Part 8

And the foregoing is a faithful description of the “landscape” around one of the houses illustrated in his book as an example of the “naturalistic” style.

But perhaps Mr. Robinson's ideas have become modified, as those of the owner of the house must have done during the twenty-five years that have elapsed since the publication of his book, subjecting Mr. Blomfield (as he was then) and Mr. Inigo Triggs to a criticism whose severity resembles that of the _Quarterly Review_ of a hundred years ago, or the _Saturday_ of our boyhood.

To return to my Temple, within whose portals I swear that I have said my last word respecting the old battle of the styles, I look on its erection as the first progeny of the matrimonial union of the house with its garden. I have mentioned the mound encircled with flowering shrubs at the termination of the lawn. I am unable to say what part was played by this raised ground in the economy of the Norman Castle, but before I had been looking at it for very long I perceived that it was clearly meant to be the site of some building that, would be in keeping with the design of the garden below it--some building in which one could sit and obtain the full enjoyment of the floral beds which were now crying out with melodious insistence for admiration.

The difficulty was to know in what form the building should be cast. I reckoned that I had a free choice in this matter. The boundary wall of the Castle is, of course, free from all architectural trammels. I could afford to ignore it. If the Keep or the Barbican had been within sight, my freedom in this respect would have been curtailed to the narrowest limits: I should have been compelled to make the Norman or the Decorated the style, for anything else would have seemed incongruous in close proximity to a recognised type; but under the existing conditions I saw that the attempt to carry out in this place the Norman tradition would result in something that would seem as great a mockery as the sham castle near Bath.

But I perceived that if I could not carry out the Norman tradition I might adopt the eighteenth century tradition respecting a garden building, and erect one of the classic temples that found favour with the great garden makers of that period--something frankly artificial, but eminently suggestive of the Italian taste which the designers had acquired in Italy.

I have wondered if the erection of these classical buildings in English gardens did not seem very incongruous and artificial when they were first brought before the eyes of the patron; and the conclusion that I have come to is that they seemed as suitable to an English home as did the pure Greek façade of the mansion itself, the fact being that there is no English style of architecture. Italy gave us the handsomest style for our homes, and when people were everywhere met with classical façades--when the Corinthian pillar with, perhaps, its modified Roman entablature, was to be seen in every direction, the classical garden temple was accepted as in perfect harmony with its surroundings. So the regular couplets of Dryden, Pope, and a score of lesser versifiers were acclaimed as the most natural and reasonable form for the expression of their opinions. Thus I hold that, however unenterprising the garden designers were in being content to copy Continental models instead of inventing something as original as Keats in the matter of form, the modern garden designer has only to copy in order to produce--well, a copy of the formality of their time. But if people nowadays do not wish their gardens to reflect the tastes of their ancestors for the classical tradition, they will be very foolish if they do not adopt something better--when they find it.

Of course I am now still referring to the garden out of which the house should spring. The moment that you get free from the compelling influence of the house, you may go as you please; and to my mind you will be as foolish if you do not do something quite different from the House Garden as you would be if you were to do anything different within sight of the overpowering House--almost as foolish as the people who made a beautiful fountain garden and then flung it at the head of that natural piece of water, the Serpentine.

My temple was to be in full view of the house, and I wished to maintain the tradition of a certain period, so I drew out my plans accordingly. I had space only for something about ten feet square, and I found out what the simplest form of such a building would cost. It could be done in stone for some hundreds of pounds, in deal for less than a fourth of that sum.

Both estimates were from well-known people with all the facilities for turning out good work at the lowest figure of profit; but both estimates made me heavy-hearted. I tried to make up my mind not to spend the rest of my life in the state of the Children of Israel when their Temple was swept away; but within six months I had my vision restored, and unlike the old people who wept because the restoration was far behind the original in glory, I rejoiced; for, finding that I could not afford to have the structure in deal, I had it built of marble, and the cost worked out most satisfactorily. In marble it cost me about a fourth of the estimate in deal!

I did it on the system adopted by the makers of the Basilica of St. Mark at Venice. Those economical people built their walls of brick and laid their marbles upon that. My collection of marbles was distinctly inferior to theirs, but I flatter myself that it was come by more honestly. The only piece of which I felt doubtful, not as regards beauty, but respecting the honourable nature of its original acquiring, was a fine slab, with many inlays. It was given to Augustus J. C. Hare by the Commander of one of the British transports that returned from the Black Sea and the Crimea in 1855, and it was originally in a church near Balaclava. In the catalogue of the sale of Mr. Hare's effects at Hurstmonceaux, the name of the British officer was given and the name of his ship and the name of the church, but the rest is silence. I cannot believe that that British officer would have been guilty of sacrilege; but I do not know how many hands a thing like this should pass through in order to lose the stain of sacrilege, so I don't worry over the question of the morality of the transaction, any more than the devout worshippers do beneath the mosaics of St. Mark--that greatest depository of stolen goods in the world.

