not a thing fo r the mind to dwell o n ; but ' one can watch almost with pleasure age s equanimity . What should we fear fo r him who had nothing to fear fo r himself? And while his long labour was still

r unaccomplished , he never seemed to share our app e 122 GARDEN WISDOM

hensio n lest he should die with it undone , or be

e tormented by his powerlessness to make an end . H was indeed somewhat harassed from time to time by complaints o fhis delay yet he never seemed to doubt i h his power to fin s . It was strange to watch how even with flagging of bodily power the mental quality

lasted . He could work less and less he worked more

i s slowly , sleep often overtook him at h table ; yet what

he did was done with the old precision , just as his '

handwriting , which could rival the Irish scribe s , kept

firm its clear stroke to the end .

e Nor did his interest in the present ever lessen . H saw three years o fthe war and one o fhis sons was in — high command the son whom among u s all he loved ' ' ‘ best and whose career , a soldier s and explorer s ,

50 was most unlike his own . merciless to many ,

e the time was lenient to him . H lost none very

near to him . The two young athletes , so famous ld in the cricket fie , had died many years be fore f in the lush of their strength , or the anxieties of his

last years might have been more grievous . Yet six

sons survived him and we were widely scattered . Again and again he said farewell to one going out to

Africa , to India , to Australia , to the War , in the ex p ectatio n that it must be the last parting ; years went by and the outgoer came back to find that same fig u re moving gently about among his garden beds— year by - year growing more wraith like , till at last it seemed b w as if a strong breath would low him a ay . Yet never

124 GARDEN WISDOM

I cannot even connect him in my mind w ith the idea o ffear ; and that curiosity which is a true desire to

nlarg e and extend experience in many directions he never lost . Through his reading , through his varied

f innumer contact with li e , and especially through his able friendships with the generation of his sons , his mind was richly stored ; and there was no more passionate student of the war in all its ramifications . Yet all this was book knowledge ; and I think he was not sorry to learn fo r himself what firing sounds like at close quarters and to see with his own observant eyes even a little of what battle means .

Such inclinations remain , even in a garden ; the truest taste for flo w ers is no way incompatible w ith fi them . If it could only have been a g ht against

al Germans , I should have no hesitation at l in saying that he enjoyed the chance of being in it — for he was very angry with the Germans . And of - this too I am sure that had Clontarf been under daily

fir shell e , nothing would have prevented him from noticing and taking delight in the advent of some blossom which spring had brought in his garden . It is no matter o fregret for me that he did not live to see the end of the war ; he must have seen also too much that would pain him . Apart even from our special troubles in Ireland , this period of transition is cruel to the old , shaking their natural tranquillity . Yet whatever else he might have disliked in the new it order or in the passage to , one thing at least w ould A SCHOLAR 125 have given him happiness— to see a child that he loved setting out with her comrades to find not only the pleasure but the business of life in the cultivation of

fl w rs ne o . fruits and e That detail of the w order , characteristic of so much , would almost have recon ciled him to the prospect o fseeing lady gardeners also voting at an election . G ER AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ARDEN .

FTER fourteen years spent in Irish political propaganda there comes a disposition to seek some uncontentious field ; and an apostleship of fruit-growing should be ? f f . anyhow less un ruit ul But , uncontentious The apple in the garden was never a symbol of peace . To be quite exact , the apple in the thoroughly defensible

h tas i lus garden , the or nc us, may ripen without shadow - of annoyance ; but once you come to fruit growing in ' the open , trouble begins . It is true , the apostle s work securely accomplished , rids him , or more probably his remote successors , of dispute ; where fru it has come to be a recognised crop , you have only the weather and insect pests to contend with . But till that stage is f reached , ruit of all kinds , and more particularly the

so apple ( admirably portable), dwells on that delicate ground where to the general apprehension a thing is

o ce atu res not exactly f r n , not certainly of public right , yet not fully and legitimately private property , as are ' a man s potatoes or his onions . Fruit carries the sug gestion of a luxury of the idle rich , which gives a plea fo r o nfisc ati n o f its c o . Nothing but a general practice — w - fruit gro ing , and fruit growing for sale , will prevent

