CHAPTER THE FIFTH

In a foregoing page I brought those who are ready to submit to my guidance up to the boundary wall of my Garden of Peace by the stone staircases sloping between the terraces of the old hanging gardens of the Castle moat. With apologies for such a furtive approach I hasten to admit them through the entrance that is in keeping with their rank and station. I bow them through the Barbican Entrance, which is of itself a stately tower, albeit on the threshold of modernity, having been built in the reign of Edward II., really not more than six hundred years ago. I feel inclined to apologise for mentioning this structure of yesterday when I bring my friends on a few yards to the real thing—the true Castle gateway, gloriously gaunt and grim, with the grooves for the portcullis and the hinges on which the iron-barbed gate once swung. There is no suggestion in its architecture of that effeminacy of the Perpendicular Period, which may be seen in the projecting parapet of the Barbican, pierced to allow of the molten lead of my antiquary being ladled out over the enemy who has not been baffled by the raising of the drawbridge. Molten lead is well enough in its way, and no doubt, when brought up nice and warm from the kitchen, and allowed to drop through the apertures, it was more or less irritating as it ran off the edge of the helmets below and began to trickle down the backs of an attacking party. The body-armour was never skintight, and molten lead has had at all times an annoying way of finding out the joinings in a week-day coat of mail; we know how annoying the drip of a neighbour's umbrella can be when it gets through the defence of one's mackintosh collar and meanders down one's back.—No, not a word should be said against molten lead as a sedative; but even its greatest admirers must allow that as a medium of discouragement to an enemy of ordinary sensitiveness it lacked the robustness of the falling Rock.

The Decorative note of the Perpendicular period may have been in harmony with such trifling as is incidental to molten lead, but the stern and uncompromising Early Norman gate would defend itself only with the Rock. That was its character; and when a few hundredweight of solid unsculptured stone were dropped from its machicolated parapet upon the armed men who were fiddling with the lock of the gate below, the people in the High Street could hardly have heard themselves chatting across that thoroughfare on account of the noise, and tourists must have fancied that there was a boiler or two being repaired by a conscientious staff anxious to break the riveting record.

Everything remains of the Castle gateway except the Gate. The structure is some forty feet high and twelve feet thick. The screen-wall was joined to it on both sides, and when you pass under the arch and through a more humble doorway in the wall you are at the entrance to my Garden of Peace.

This oaken door has a little history of its own. For several years after I came to Yardley Parva I used to stand opposite to it in one of the many narrow lanes leading to the ramparts of the town. I knew that the building to which it belonged, and where some humble industry was carried on, embodied the ancient church of Ste. Ursula-in-Foro. The stone doorway is illus-=trated in an old record of the town, and I saw where the stone had been worn away by the Crusaders sharpening the barbs of their arrows on it for luck. I had three carefully thought-out plans for acquiring this door and doorway; but on consideration I came to the conclusion that they were impracticable, unless another Samson were to come among us with all the experience of his Gaza feat.

I had ceased to pass through that ancient lane; it had become too much for me; when suddenly I noticed building operations going on at the place; a Cinema palace was actually being constructed on the consecrated site of the ancient church! Happily the door and the doorway were not treated as material for the housebreaker; they were removed into the cellar of the owner of the property, and from him they were bought by me for a small sum—much less than I should have had to pay for the shaped stones alone. The oak door I set in the wall of my house, and the doorway I brought down my garden where it now features as an arch spanning one of the paths.

But my good fortune did not end here; for a few years later a fine keystone with a sculptured head of Ste. Ursula was dug up in the little garden behind the site of the tiny church, and was presented to me with the most important fragments of two deeply-carved capitals such as one now and again sees at the entrance to a Saxon Church; and so at last these precious relics of mediaeval piety are joined together after a disjunctive interval of perhaps five or six hundred years, and, moreover, on a spot not more than a few hundred feet from where they had originally been placed.

Sir Martin Conway told some years ago of his remarkable discovery in the grounds of an English country house, of one of the missing capitals of Theodocius, with its carved acanthus leaves blown by the wind and the monogram of Theodocius himself. A more astounding discovery than this can hardly be imagined. No one connected with it was able to say how it found its way to the place where it caught the eye of a trustworthy antiquarian; and this fact suggested to me the advisability of attaching an engraved label to such treasure trove, giving their history as far as is known to the possessors. The interest attaching to them would be thereby immensely increased, and it would save much useless conjecture on the part of members of Antiquarian Societies. Some people seem to think that paying a subscription to an Antiquarian Society makes one a fully qualified antiquarian, just as some people fancy that being a Royal Academician makes one a good painter.

