Part 19

Bedford Park is in danger of becoming a show-place. Now and then the fair riders of Hyde Park extend afternoon exercise to enjoy a look at the new suburb. And sometimes the statesman, weary with his midnight work in Parliament or in Downing Street, finds relief in this quiet retreat. Professor Fawcett is apt to put in an appearance on Sunday afternoons, and one day the grand face of John Bright, with its white halo of silken hair, was seen among us. M. Renan, when he was delivering his Hibbert lectures, was entertained in one of our homes, and pronounced Bedford Park “que véritable utopie.” He appeared quite amazed at finding in London that ideal place which French enthusiasm has often dreamed of, and which differs from the “plain living and high thinking” of the English philosophers. For here, where we have the scientific lecture one evening, we may have theatricals on the next; and if we have ambrosial poetry or classic music one day, on the next the ladies will be found attending the School for Cookery, and learning how to make dishes dainty enough to set before any gourmand. Minister Lowell has also paid us a visit, and I believe he thought Bedford Park ought to be somewhere in the neighborhood of Harvard University. But our most memorable visitor was “H. H.,” whose eyes illuminated our town for a day or two, and then went away with such pictures as can only be painted when such vision as hers comes upon such a vision as she found here. She came from a beautiful home in a beautiful land; from bright rooms decorated with many a brilliant stripe and spot contributed by the wild creatures and growths of Colorado, and touched all over with her own poetic taste; and she realized at once that she had come to sister homes with hers, where there was the same desire to cultivate beauty in harmony with nature. The brilliant letter she wrote about her visit here comes back to Bedford Park just as I write this my last page, and among the many reports that have been written of us none is more true. My distant readers will perceive that my enthusiasm is not of delusion, if I conclude my rambling paper by borrowing for a moment the pen of “H. H.” “Only thirty minutes by rail from Charing Cross--gardens, country air, lanes, bits of opens where daisies grow, where fogs do not hang, and from which far horizons can be seen--is not the London prisoner lucky that can flee his jail at night, and sleep till morning in such a suburb? Lucky indeed, no matter to what sort of house he escaped, so it stood on a spot like this. But when to the opens, the clear air, lanes, and daisies, it is added that, fleeing thither, the London prisoner may sit down and rest, lie down and sleep in, and rise up and enjoy, a charming little Queen Anne house, built, colored, and decorated throughout with good taste by artists who know what souls need as well as what bodies require, there is conferred on him a double, nay, an immeasurable, benefit and unreckonable obligation.”

THE END.

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FOOTNOTES:

[A] The “Stoning of Stephen,” the “Conversion of St. Paul,” and “Paul in the Dungeon at Philippi.”

[B] “Catalogue of Spanish Works of Art in the South Kensington Museum in 1872.” By Señor Juan F. Riaño, of the Educational Board of the Ministry of Fomento, Spain. Reprinted in Mr. Robinson’s Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of 1881.

[C] Since this was written General Pitt Rivers has offered his grand collection to the nation as a free gift, and I am ashamed and astounded to learn that it has been declined! The great men connected with the South Kensington institutions--Huxley, Poynter, Cunliffe Owen, and others--were felicitating themselves at this splendid acquisition, when this mysterious refusal came. Sir John Lubbock, as I write, is questioning the Government on the subject, and it is possible the outrageous folly may be checked. I regret to say there are indications that the cause of it is a certain jealousy that has sprung up in influential quarters at the prodigious growth of the South Kensington collections. For the moment they have managed to make the British Museum a sort of dog-in-the-manger. I cannot believe, however, that the country will consent that such jealousy shall become a contest so costly to itself. The incident I have just mentioned tempts me to strike out from this work some complimentary things I have written concerning the administration of the Science and Art Department; but the facts have not yet been publicly sifted, and I leave what is written in hope that the result of this strange affair may not turn all its admiration to satire.

[D] Heine. Translated by Charles Leland.

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Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

explanatory catalogue of 1247=> explanatory catalogue of 1847 {pg 80}

which all from the cornice to the floor=> which fall from the cornice to the floor {pg 197}