1 26

128 GARDEN wxsoom the dog ; a reward was in contemplation when arrived a retired military man , somewhat heated , with Conn i C on a lead . Hm at some earlier period onn had adopted ; to him Conn had returned . Another week , and we were again dogless , and so the stage was

u r cleared for a leading fig e . The cabman who rents our stables produced after certain days what he called ' ’ hrst a brindled pup . We know it now as the example of the Shamus terrier . All one can ascertain as to the beginnings of the H line is the identity of the mother , a West ighland f lady of high parentage , who in a secluded li e con tri o f v ed to love out o fher own rank . Shamus was — her first family by the conjecturable mate who ap l arent . so p y must have flo wn into the enclosure If , it was in the likeness of a shag or cormorant , for this little blackish-brown creature with the pointed nose has attitudes that certainly recall those birds . Some for that reason have attempted to call him Seal , but Shamus was determined to be the original and ep o ny

He mous Shamus terrier . does not speak , but prob ably will before he dies ; he is that kind of dog . As

o f a guardian property , he had all the moral qualities desirable , and even in excess for he has bitten many persons , including a coalman , who came in the hour of our most plaintive destitution . But he lacked the

f o So fo r gi t fsize . the cry went abroad a dog that would be physically as well as morally prohibitive , and from all sides we were urged to get a Kerry Blue . AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GARDENER 129

Ho w do breeds develop ? Ho w does the fashion I start ? Up to a short time ago , who have been for t fify years acquainted with Irish dogs , never heard

first E this name . The I saw was with an nglishman — a Chief Secretary at that ; and my comment was that some one had been imposing on his Saxon credulity . Now , one hears of the Kerry Blue on all hands ; and the truth appears to be that it is a type of f the old Irish terrier , as he was be ore judges at Irish shows— who reflect English opinion—set to work to - tidy up the rather shaggy , unkempt , curly coated dog that we knew and loved . Then no doubt , while the general effort was after redness and a strong stubbly coat , some one else tried to develop the grey that was At often in the original breed . all events , beyond dis pute , the Kerry Blue as it exists at present is a typically

A f u s f Irish dog . riend promised a pup , and a ter long waiting he arrived ; much like a miniatu re wolf hound in colour and , what is more , with the wolf

' hound s long , powerful forelegs . There was not much power in them when he emerged from his box , - l poor puppy , staggering like a new born ca f ; and

Shamus , two months older and half the size , fell upon

' the intruder with fury . IIe spat and struck at him rather than barked and bit , such was his venom . The

all big grey youngster , a mass of nerves like these

Kerrys , was sadly disconcerted , though declining to take the aggression as a danger . But it was now two 130 GARDEN w1sno~1

days since he had seen a dog to speak to or play with ,

He and the need fo r companionship was irresistible . would simply move a little aside after each of these inroads , and then return to an attitude of invitation — head down between outstretched forepaws , hind — legs gathered in for a spring most engaging , most alluring , in the challenge to a romp . Dignity and resentment showed no signs of yielding ; but , in fair ness to Shamus , it should be mentioned that his f wisdom had only six months o fli e . I did not see the

f w as fiv e moment o collapse , for I minutes away from the room ; but when I came back Shamus was flat on hi his back , and the grey puppy rolling m about with a long forepaw . All seemed peace when they were bedded down ; but such lonely wails as pierced the night from the — new inmate I have seldom listened to e xcept indeed from a wolfhound of my acquaintance in old days when it sneaked into a church and heard the organ — beg in . Evidently the creature whose name the Younger Generation had divined as Mike—had gone

al sleepless , and was on wires l day , till in the even fi ing , as we sat by the re , this leggy thing persistently

o f fire piled himself on top Shamus as he lay by the .

There were growls , then some snaps , but Mike per f sisted , and having established himsel , instantly went ‘ to sleep . Then , said the Younger Generation , Look that is what he needs ; he is from a litter in a kennel . Accordingly on that night the small basket in which

132 GARDEN wisnom

market gardening , there will be little room for the — unemployed dog the dog of luxury . Not indeed that the Toby o ftravelling shows is so to be described he belongs to the artist world , a community within a com munity , which , on a balance struck , gives more than f it gets , provides pleasure only too o ten with a tightened waistband . I should indeed desire for

Shamus , or his younger kinsman Timothy , a less painful existence than Punch and Judy promise them . I - But in the new order there should be no ap dogs , and we resist strenuously any velleities in Shamus to - become a lap dog . They are not lacking ; his devotion to the Younger Generation is jealous , and he feels most secure in possession when established on her knee . Mike also would fain be there , and makes sprawling efforts to attain his object ; but there

la fit . is no p , not even the amplest , that Mike would ' nd Besides , Mike s business is to be menacing a he - will not so acquire it ; he is too good natured as it is .

