BOOKS.
MISS JEKYLL'S NE W BOOK.*
Miss JEKYLL'S new book makes an interesting contribution to a new and rather curious little school of literature. This school cannot be called exactly autobiographical, and it would be extremely unfair to label it egotistical. A good name might be the "school of personal experience," though that would perhaps cover only the useful contributions to the works of the school, and exclude such flights of delightful literary fancy as the experiences of the lady of whom we all now speak affectionately as "Elizabeth." Mrs. Earle's two charming books written on the peg of her Surrey garden are striking examples of this school of experience. The great difference of these books from all other home text-books is that the authors do not stand in a literary pulpit and preach to others as to what they should do. Instead, they turn to their own actual homes and describe them. They point out what are their own methods of doing things, frankly emphasising their mistakes as "awful warnings," and as frankly advertising their successes as worthy of example. Of course, in books of this kind great prominence is bound to be given to " that upright and independent vowel which stands between e' and o.' " It is the school of the direct appeal, and as a literary novelty its advent certainly deserves notice as both curious and interesting.
Miss Jekyll's descriptions of her house and its building are excellent and a great testimony to the work of the gentleman whose personality is modestly shielded under the name of "the architect." The account of this gentleman's methods of work is specially interesting just now if it be true, as report says, that he is the architect selected to build a typical English house, a copy of the beautiful Elizabethan Manor House at Bradford-on-Avon, at the Paris Exhibition. We can certainly trust our national reputation as careful builders to the man whose extraordinary honesty and thorough- ness of work Miss Jekyll shows us in these pages. As to the methods of the work done there can be but one opinion ; as to the actual plans of the house tastes differ. Some people, for instance, may think 8 ft. stuffily low for a room 27 ft. by 21 ft., and it is not every one who would in the least wish to have " something of the feeling of a convent " in a house intended to be the scene of the varied joys and sorrows of domestic life. But of course this was the special taste of both the owner and the architect, and the house stands as a very good example of the late nineteenth- century "zesthetic" style of building. (Miss Jekyll must forgive the odious adjective,—the only one which will convey the writer's meaning exactly.)
Turning from the architecture to the more horticultural part of the book, the chapter which the dweller in Miss Jekyll's own county of Surrey will welcome most will be the one called "Plants for Poor Soils." It is some consolation to the dwellers in Surrey to read the long list of delightful things which will be happier in their poor sandy soil than in the rich alluvial gardens of more favoured counties. The excellence attainable merely in lavender and rosemary should console Surrey gardeners for many evils. Miss Jekyll's arrangements for having a large supply of these
• some and Garden. By Gertrude Jekyll, London: Longman and Co. Dos. ad. net.]
two delicious bushes are so judiciously generous that we oan not refrain from quoting her methods :—
" Best among all good plants for hot sandy soils are the ever blessrd Lavender and Rosemary, two delicious old garden bushes that one can hardly dissociate, so delightfully do they agree in their homely beauty and their beneficence of enduring fragrance, as well as in their love of the sun and their power of resisting drought. I plant Rosemary all over the garden, so pleasant is it to know that at every few steps one may draw the kindly branchlets through one's hand, and have the enjoyment of their incomparable incense; and I grow it against walls, so that thy" sun may draw out its inexhaustible sweetness to greet me as I pass; and early in March, before any other scented flower of evergreen is out, it gladdens me with the thick setting of pretty lavender-grey bloom crowding all along the leafy spikes Of Lavender I always arrange to have two hedges of a good bearing age, besides a number of bushes here and there. Every year in early summer we make a good number of cuttings. When rooted these are planted out in nursery lines, and in the autumn of the next year they are nice round little bushes, just at the best size for planting out permanently. Lavender can also be propagated by layering, but the plants are not so well shaped as those grown from cuttings. The year after planting, the young hedge gives a few nice flowers, the next year a good crop, and the third year its fullest yield. After that, with me, the bush deteriorates, and begins to show bare gaps, yielding less bloom. Still in half wild places I leave it, because though it is no longer so eff-ctive as a flowering bush it is distinctly pictorial. But in the Lavender hedges which are in the region where pleasure garden meets working garden, and the flowers are wanted as a crop, the bushes are only kept for three flowering years, after which they are pulled up and destroyed and a young hedge made, the plants being put about three and a half feet apart. I always think it well with all these plants and shrubs of South European origin to put them out as early as possible, not later than the middle of October, so that their naked roots may get hold of the ground while it is still warm. In places where the soil is stiff enough to take up growing things with a ball of earth it matters less, but here and in other poor soils the earth shakes off entirely, leaving the roots quite bare."
Although very few gardeners who have poor soil to manage will have the strength of mind really to restrict their plants to the list recommended by Miss Jekyll, still a beautiful garden might be made of them in the case of gardens where very little labour can be afforded. Owners of gardens should remember that the growing of every plant which is not at home in their soil means an appreciable increase in the labour bill.
Londoners and gardeners alike will be interested in the chapter on " Cat Flowers." Though not one person out of ten will ever heed advice whose tendering suggests that any improvement is possible in the way they arrange cut flowers in water, still there are few mistresses of drawing-rooms who could not, if they would, profit by Miss Jekyll's remarks. The following suggestions as to the treatment of flowers which arrive after a " tiring" railway journey—for who that has unpacked the poor things would ever deny that they always look overcome with fatigue ?—are most excellent :- "On receiving flowers after a journey, every stalk should be cut afresh, and cut only the instant before being placed in the water. When flowers arrive from the South of France or from any far distance, the stalks should be prepared with a long slant- ing cut, or be slit up in order to expose a larger surface to the water, and they should be plunged deep in the water, right up to the flower itself, and left all night. If the water is warm, so much the better. Even for an ordinary journey, many things must have such a deep bath, or even total immersion. Leaves of Artichoke. so grand in large decorations with long-stalked Oriental Poppy, or the taller of the Flag-leaved Irises, such as Paitida dalmatica, are plunged over-night in the garden tank. Flowers that have milky juice, such as Oriental and other Poppies, Stephanotis, and Physianthus, want special care. I have often been told that you cannot make these live in water, and unless treated with simple common sense you certainly can not. These flowers and some others have a fast-flowing milky juice that dries quickly and hardens over the cut as if it ha I been pur- posely sealed with a waterproof coating of india-rubber. There- fore, when I bunch up Oriental Poppies, the moment before the bunch is put into its deep pail, the ends are cut afresh, and the stalks are also slit up two or three inches, and as the juice flows out they are plunged into the water, which washes it away."
Enough has been said to show that Miss Jekyll's book will give good reading both to the general public and the serious gardener.
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