The great revival in this country in the taste for the Formal Garden and the Dutch Garden has brought about the introduction of an immense number of sculptured pieces of decoration; and one feels that in the course of lime our gardens will be as well furnished in this way as those of Italy. The well-heads of various marbles, with all the old ironwork that one sees nowadays in the yards of the importers, are as amazing as the number of exquisite columns for pergolas, garden seats of the most imposing character, vases of bronze as well as stone or marble, and wall fountains. And I have no doubt that the importers would make any purchaser acquainted with the place of origin of most of these. Of course we knew pretty well by now where so many of the treasures of the Villa Borghese are to be found; but there are hundreds of other pieces of sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian work that arrive in England, and quite as many that go to the United States, without any historical record attached to them. I do hope that the buyers of these lovely things will see how greatly their value and the interest attaching to them would be increased by such memoranda of their origin.

The best symbol of Peace is a ploughshare that was once a sword; and surely a garden that has been made in the Tiltyard of a Norman Castle may be looked on as an emblem of the same Beatitude. That is how it comes that every one who enters our garden cries,—

“How wonderfully peaceful!”

I have analysed their impression that forces them to say that. The mild bustle of the High Street of a country town somehow imposes itself upon one, for the simple reason that you can hear it and observe it. The hustle of London is something quite different. One is not aware of it. You cannot see the wood for the trees. It is all a wild roar. But when our High Street is at its loudest you can easily distinguish one sound from another.

Then the constant menace of motor-cars rushing through the High Street leaves an impression that does not vanish the moment one turns into the passage of the barbican; and upon it comes the sight of the defensive masonry, which is quite terrific for the moment; then comes the looming threat of the Norman gateway which gives promise of no compromise! It is not necessary that one should have a particularly vivid imagination to hear the clash and clang of armoured men riding forth with lances and battleaxes; and when one steps aside out of their way, the rest is silence and the silence is rest.

“How wonderfully peaceful!” every one cries.

And so't is.

You can hear the humming of a bee—the flick of a swallow's wing, the tinkle of the fountain—a delightful sound like the counting out of the threepenny pieces in the Church Vestry after a Special Collection—and the splash of a blackbird in its own particular bath. These are the sounds that cause the silence to startle you. “Darkness visible,” is Milton's phrase. But to make an adaptation of it is not enough to express what one feels on entering a walled garden from a street even of a country town. There is an outbreak of silence the moment the door is closed, and it is in a hushed tone that one says, when one is able to speak,—

“How wonderfully peaceful!”

I think that a garden is not a garden unless it is walled. Perhaps a high hedge of yew or box conveys the same impression as a built-up wall; but I am not quite certain on this point. The impression has remained with us since the days when an Englishman's home was his castle and an Englishman's castle his home. What every one sought was security, and a consciousness of security only came when one was within walls. In going through a country of wild animals one has a kindred feeling when the fire is lighted at nightfall. Another transmitted instinct is that which forces one to look backward on a road when the sound of steps tells one that one is being followed. The earliest English gardens of which any record remains were walled. In the illustrations to the Romaunt of the Rose, we see this; and possibly the maze became a feature of the garden in order to increase the sense of security from the knife of an enemy whose slaughter had been overlooked by the mediaeval horticultural enthusiast, who sought for peace and quiet on Prussian principles.

I think it was the appearance of the walls that forced me to buy my estate of a superficial acre. Certainly until I saw them I had no idea of such a purchase. If any one had told me on that morning when I strolled up the High Street of Yardley Parra while the battery of my car was being re-charged after the manner of those pre-magneto times, that I should take such a step I would have laughed. But it was a day of August sunshine and there was an auction of furniture going on in the house. This fact gave me entree to the “old-world garden” of the agent's advertisement, and when I saw the range of walls ablaze with many-coloured snapdragons above the double row of hollyhocks in the border at their foot, I “found peace,” as the old Revivalists used to phrase the sentiment, only their assurance was of a title to a mansion in the skies, while I was less ambitious. I sought peace and ensued it, purchasing the freehold, and I have been ensuing it ever since.