Yet he has certain dispositions . The other day as I sat writing , a telegraph boy approached the house riding his bicycle across the lawn where it was only too obvious that many had gone before him , yet equally obvious that it was not so intended . I hesitated

o k whether to interrupt my work , g out and spea — austerely when suddenly I saw Mike charge . I came out and found in the middle of the lawn a boy f dismounted and trembling be ore that array of teeth . It was at once explained that this carefully instructed AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GARDENER 133

dog would molest no one who went round by the drive , but that any one who bicycled across the grass Mike — would make Hitters of them . The legend spread as — If I had hoped in telegraph offices . we can only

establish a similar faith about the fruit trees , we may garden in peace ; and that is what dogs are fo r in a

market garden . In a garden o fthe old order their mission was to accompany the presiding genius when he or she went

out to gather roses or smell the seringa blossom . For such a purpose a small dog was best— the smaller the

re fined better ; a dog , too , of and gentle habits that

would not plunge about or scratch in the beds . The fu rther back you got into the old order , the smaller

r and more efined was the dog . I have been living

much of late in the eighteenth century , and perceive how the whole thing was of a piece with the cere mo nio u s and elaborate costume o fthat epoch ; there was then no lo afing about in tennis flannels ; indeed

there was no question of being equipped for exercise .

' IIo race Walpole thought himself extremely u nco n

v entio nal because he walked about his grounds , at Strawberry Hill without a hat—and one knows what

o f w as He the hat his period like . , now , was a great

and genuine lover of gardens , a true lover of dogs . But his garden was a garden of luxury and his dogs were toy dogs . Ho w oddly it happens that one can know intimately and with all the assurance of life-long association a 134 GARDEN wrsoom

man who died and was buried when Napoleon w as

o i o wn still a gunner subaltern . Outside my nearest kin there is no man living whose life and nature are so clear to my comprehension as are the life and nature of this eighteenth century gentleman ; and what makes - it odder still is that he is only a post war acquaintance . f But o r the war I should never have known him . Haphazard search through my shelves for something

that I could read continuously , read myself to sleep

with at night , made me aware that a century and a half ago a man of about my own age had lived

through a great war , had recorded from day to day his it feelings about , had seen its triumphant close , and

the disquieting time which followed a war period . What appealed to me more nearly was that at that epoch he had gone out of Parliament and the political f — f li e to cultivate his garden a ter his own fashion . And so I became interested in the nine solid volumes which are needed to build up the complete picture

Mx . of that long life ; and for nine months at least , H k orace Walpole has been my chief company . I li e the man . Yet somehow if we ever meet , I doubt if we shall get on together . He belong ed too entirely th to the old order ; he saw its very culmination , e last

c word of its elegan e , both in France and England , but F specially in rance ; he saw also , and abhorred , the first convulsions of that world movement which began

R a d with the French evolution , n of which the war of — yesterday was a sequel to be continued in our next .

136 GARDEN w1soorv1 - - R lowed a black and tan King Charles , osette . Who ever entertained Horace Walpole had to entertain ’ R and osette ; have me have my dog , he wrote , many of his letters record how some housekeeper won R his heart by thoughtful possets for the lady . osette

a lived many years , and at l st her master , this rather

1 - 01 frivolous and sharp tongued man the world , sat up w hole nights to nurse her ; and when she died he took the resolution never to have another dog the p arting

He had hurt him too much . broke the resolution ,

but in a manner entirely characteristic . ' ad After the Seven Years War h ended , Horace

o Walpole decided to g back to Paris , which he had not visited since he w as tw enty ; and he spent a year there at the moment when all the fine ladies were H talking philosophy ; when ume , the dowdy Scot , was - the rage in drawing rooms and convulsed Society by i R Hs quarrels w ith ousseau . Walpole was little - amused or attracted by the fashionable blue stockings ; the France which interested him was the France of

