A LONDON SQUARE GARDEN.
91HERE is generally same drawback to the pleasure to be got out 1 of a garden. Just now the amount of work which mutt be done in it by the owner's wife or daughter to keep it from becoming a waste is a drawback, and again the strain of conscience involved in deciding to what extent amenity must be sacrificed to vegetables is a drawback. When the gardener is always in it he is a drawback to our delight in its solitude, and now he is gone to the war his absence is a greater grievance still. Now and then the Londoner Irving in a square is tempted to wonder if he does not get more refreshment out of his semi-public garden than his friends do out of their private ones. The green lawns and the plane-trees standing in the very midst of the heatand bustle of the streets are so delicious. Of COMIC the London square-dweller is not alone in his garden. On the other hand, the expression " semi-public " which we have just used is a singularly bad one whereby to describe the privacy of a garden entered by a key. As compared to a park it is private, and the Londoner is sure to make the comparison. So many people would like to come in who cannot, especially when it is in full leafage, when the trees and hedges have, so to speak, drawn the curtains, and from the pavement the gay parterres are not visible. The passer-by on the hot pavement longs to know what the flowers are like inside, but the geraniums and daisies and fuchsias delight the privi- leged only. There is something very pleasant about any privilege. We just open the heavy gate and feel as if we had left London behind us. Not that we can imagine our- selves in the country. They are not country trees or country flowers, nor is it even country grass ; but the sight of them is grateful and pleasant all the same, and the smell is in itself a refresh- ment. Do any lime-trees smell as good as London limes ? They do of course, and much better, but we do not come upon their fragrance so suddenly and unexpectedly, and when we are in such need of it. Really no jasmine is quite so starry as London jasmine because none has such dark leaves. When storms come and knock the • bedding-out plants to bits we feel no responsibility. We reflect upon the good the rain does to the grass and agree with our conscience, which tells us that in war time flowers must not be replaced. But the housekeeping of the garden does not specially concern us and does not get upon our minds.
Square-gardeners are almost always old. They were old before the war and rather cross, but now they are older and crosser still. The fact chiefly concerns the children, for they do not set upon silent persons over fifteen years of age as a rule. We believe there is something pleasant to the childish imagination in the presence of a bogy in a playground. Certainly the present writer has seen little boys with keys in their hands get over the gates in the fearful hope of being seen and reprimanded by the tyrant. In the square of which he is thinking the old gardener is especially fierce. He walks in a peculiarly threatening manner after little malefactors who run on the beds. It is strange that a walk should threaten, but it may. If once he broke into a run, it would spoil the effect. He stalks them till he catches them, and holds the law over them some- times till they cry. In the rare event of his making any attack upon a grown-up person the children are of course filled with joy. Some days ago a soldier sauntered in with a little lame dog at his heels. The children saw him first and whispered together. Dogs are not admitted, and the soldier was disobeying a by-law. Would even the bogy of the square dare to accost a soldier ? " He dare not do anything to him!" asserted one little braggart. "A soldier is far above a policeman." They wronged the gardener. He threw down his rake and advanced with long strides. The soldier must have known his reputation, or perhaps he guessed that he was a fire-eater by his walk. Anyhow, he feigned terror very enecoesfully, imploring the gardener to spare him and his lame friend. The little farce delighted the youthful audience, and put them in heart against an enemy so easily discomfited by a joke, so implacable to tears.
Dogs, like the public at large, look very longingly through square- garden railings, and envy the slim cats who pass in and out at will with no one to call them off. They do a good deal of harm in a garden, digging almost as busily as dogs, but their depredations rank with those of the elements. if a plant is scratched up by a cat, it is as if it were broken down by a storm—it simply can't be helped. To see cats in a London square ie to see them at their worst—or rather it is only the worst eats who run wild in them. Cats ought always to be by a fireside, and never two of them together. They make use of man at every turn—even his pleasure-grounds they take for their own—yet they will not even play with his children. They-do not happen to like man, and gratitude is unknown to them. At night they throw off his influence altogether. Very few cats seem to have any beds. One old lady in this square garden comes nightly to look for her pet. He is a handsome cat of opulent appearance. He sits with some poor thin creatures, who irresistibly remind the onlooker of very much worn charwomen, in the part of the garden he favours after dark. Now and then a poor cat will answer to the rich cat's name, perhaps in the hope of adoption in his absence, but he never stirs. If his mistress can see him, she picks him up and carries him in ; if not, he watches her short-sighted efforts while he washes his face for the night. "'Orrid-charactered cat," grumbles the maid who comes out for a last search when her mistress has failed. Judging by their voices in dispute, cats have an active hatred towards one another. They do not begin their tights upon the lawns till human intruders are gone and dogs are in their respectable beds.
One of the drawbacks of the ordinary square garden is that it is so vocal—long before cat-time, so to speak, much noise begins. The more unfashionable the neighbourhood, the less its inhabitants mind noise, and sometimes one is tempted to believe the more vain they are. It is difficult not to think that vanity tempts singers to practise so very loud and long with the windows wide open. In the square we are thinking of the singers have had, however, a very good influence upon a handsome parrot who site on a balcony. His voice is often quite human, and ho • seems to try to regulate it, and seldom emits one of the fearful screams with which the Zoological Gardens re-echo. Canaries alone suggest the wild life of the country. A good canary might be compared to a gramophone record of a nightingale. It is curious how little of bird fascination there is in their voices. No ; it has to be admitted that the charms of a square are quite other than those of the country. On the other band, noises which would utterly dese- crate a summer evening among fields do not desecrate it in a London garden. The very fact that we can hear them puts us in mind of the great traffic which has died down, the groat life of the place which has sunk to rest. Evening light glorifies houses almost as it glorifies hills. They seem like palaces round a great green courtyard. The stucco is stone, and the whole scheme of the building is for a while what it was recant to be. It makes the Londoner forget the huge sections of ugly mean streets, and think of what London must be like to a visitor who only sees the best part. An American on a first visit told the present writer the other day that till she saw the spring in London she had not known what the word " spring " meant, and had not conceived it possible that such a miracle could be worked upon a city in so short a time. The London gardens impressed her almost more than the London buildings. The new green of London leaves is something no New-Yorker could imagine. •
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