0077

The mighty walls of the old Castle compass us about as they did the various dwellers within their shelter eight hundred years ago. On one side they vary from twelve feet to thirty in height, but on the outer side they rise from the moat and loom from forty to fifty feet above the lowest of the terraces. At one part, where a Saxon earthwork makes a long curved hillock at the farther end of the grounds, the wall is only ten feet above the grassy walk, but forty feet down on the other side. The Norman Conqueror simply built his wall resting against the mound of the original and more elementary fortification. Here the line of the screen breaks off abruptly; but we can see that at one time it was carried on to an artificial hill on the summit of which the curious feature of a second keep was built—the well-preserved main keep forms an imposing incident of the landscape in the opposite direction.

The small plateau which was once enclosed by the screen-wall is not more than three acres in extent; from its elevation of a couple of hundred feet it overlooks the level country and the shallow river-way for many miles—a tranquil landscape of sylvan beauty dominated by the everlasting Downs. Almost to the very brink of the lofty banks of the plateau on one side we have an irregular bowling-green, bordered by a row of pollard ashes. From a clause in one of my title deeds I find that three hundred years ago the bowling-green was in active existence and played a useful part as a landmark in the delimitation of the frontier. It is brightly green at all seasons; and the kindly neighbouring antiquarian confided in me how its beauty was attained and is maintained.

“Some time ago an American tourist asked the man who was mowing it how it came to be such a fine green, and says the man, 'Why, it's as easy as snuffling: all you've got to do is to lay it down with good turf at first and keep on cutting it for three or four hundred years and the thing is done.' Smart of the fellow, wasn't it?”

“It was very smart,” I admitted.

Our neighbour showed his antiquarian research in another story as well as in this one. It related to the curate of a local parish who, in the unavoidable absence of his vicar, who was a Rural Dean, found himself taking a timid breakfast with the Bishop of the Diocese. He was naturally a shy man and he was shying very highly over an egg that he had taken and that was making a very hearty appeal to him. Observing him, the Bishop, with a thorough knowledge of his Diocese, and being well aware that the electoral contest which had been expected a few months earlier had not taken place, turned to the curate and remarked——

But if you've heard the story before what he remarked will not appeal to you so strongly as the egg did to the clergyman; so there is nothing gained by repeating the remark or the response intoned by the curate.

But when our antiquarian told us both we heartily agreed with him that that curate deserved to be a bishop.

We are awaiting without impatience. I trust, the third of this Troika team of anecdotes—the one that refers to the Scotsman and Irishman who came to the signpost that told all who couldn't read to inquire at the blacksmith's. That story is certain to be revealed to us in time. The antiquarian from the stable of whose memory the other two of the team were let loose cannot possibly restrain the third.

Such things are pleasantly congenial with the scent of lavender in an old-world garden that knows nothing of how busy people are in the new world outside its boundary. But what are we to say when we find in a volume of serious biography published last year only as a previously unheard-of instance of the wit of the “subject,” the story of the gentleman who, standing at the entrance to his club, was taken for the porter by a member coming out?

“Call me a cab,” said the latter.

“You're a cab,” was the prompt reply.

The story in the biography stops there; but the original one shows the wit making a second score on punning points.

“What do you mean?” cried the other. “I told you to call me a cab.”

“And I've called you a cab. You didn't expect me to call you handsome,” said the ready respondent.

Now that story was a familiar Strand story forty years ago when H. J. Byron was at the height of his fame, and he was made the hero of the pun (assuming that it is possible for a hero to make a pun).

But, of course, no one can vouch for the mint from which such small coin issues. If a well-known man is in the habit of making puns all the puns of his generation are told in the next with his name attached to them. H. J. Byron was certainly as good a punster as ever wrote a burlesque for the old Gaiety; though a good deal of the effect of his puns was due to their delivery by Edward Terry. But nothing that Byron wrote was so good as Burnand's title to his Burlesque on Rob Roy, the play which Mrs Bateman had just revived at Sadler's Wells. Burnand called it Robbing Roy, or Scotch'd, not Kilt. The parody on “Roy's Wife,” sung by Terry, was exquisite, and very topical,—

Roy's wife of Alldivalloch!

Oh, while she

Is wife to me,

Is life worth living, Mr. Mallock?”

Mr. Mallock's book was being widely discussed in those days, and Punch had his pun on it with the rest.

“Is Life worth living?”

“It depends on the liver.”