S vi the Grand Monarque and of Madame de é g né , w hose memory b e w orshipped ; and he met w ith one

du person who made a link to those days . Madame ff f De and , old and blind , but still ull of wit and gaiety , l made him welcome in her salon , and , to use the on y f word , ell in love w ith her new admirer . He was ' fift under y , she over sixty j ai soixante e t mille ' — ans , she used to say but she gave him a passionate

e devotion which lasted till her death ; and h , who AN momm a CENTURY GARDENER 137

w w alw ays had a love for old ladies , ans ered her ith

o urne real affection . He made i y after journey to

France for no other purpose but to see her , to satisfy her craving for his presence ; and it was he who , after had her death , took charge as he promised of her — forlorn dependent her pet dog . Walpole cherished R Tonton as he had cherished osette , and brought him B to the great age of sixteen years . y that time Walpole had a new reason against setting up another dog ; he feared what might befall it after his o w n departure .

One of his pleasantest correspondents , the anti

u ar Mr q y , . William Cole , wrote to say , on learning ' of Tonton s advent , that the little French dog was lucky to fall into so kind hands ; and that it is only fair for u s to make full provision for these helpless creatures which we have pampered for our pleasure . So it is ; but is it fair to pamper them ? Can the toy dog justify his existence before the new order ? He wants milk , for instance , when milk may be a scarce H commodity . orace Walpole , if he heard that ques tion put seriously , would understand how far we have travelled since his day . No person of quality within his range o fexperience had ever to consider whether

o there was milk enough to g round . Shamus and Mike can justify their existence very su ffic iently as guardians ; the case they make would be stronger if they had learnt how a terrier should 138 GARDEN WISDOM behave to a rat—animals which at present they con template with detachment . But , on the other hand , Shamus has by valorous and vociferous demonstrations scared away a tramp who was molesting a young girl ;

o f and for pleasantness company these larger , more vigorous creatures seem preferable to all the Tontons — it R . s and osettes Le s elegant , no doubt is all part

' o f f our attitude to li e . I like a countryman s life ; and ' f a countryman s li e , the more real it is , the more it will be in harmony with the new order . Town life

w ill e there always b , but Walpole , when he got to my age and knew what he really wanted , avoided towns . What he liked was a villa , which is neither

am town nor country . I not sure that there will be

A v any villas in the new order . illa is the town play ing at being country ; it is a toy country , just as

Patapan and the rest were toy dogs .

I never g o through the English home counties in

s summer , and Surrey in particular , without a re entfu l feeling that all the trees and fields and the cows in the

fields have had their hair combed and brushed every morning . That was what Horace Walpole adored . For the real country life as he had known it in Norfolk R f with Sir obert , he had a rank detestation ; he hated the o fit big , rough ways , the strong , coarse men , so enormously interested in turnips , partridges , and foxes . Worse still did he abominate the country life of

France .

140 GARDEN WISDOM against the formality which had been developed on the

Continent ; and he despised France because it was a country where there was not one natural tree , all had been so lopped and barbered and regimented . A tree should grow in wild freedom , he thought , spread and burgeon romantically . It never concerned him that the

French w ere , then as now , utilising their timber to the i E w utmost , wh le the nglish were , then as now , asteful and careless of wood . The country was for him some

at thing to look , to pet and to enjoy ; he cared no more for its uses than fo r the uses of a dog . Even his gar dening— and he wrote about gardening—seems to have interested him only in the most amateurish way . I hnd plenty about his g o ldfish nothing to tell me what

fo r fru 1 t roses he grew ; as his , he condescends upon indif no detail . The only exception to this general ference was his nursery o fyoung trees ; plainly , he knew and cared a good deal about that branch of his operations .