All the rest of my coloured marbles that I applied to the brickwork of my little structure came mostly from old mantelpieces and restaurant tables, but I was lucky enough to alight upon quite a large number of white Sicilian tiles, more than an inch thick, which were invaluable to me, and a friendly stonemason gave me several yards of statuary moulding: it must have cost originally about what I paid for my entire building.

It was a great pleasure to me to watch the fabric arise, which it did like the towers of Ilium, to music--the music of the thrushes and blackbirds and robins of our English landscape in the early summer when I began my operations--they lasted just on a fortnight--and the splendid colour-chorus of the borders. But what is a Temple on a hill without steps? and what are steps without piers, and what are piers without vases?

All came in due time. I found an excellent quarry not too far away, and from it I got several tons of stone that was easily shaped and squared, and there is very little art needed to deal efficiently with such monoliths as I had laid on the slope of the mound--the work occupied a man and his boy just three days. The source of the piers is my secret; but there they are with their stone vases to-day, and now from the marble seat of the temple, thickly overspread with cushions, one can overlook the parterres between the mound and the house, and feel no need for the sunk garden which is the ambition of such as must be on the crest of the latest wave of fashion.

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

Atheist Friswell has been wondering where he saw a mount like mine crowned with just such a structure, and he has at last shepherded his wandering memory to the place. I ventured to suggest the possibilities of the island Scios, and Jack Heywood, the painter, who, though our neighbour, still remains our friend, makes some noncompromising remark about Milos “where the statues come from.”

“I think you'll find the place in a picture-book called _Beauty Spots in Greece_” remarked Mrs. Friswell. Dorothy is under the impression that Friswell's researches in the classical lore of one Lemprière is accountable for his notion that there is, or was, at one time in the world a Temple with some resemblance to the one in which we were sitting when he began to wonder.

“Very likely,” said he, with a brutal laugh. “The temples on the hills were sometimes dedicated to the sun--Helios, you know.”

Of course we all knew, or pretended that we knew.

“And what did your artful Christians do when they came upon such a fane?” he inquired.

“Pulled it down, I suppose; the early artful Christians had no more sense of architectural or antiquarian beauty than the modern exponents of the cult,” said Heywood.

“They were too artful for that, those early Christian propagandists,” said Friswell. “No, they turned to the noble Greek worshippers whom they were anxious to convert, and cried, dropping their aspirates after the manner of the moderns, 'dedicated to Elias, is it?' Quite so---Saint Elias--he is one of our saints. That is how it comes that so many churches on hills in the Near East have for their patron Saint Elias. Who was he, I should like to know.”

“I would do my best to withhold the knowledge from you,” said Dorothy. “But was there ever really such a saint? There was a prophet, of course, but that's not just the same.”

“I should think not,” said Friswell. “The old prophets were the grandest characters of which there is a record--your saints are white trash alongside them--half-breeds. They only came into existence because of the craving of humanity for pluralities of worship. The Church has found in her saints the equivalents to the whole Roman theology.”

“Mythology,” said I correctively.

“There's no difference between the words,” he replied.

“Oh, yes, my dear, there is,” said his wife. “There is the same difference between theology and mythology as there is between convert and pervert.”

“Exactly the same difference,” he cried. “Exactly, but no greater. Christian hagiology--what a horrid word!--is on all-fours with Roman mythology. The women who used to lay flowers in the Temple of Diana bring their lilies into the chapel of the Madonna. There are chapels for all the saints, for they have endowed their saints with the powers attributed to their numerous deities by the Greeks and the Romans. There are enough saints to go round---to meet all the requirements of the most freakish and exacting of district visitors. But the Jewish prophets were very different from the mystical and mythical saints. They lived, and you feel when you get in touch with them that you are on a higher plane altogether.”

“Have you found out where you saw that Temple on the mound over there, and if you have, let us know the name of the god or the goddess or saint or saintess that it was dedicated to, and I'll try to pick up a Britannia metal figure cheap to put in the grove alongside the Greek vase,” said I.

He seemed in labour of thought: no one spoke for fear of interrupting the course of nature.

“Let me think,” he muttered. “I don't see why the mischief I should associate a Greek Temple with Oxford Street, but I do--that particular Temple of yours.”

“If you were a really religious business man you might be led to think of the City Temple, only it doesn't belong to the Greek Church,” remarked Heywood.

“Let me help you,” said the Atheist's wife; “think of Truslove and Hanson, the booksellers. Did Arthur Rackham ever put a Temple into one of his picture-books?”

“After all, you may have gone on to Holborn--Were you in Batsford's?” suggested Dorothy.

