THE REORGANISATION OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY.
"91HE fortnightly show of the Royal Horticultural 1 Society was held for the first time at the London Scottish Drill-Hall, James Street, Westminster." This unpretending bit of news, copied from the gardening papers of last week, is really the closing sentence in a, chapter of the history of Western London. In the middle seventies, or thereabouts, the dwellers in two lines of houses, Queen's Gate and Prince's Gate, had what amounted to the exclusive use of a lordly pleasure-ground, which by a con- venient fiction was supposed to be devoted to the further- ance of science. The Commissioners for the Exhibition of 1851 had assigned them the land ; the Royal Horti- cultural Society had turned it into a garden. Flower- shows, indeed, were held at intervals, and on these occasions the fashionable world of South Kensington was invaded for a few hours by a crowd of country-cousins and amateur or working gardeners. Ordinarily, however, the grounds were given up to croquet on week-days, and to saunters under the scanty shade of the growing trees on Sundays. Each house had its own corner in the gardeners' sheds, in which balls and mallets lived by night, while by day the nursery, the schoolroom, and the drawing-room kept them successively in use. The whole place looked like what, in fact, it was, the private garden—nominally of all who chose to pay four guineas a year, really of such of the subscribers as happened to live in the opposite houses. The habitual frequenters of the gardens behaved very well. If the children occasion- ally destroyed the flowers in the borders, they contributed more than an equivalent in life and colour. The older people showed no resentment at the horticultural incur- sions which from time to time dislodged them from their accustomed lawns. They usually left the exhibition tents to those who cared for them, and either stayed away or amused themselves by criticising the strange costumes and stranger looks of the rural visitors. Altogether, for those who had the luck to live near them, the Horti- cultural Gardens were a very pleasant oasis in what was even then becoming a vast and. ordered brick- field.
To the permanence of this agreeable arrangement there was only one thing wanting. The Commissioners of 1851 were not disposed to inquire too curiously into the precise services which the Horticultural Gardens rendered to science. But as years went on, they did inquire into certain payments which the Horticultural Society had agreed to make, but—except, we believe, for one bright exceptional year—had not made. If the Society could have approached the Commissioners half-yearly with the full tale of money in its hand, it might very possibly have been in South Kensington still. But this was just what the Society could not do. Like an Irish tenant, it could "live and thrive" on somebody else's land, provided that nothing was charged for the use of it. The South Kensington Garden had that common defect of gardens, —it cost a great deal more than it brought in. It was emphatically not "the garden that paid the rent." For a time the Commissioners were long-suffering. They did not want the land for other purposes, and while that state of things lasted, they were willing that the Horticultural Society should have it. Then came the epoch of annual ex- hibitions, and the grounds underwent a lamentable change.
They ceased to constitute the private garden of the neigh- bouring householders ; they were thronged with crowds of sightseers for twelve hours every day. The permission to make one of the crowd, which was all the practically evicted Fellows received in exchange, was but a poor com- pensation for the power of escaping from a crowd which a Fellow's ticket had once given them. Even this, how- ever, was not long left to them. Each year the Com- missioners offered less and less, until at last the exhibi- tions came to an end, and the scheme of an Imperial Institute gave even the reduced area of the gardens an immediate value. The falling fortunes of the Society had had their natural result in a continually lessening sub- scription-list; and as the demands of the Commissioners rose, the ability of the Society to meet them declined in proportion. The crisis was prolonged and recurrent, but it worked itself out at last, and the nominal connection between the Horticultural Society and South Kensington came to an end with the year 1887. Hence the spectacle of the Society hiding its diminished head in James Street, Westminster, subsisting on a precarious arrangement with the London Scottish Volunteers, and obliged to identify the new home for its flower-shows by the addition, "near the Army and Navy Stores." Yet even in this its low estate there is consolation. Its instalment at South Kensington was to the Society what the conversion of Constantine was to the Church. It gave it splendour, it gave it position, it gave it the sup- port of eminent names, and the presence of great people. But all this was secured at the sacrifice of much of its original purpose. During its stay at South Kensington, the Horticultural Society lost more and more of its scientific character, and more and more came to be re- garded as merely one among the many lounging-places provided for fashionable London. Its true work went on, indeed, in its old garden at Chiswick, but it went on in a maimed way. The income, the staff, the labour, the appliances that the Society commanded, were all absorbed by the necessity of keeping the South Kensington Garden in order, and of filling the huge conservatory and the numberless flower-beds with decorative plants. What did the Fellows, who only wanted to see the lawns on which they amused themselves constantly green, and the beds which relieved the gravel-walks constantly bright, care whether scientific experiments were being crippled at Chiswick, or whether the Society was gradually losing all its hold upon such of its members as did not happen to live within sight of the Albert Hall ? Long ago, when the South Kensington fever was at its height, there were wise men who foretold all that has since come to pass, who warned the Society that it could not stay at South Kensington for ever, and pointed out that, in the true interests of horticulture, it would have been well if it had never come there. So long as there was a chance of this prediction being falsified, the moral that accompanied it was uttered to deaf ears. Now, however, that it has been fulfilled to the very letter, there are evident signs that the lesson is being laid to heart. A new class of fellowship has been started, chiefly at the instance, again and again renewed, of Mr. G. F. Wilson ; and the Council seem at last aware that it is only by appealing to that larger public which cares nothing for fashion and a great deal for flowers, that the Society can be set on its legs.
That in this way it can be set on its legs, we have no doubt. Since its original foundation, the number of persons to whom such a Society appeals has increased a hundred- fold. The habit into which busy men have so largely fallen, of living some way out, not of London only, but of every large town, has multiplied the opportunities for gardening, and with the opportunities has come the taste. What the owners of gardens want is some centre to which to look for information, encouragement, and the knowledge that comes of well-calculated experiment. They will not pay much for this ; but we believe that if they were sure of getting it, they would think it cheap at a guinea a year. The Chiswick Garden is very well adapted for its proper work,—the work, that is, of growing rare plants, or common plants under new conditions. In both these ways some- thing of interest might always be in progress there, some- thing that would well repay even the hasty visits of busy men, or of men only in London for a day or two. There would be no need for the Society to go to the expense of publishing "Transactions." The gardening papers would be glad to print a weekly bulletin from Chiswick, and in this way every member of the Society would know what precise services his guinea was doing to horti- culture. Some place in London would, no doubt, be wanted for periodical flower-shows, and this might easily be made a centre of very great interest to all lovers of flowers. During one at least of the series of Inter- national Exhibitions formerly held at South Kensington, there was a permanent show of cut flowers provided by some of the leading nurserymen, which was of great use in helping amateurs to name their own plants, to compare the results of their culture with those of large gardens, and to know which of the many advertised new plants, or plants which have been reintroduced after falling out of cultivation, are really worth growing. We are persuaded that a continuous exhibition of this kind would be of real interest and real use, while its cost would be comparatively trifling.
Only, to do all this, money is wanted, and though a guinea is quite enough for each Fellow to pay, it is only enough on the assumption that there are a great many Fellows to pay their guinea. There is now a really good chance that the Horticultural Society may do thoroughly that good work which as yet it has done imperfectly ; but, to enable it to do it, there must be a large influx of support on the new terms. If those who, with very good reason, have not thought the Society worth supporting when it was burdened by its liabilities at South Kensington, do not come forward now that it is happily rid of those liabilities, it must die a lingering death ; and this would, we are certain, be a real injury to a branch of science which is every day becoming more popular and more useful.
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