It is true , no doubt , that he had too much social instinct to thrust upon his correspondents matter which - might not interest them ; letter writing is almost the only branch o fliterature in which it is fatal to be an egoist . Yet if the detail of gardening had really occupied him , he would assuredly have found some kindred spirit with whom he would have corresponded f Al in the terms of their reemasonry . l his anti - q u arianism is stuffed away in water tight compart —- ments ; letters to Cole and half a dozen others are AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GARDENER 141

brimful of it ; yet because the man had a genius for - letter writing , even these same epistles have always

some human touch that animates their dryasdust . But

e he wrote no such letters about gardening . H was - not a real gardener , much less a market gardener . In

o f fact , outside the things that he really knew , he was — a dabbler an intelligent and acute and energetic — it dabbler , but still a dabbler and he knew , in the thing over which he might most readily have been mis

s — led , hi dabbling in literature , his plays , his novels all

his writings , in short , except those by which he really

meant to survive . He loved documents and he meant to

be a document , a living human document who should tell to the curious in other days what he himself had

been most curious to discover o fthe past . Again and again one finds Walpole refusing to incur obligations f t to ministers . I have spoken my mind all my li e wi h ’ m freedom , he says , and I mean to speak it after I a 1 ' dead Well , he has kept his word . We know , chicfl y through him , an amazing deal about the society in which he moved— the very limited ruling class of that day in England and its counterpart , so very unlike t i , in France . - What has special interest for u s to day is his picture of that society in a great war . It is a Member of ' e Parliament s picture . H had been tw enty years in

Parliament , never active , but always a party man ; ' and it perplexed and worried him to see that party had disappeared ; that one man had come on top and 142 GARDEN WISDOM

nobody else counted , or said a word in serious opposi

he tion . It worried him none the less;although , too , — was under the spell of Mr. Pitt whom a few years before he had been denouncing as a juggler and mountebank— using a great many terms of abuse that

His I have heard used of another eminent man . age ,

o fw ar too , like ours , was distressed by the backwash f for one thing , by the human wreckage , roads in ested

’ with highwaymen who a year ago were heroes .

Then , too , as now , there was labour unrest , a tendency - to mob law .

T o f h0 e o f r he dearness provisions incites , the p inc ease fw T o in . ages allures , and drink puts them motion he co alheav e i rs beg an , and it s well it is not a hard frost , fo r t w they have s opped all coal coming to to n .

Again (with a shrewd comment)

We were tired o fbeing in a situation to g ive the law to E now we w f to th e urope, and cannot g ive it ith sa ety — mob fo r g iving it when they are not disposed to receive it is ofall experiments the most dang erous ; and whatever in may be the consequence , the end seldom fails to fall on h the heads o fthem w o undertake it .

Above all , in one aspiration , he resembled many — ’ of us in these years are they of grace ?

am w w I content ith historic seeing , and ish Fame and History would b e quiet and content without entertaining an i me with y more s ghts .

144 GARDEN WISDOM

p anio nship is only possible with your o wn generation . No use in trying to consort with the young

Your wit and humour will be as much lost upon them as ifyou talked the dialect o fChaucer ; fo r with all the l divinity o fwit it g rows out offashion like a farding a e. ’ I am convinced that the young men at Whi te s already ’ - laug h at George Selwyn s b on mo t s only by tradition . I avoid talking before the youth o f the ag e as I would dancing before them .

A to i s young acqua ntance , there is no uniting the con o f ff O i versation di erent ages . ne s checked every moment ; one cannot make an allusion to what one has w seen ithout being reduced to explanations that become , t T or seem to them , old s ories . he times immediately p receding their o wn are what all men are least acquainted wi A w e th . young man kno s Romulus better than G org e S w men the econd . It amazes me hen I see by choice w f W push on to ards a succession o Courts . hat joy can it be to g overn the g randchildren o four contemporaries ? n ma nifi n o f t It is but bei g a more g cent ki d schoolmas er .

I live in a country where there has been a revolt o f

a ificent the young , and the schoolmasters , m g n or other N wise , were summarily deposed . o doubt the fol f lowers run aster under the new leading , and are more in touch with contemporaries who direct (ii any one may be said to direct)their decisions and actions . Yet I am not sure that Walpole is right in thinking that the young resent the leadership of their elders . For a matter of three years I had to live cheek by jowl wi th AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GARDENER 145

young men , boys even , and I saw their attitude to an — - unusually gifted leader who was of the age fifty fiv e that Walpole had reached when he wrote what I have

quoted . The colonel of my regiment contrived to retain contact with his young men ; he could become their age over a rubber o fbridge ; he could also become

exceedingly remote ; but , assuredly , they did not regard

him as a schoolmaster . There is exaggeration here in Walpole 's estimate—perhaps because he was talk ing of what he never tried ; it was not his way to want to lead anything or anybody , nor was he ever willing to be led . But on the social side , which he knew to

ftw o the bottom , he is perfectly right ; the men o generations stabled together w ill almost inevitably bore each other if they have any interests other than those of the moment . I remember how blessed it was ' in France to meet some one of one s own age , and can realise very well what a nuisance it must have been for the young men to share a company mess with something not unlike (unholy name)a schoolmaster . f They and I meet now on terms o affection , but only

u s to talk over the experience which is common to , the things o fwhich they can tell me more than I them .