“Don't bother about him,” said I. “What does it matter if he did once see something like our Temple; he'll never see anything like it again, unless----”

“It may have been Buszards'--a masterpiece of Buszards,--pure confectioners' Greek architecture--icing veined to look like marble,” said Dorothy.

“I have it---I knew I could worry it out if you gave me time,” cried Friswell.

“Which we did,” said I. “Well, whisper it gently in our ears.”

“It was in a scene in a play at the Princess's Theatre,” he cried triumphantly. “Yes, 1 recollect it distinctly--something just like your masterpiece, only more slavishly Greek--the scene was laid in Rome, so they would be sure to have it correct.”

“What play was it?” Dorothy asked.

“Oh, now you're asking too much,” he replied. “Who could remember the name of a play after thirty or forty years? All that I remember is that it was a thoroughly bad play with a Temple like yours in it. It was the fading of the light that brought it within the tentacles of my memory.”

“So like a man--to blame the dusk,” said his wife.

“The twilight is the time for a garden--the summer twilight, like this,” said Mr. Heywood.

“The moonless midnight is the time for some gardens,” said Dorothy, who is fastidious in many matters, though she did marry me.

“The time for a garden was decided a long time ago,” said I--“as long ago as the third chapter of Genesis and the eighth verse: 'They heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day.'”

“You say that with a last-word air--as much as to say 'what's good enough for God is good enough for me,'” laughed Friswell.

“I think that if ever a mortal heard the voice of God it would be in a garden at the cool of the day,” said Mrs. Friswell gently.

“There are some people who would fail to hear it at any time,” said I, pointedly referring to Friswell. He gave a laugh. “What are you guffawing at?” I cried with some asperity I trust.

“Not at your Congregational platitudes,” he replied. “I was led to smile when I remembered how the colloquial Bible which was compiled by a Scotsman, treated that beautiful passage. He paraphrased it, 'The Lord went oot in the gloamin' to hae a crack wi' Adam ower the garden gate.'”

“I don't suppose he was thought irreverent,” said Dorothy. “He wasn't really, you know.”

“To take a step or two in the other direction,” said Mrs. Friswell; “I wonder if Milton had in his mind any of the Italian gardens he must have visited on his travels when he described the Garden of Eden.”

“There's not much of an Italian garden in Milton's Eden,” said Dorothy, who is something of an authority on these points. “But it is certainly an Italian twilight that he describes in one place. Poor Milton! he must have been living for many years in a perpetual twilight before 't darkened into his perpetual night.”

“You notice the influence of the hour,” said Heywood. “We have fallen into a twilight-shaded vale of converse. This is the hour when people talk in whispers in gardens like these.”

“I dare say we have all done so in our time,” remarked some one with a sentimental sigh that she tried in vain to smother.

“Ah, God knew what He was about when He put a man and a woman into a garden alone, and gave them an admonition,” said Friswell. “By the way, one of the most remarkable bits of testimony to the scientific accuracy of the Book of Genesis, seems to me to be the discovery, after many years of conjecture and vague theorising, that man and woman were originally one, so that the story of the formation of Eve by separating from Adam a portion of his body is scientifically true. I don't suppose that any of you good orthodox folk will take that in; but it is a fact all the same.”

“I will believe anything except a scientific fact,” said Dorothy.

“And I will believe nothing else,” said Friswell. “The history of mankind begins with the creation of Eve--the separation of the two-sexed animal into two--meant a new world, a world worth writing about--a world of love.”

“Listen to him--there's the effect of twilight in a Garden of Peace for you,” said I. “Science and the Book of Genesis, hitherto at enmity, are at last reconciled by Atheist Friswell. What a triumph! What a pity that Milton, who made his Archangel visit Adam and his bride and give them a scientific lecture, did not live to learn all this!”

“He would have given us a Nonconformist account of it,” said Mrs. Friswell. “I wonder how much his Archangel would have known if Milton had not first visited Charles Deodati.”

There was much more to be said in the twilight on the subject of the world of love--a world which seems the beginning of a new world to those who love; and that was possibly why silence fell upon us and was only broken by the calling of a thrush from among the rhododendrons and the tapping of the rim of Heywood's empty pipe-bowl on the heel of his shoe. There was so much to be said, if we were the people to say it, on the subject of the new Earth which your lover knows to be the old Heaven, that, being aware of the inadequacy of human speech, we were silent for a long space.

And when we began to talk again it was only to hark back from Nature to the theatre, and, a further decadence still--the Gardens of the Stage.

The most effective garden scene in my recollection is that in which Irving and Ellen Terry acted when playing Wills' exquisite adaptation of _King Renê's Daughter_, which he called _Iolanthe_. I think it was Harker who painted it. The garden was outside a mediaeval castle, and the way its position on the summit of a hill was suggested was an admirable bit of stagecraft. Among the serried lines of pines there was at first seen the faint pink of a sunset, and this gradually became a glowing crimson which faded away into the rich blue of an Italian twilight. But there was enough light to glint here and there upon the armour of the men-at-arms who moved about among the trees.