The Garrick Club stories of Byron, Gilbert, and Burnand were innumerable. To the first-named was attributed the dictum that a play was like a cigar. “If it was a good one all your friends wanted a box; but if it was a bad one no amount of puffing would make it draw.”

The budding littérateurs of those days—and nights—used to go from hearing stories of Byron's latest, to the Junior Garrick to hear Byron make up fresh ones about old Mrs. Swanborough of the Strand Theatre. Some of them were very funny. Mrs. Swan-borough was a clever old lady with whom I was acquainted when I was very young. She never gave utterance to the things Byron tacked on to her. I recollect how amused I was to hear Byron's stories about her told to me by Arthur Swanborough about an old lady who had just retired from the stage, and then, passing on to Orme Square on a Sunday evening, to hear “Johnny Toole,” as he was to the very youngest of us, tell the same stories about a dear old girl who was still in his company at the Folly Theatre.

So much for the circulation of everyday anecdotes. Dean Swift absorbed most of the creations of the early eighteenth century; then Dr. Johnson became the father of as many as would till a volume. Theodore Hook, Tom Hood, Shirley Brooks, Albert Smith, Mark Lemon, and several others whose names convey little to the present generation, were the reputed parents of the puns which enlivened the great Victorian age. But if a scrupulous historian made up his mind to apply for a paternity order against any one of these gay dogs, that historian would have difficulty in bringing forward sufficient evidence to have it granted.

The late Mr. M. A. Robertson, of the Treaty Department of the Foreign Office, told me that his father—the celebrated preacher known to fame as “Robertson of Brighton”—had described to him the important part played by the pun in the early sixties. At a dinner-party at which the Reverend Mr. Robertson was a guest, a humorist who was present picked up the menu card and set the table on a roar with his punning criticism of every plat. Robertson thought that such a spontaneous effort was a very creditable tour de force—doubtless the humorist would have called it a tour de farce—but a few nights later he was at another party which was attended by the same fellow-guest, and once again the menu, which happened to be exactly the same also, was casually picked up and dealt with seriatim as before, with an equally hilarious effect. He mentioned to the hostess as a curious coincidence that he should find her excellent dinner identical with the one of which he had partaken at the other house: and then she confided in him that the great punster had given her the bill of fare that afforded him his opportunity of displaying his enlivening trick! Robertson gave me the name of this Victorian artist, but there is no need for me to reveal it in this place. The story, however, allows us a glimpse into the studio of one of the word-jugglers of other days; and when one has been made aware of the machinery of his mysteries, one ceases to marvel.

Two brothers, Willie and Oscar Wilde, earned many dinners in their time by their conversational abilities; and I happen to know that before going out together they rehearsed very carefully the exchange of their impromptus at the dinner table. Both of these brothers were brilliant conversationalists, and possessed excellent memories. They were equally unscrupulous and unprincipled. The only psychological distinction between the two was that the elder, Willie, possessed an impudence of a quality which was not among Oscar's gifts. Oscar was impudent enough to take his call on the first night of Lady Windermere's Fan smoking a cigarette, and to assure the audience that he had enjoyed the play immensely; but he was never equal to his brother in this special line. Willie was a little over twenty and living with his parents in Dublin, where he had a friendly little understanding with a burlesque actress who was the principal boy in the pantomime at the Gaiety Theatre. She wrote to him one day making an appointment with him for the night, and asking him to call for her at the stage door. The girl addressed the letter to “Wm. Wilde, Esq.,” at his home, and as his father's name was William he opened it mechanically and read it. He called Willie into his study after breakfast and put the letter before him, crying, “Read that, sir!”

The son obeyed, folded it up and handed it back, saying quietly,—

“Well, dad, do you intend to go?”

To obtain ready cash and good dinners, Willie Wilde, when on the staff of a great London newspaper was ready to descend to any scheming and any meanness. But the descriptive column that he wrote of the sittings of the Parnell Commission day after day could not be surpassed for cleverness and insight. He would lounge into the Court at any time he pleased and remain for an hour or so, rarely longer, and he spent the rest of the day amusing himself and flushing himself with brandies and soda at the expense of his friends. He usually began to write his article between eleven and twelve at night.

Such were these meteoric brothers before the centrifugal force due to their revolutionary instinct sent them flying into space.

But one handful of the meteoric dust of the conversation of either was worth all the humour of the great Victorian punsters.