For anything outside o f that , another sentence of Walpole 's cuts home to my apprehension

Authors are said to labour fo r posterity fo r my part

I find I did not w rite even fo r the rising generation . It is as difficult to w rite fo r young people as to talk to them . 146 GARDEN WISDOM That is a hard saying to face when you are writing f memories . Perhaps there is solace to be ound in this philosopher 's admission that he has been spending much time in a club o f both sexes created at ' ' '

Almack s o f . , on the model of that the men at White s

He f names his associates , and con esses to shame at

i ’ being of so young and fashionable society . But he has his defence

I can g o to a young supper without forgetting ho w - much sand is run out o fthe hour glass My plan m f is, sometimes to amuse ysel with the rising g eneration , f t w but to take care not to atig ue hem , nor eary them with old stories whi ch will not interest them , as their A e w adventures do not interest me . g ould only indulge p rejudices if it did not sometimes polish itself ag ai nst young er acquaintance ; but it must b e the work o ffolly if f hi one hopes to contract riends ps with them , or desires it f , or thinks one can become the same ollies, or expects that they should do more than bear one with g ood t humour . In shor they are a pleasant medicine that one should take care not to g row too fond o i .

Alas for philosophers in his seventies Horace

e Walpole took an overdose . H contracted an attach ment to the young which made him both happy and

et unhappy , y I think unhappiness was the more acute H sensation . e loved , not one young woman , but two

du at a time , and with such a passion as Madame Defi and had bestowed on him ; and though there was nothing unbecoming in his love , his crying out when the Miss Berrys stayed longer in Italy than he expected

148 GARDEN wisoom

barriers less definite . In the army , you were the age o fyour job so long as you could do it ; thousands of u s must have exchanged duty with our sons or their cousins or contemporaries , holding equivalent rank to - our own ; and it seems all the more natural to day that father and daughter should be turni ng together to a new task , and the same task , in a market garden .

There , too , one should be less quickly superannuated than in trenches ; the best description of a gardener that was ever written describes an old man , whom

! r irgil knew at Co ycus . Hi s holding , the poet says , was only a few roods — that no one troubled to take u p land that would not fatten cattle or suit sheep ; vines would not do there

and yet among the rough brakes , pricking in here there his cabbage plants and white lilies and verbenas

r and shrivelling poppies , his temper made him the pee ' of any peer s possessions . Late of an evening he would come home and pile up tables with feasts that

rs no money paid for ; he had the fi t rose of spring , the first apple of autumn ; and when surly winter was still splitting the rocks with frost and putting a curb of - ice on the water courses , this old hero would be already clipping the hyacinth 's soft tresses and scold ' ' ing at summer s lateness and the zephyr s delay . And so of course he was foremost too with his breeding bees , swarm after swarm , and flush of honey that b e squeezed bubbling from the comb ; he was the one to have lindens and the sappiest pines ; and each fruit AN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY GARDENER 149

tree o fhis would hold an apple fast in autumn fo r

every blossom it put on in spring . I wish he had c o nfided to !irgil that last secret

u s the Georgics nowhere tell how it should be done , and my count o fapples and pears this year will be ' sadly short of the blossom s promise . Yet when one is old enough to let a garden really eng ross the facu l

ties , I too may acquire something of these delicate

r revelations . O is my lady Earth more likely to say , ‘ - Yo u turned to your market garden when nothing else ' was left you but memories ? The cunning of her mysteries she may , and I could not quarrel with her fo r it f , withhold rom me , to impart it to the more deserving Younger Generation— about the time when my great-grandchildren should be appearing to dis turb my Younger Generation of to-day in her slowly n ripeni g garden wisdom , and in her gradual gathering of memories , to which I shall belong .

000865 61 7 5

ma ss DO nor REMO!E THIS BOOK CARD

UBRARYOA