The parterre in the foreground was full of red roses, and I remember that Mr. Ruskin, after seeing the piece and commenting upon the _mise-en-scène_, said that in such a light as was on it, the roses of the garden would have seemed black!

This one-act play was brought on by Irving during the latter months of the great run of _The Merchant of Venice_. It showed in how true a spirit of loyalty to Shakespeare the last act, which, in nearly all representations of the play, is omitted, on the assumption that with the disappearance of Shylock there is no further element of interest in the piece, was retained by the great manager. It was retained only for the first few months, and it was delightfully played. The moonlit garden in which the incomparable lines of the poet were spoken was of the true Italian type, though there is nothing in the text of what is called “local colour.”

Juliet's garden on the same stage was not so definitely Italian as it might have been. But I happen to know who were Irving's advisers. Among them were two of the most popular of English painters, and if they had had their own way Romeo would have been allowed no chance: he would have been hidden by the clumps of yew, and juniper, and oleander, and ilex, and pomegranate. A good many people who were present during the run of _Romeo and Juliet_ were very much of the opinion that if this had taken place it would have been to the advantage of all concerned. Mr. Irving, as he was then, was not the ideal Romeo of the English playgoer. But neither was the original Romeo, who was, like the original Paolo, a man of something over forty.

I have never seen it pointed out that a Romeo of forty would be quite consistent with the Capulet tradition, for Juliet's father in the play was quite an elderly man, whereas the mother was a young woman of twenty-eight. As for Juliet's age, it is usually made the subject of a note of comment to the effect that in the warm south a girl matures so rapidly that she is marriageable at Juliet's age of thirteen, whereas in the colder clime of England it would be ridiculous to talk of one marrying at such an age.

There can be no doubt that in these less spacious days the idea of a bride of thirteen would not commend itself to parents or guardians, but in the sixteenth century, twelve or thirteen was regarded as the right age for the marriage of a girl. If she reached her sixteenth birthday remaining single, she was ready to join in the wail of Jephtha's Daughter. In a recently published letter written by Queen Elizabeth, who, by the way, although fully qualified to take part in that chorale, seemed to find a series of diplomatic flirtations to be more satisfying than matrimony, she submitted the names of three heiresses as ripe for marriage, and none of them had passed the age of thirteen. The Reverend John Knox made his third matrimonial venture with a child of fifteen. Indeed, one has only to search the records of any family of the sixteenth or seventeenth century to be made aware of the fact that Shakespeare's Juliet was not an exceptionally youthful bride. In Tenbury Church there is a memorial of “Ioyse, d. of Thos. Actone of Sutton, Esquire.” She was the wife of Sir Thomas Lucy, whom she married at the age of twelve. If any actor, however, were to appear as a forty-two year Romeo and with a Juliet of thirteen, and a lady-mother of twenty-eight, he would be optimistic indeed if he should hope for a long run for his venture.

Of course with the boy Juliets of the Globe Theatre, the younger they were the better chance they would have of carrying conviction with them. A Juliet with a valanced cheek would not be nice, even though she were “nearer heaven by the attitude of a chopine” than one whose face was smooth.

I think that Irving looked his full age when he took it upon him to play Romeo; but to my mind he made a more romantic figure than most Romeos whom I have seen. But every one who joined in criticising the representation seemed unable to see more of him than his legs, and these were certainly fantastic. I maintained that such people began at the wrong end of the actor: they should have begun at the head. And this was the hope of Irving himself. He had the intellect, and I thought his legs extremely intellectual.

I wonder he did not do some padding to bring his calves into the market, and make--as he would have done--a handsome profit out of the play. In the old days of the Bateman Management of the Lyceum, he was never permitted to ignore the possibilities of making up for deficiencies of Nature. In the estimation of the majority of theatre-goers, the intellect of an actor will never make up for any neglect of the adventitious aid of “make-up.” When _Eugene Aram_ was to be produced, it was thought advisable to do some padding to make Irving presentable. There was a clever expert at this form of expansion connected with the theatre; he was an Italian and, speaking no English, he was forced into an experiment in explanation in his own language. He wished to enforce the need for a solid shape to fit the body, rather than a patchwork of padding. In doing so he had to made constant use of the word _corpo_, and as none of his hearers understood Italian, they thought that he was giving a name to the contrivance he had in his mind; so when the thing passed out of the mental stage into the actor's dressing-room, it was alluded to as the corpo. The name seemed a happy one and it had a certain philological justification; for several people, including the dresser, thought that corpo was a contraction for corporation, and in the slang of the day, that meant an expansion of the chest a little lower down.