MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON pLUTARCH was wont to interrupt his .tales of .glory and disgrace by inserting moral reflections upon the manners and customs of his-time. It would be a mistake to accuse him of sententiousness, since he took an ever-fresh delight in his own heroic narratives, was ready to forgive lapses from nobility as being no more than " shortcomings in some par- ticular excellence," and failed entirely to conceal his affection for such wayward types as Alcibiades and Antony. - But we are not allowed to forget that, before he became a biographer, he had lectured on ethics and served as a priest of Apollo in the Temple at Delphi. It is true, I think, that moral philo- sophers and clergymen do not make the best biographers, and Plutarch was certainly hampered as a historian by his desire to write cautionary tales illustrative of the virtues of " lovely and famous Athens" and " invincible and glorious Rome." As a boy he had played knuckle-bones around the base of the huge stone lion which to this day dominates the plain below Parnassus- and, when grubbing for eels among the sedge of the Cephissus, had come across bits of greaves and breast-plates dating from the battles of Sulla and Philip of Macedon. It is not surprising, therefore, that even the University of Athens, even the lecture-rooms of Alexandria and Rome, did not suffice to numb his vivid sense of the romance of history, or to chill his Kipling warmth. When in his old age he returned to Chaeronea, amused himself by writing his entrancing Lives, and devoted the surplus of his energy to the drudgery of his Parish Council, his reflections upon conduct assumed a mellow tinge. Being an eclectic, he was able, quite gently, to indicate what were in fact the precepts of virtue that had rendered the great Athenians worthy of being dubbed both beautiful and good and had given to the better Romans their superb gravitas. Occupying himself with the affairs of his own small town, he learnt how conciliatory was the effect of the gentlemanly qualities. . * * * * Among his many incidental apophthegms upon conduct there is a passage denouncing those who behave ungenerously to old servants. He condemned those employers who, when their ancient retainers became crippled with rheumatism and therefore past their work, would just send them back to the slave:market to be sold for what they would fetch. Such insensitiveness, be contended, was evidence-of " a very mean mind "; he indicated that the perpetrators of these offences evidently felt that there was " nothing in the relations between man and man beyond the material link of usefulness."' It is not easy for us, with our egalitarian training, to understand the attitude of the ancients towards the system of slavery, or to forgive a man of Aristotle's enlightenment for regarding domestic slavery as a necessary and even salutary social insti- tution. Yet they certainly . realised that the system would become wholly indefensible unless the owners of slaves realised the responsibilities entailed. Our own long territorial tradition created a similar sense of obligation. -It became morally impos- sible for any employer summarily to dismiss a retainer who had worked for the family for many years. The parks and gar- dens of our ancient estates were peopled with arthritic dotards sweeping leaves slowly, and in the budget of every household. allowance was made for a long list of pensioners, who were supported and housed until they died. To evade this obliga- tion was regarded as evidence of ' a very mean mind "; people who acted thus selfishly were disliked and shunned. * * * * In these days of dithinished incomes and the Welfare State, this tradition of direct personal responsibility may become difficult to perpetuate and may lose its human quality. The " family " so long served by a faithful retainer may have flitted to Rhodesia, and the quiet lawns and fields that he had known from boyhood may now echo to the strident cries of school- girls playing hockey or lacrosse. It is true that the servitor who is no longer able to work can draw his weekly old-age pension and is preserved by the community from actual desti- tution; but what he needs for happiness is some continuity with his own past and some opportunity to preserve, even if in the mildest way, the habit of his life. It is for this reason that I warmly welcome and recommend the scheme now being put forward by the Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Institution, of 92 Victoria Street, who are appealing for funds to endow and equip a Country Home for aged gardeners who are unable to find employment. They have found in the village of Horton in Buckinghamshire a house with a garden of four-and-a-half acres admirably suited for their purpose. This house can accommodate some forty aged gardeners with their wives; the old people will be able to fiddle during the afternoon with the roses and the carnations and in the evening discuss together the mysteries of horticulture and the triumphs of the old days when there were fifteen men employed to do the bedding-out and gardenias and tuberoses in the greenhouses. They will thus not feel that they are sundered from their own experience, that they are condemned to live off the charity of the State, and their closing years will be passed in the company of equal experts and in the gentle handling of the flowers they have always loved.
* Many of us can still recall the part played in our childhood by the family coachman, game-keeper, or head gardener. The latter was often a formidable figure, who held strong views about little boys who crept under the strawberry-nets, or who would pluck unripe peaches from the walls. We noticed that even our elders were intimidated by Mr. Stubbs, and that their instructions took the form, not of orders such as were addressed to the other servants, but of tentative suggestions diffidently advanced. " I shall want the wagonette at half past two sharp," our parents would remark to the coachman; but when it came to the head gardener a note of slavish insinuation would creep into their voices. " I wonder, Mr. Stubbs. whether it would be possible. . ."; thus would they begin; and when Mr. Stubbs said "No," they would recoil crushed. In later years I have studied the mentality of head gardeners with affection and awe and have come to learn the many eccentricities that they develop. They have a habit, for instance, when embarking on the long weeks of hedge-clipping, to begin at the back and first to finish the parts that do not show. They have a habit of refusing to pay attention to work that appears to us of extreme urgency, on the ground that that particular section of the garden is not yet the section to which they have " got round." They have a habit of tending with the utmost solicitude the pans in which they nurse their seeds or cuttings, and thereafter behaving like birds and ignoring the progeny once the plants have become established. Even the best gardeners have their prejudices and predilections. They will clutter up the green- house with nerines and allow the arums to become pot-bound. Their capacity for passive resistance is obstinate and proud.
* * Yet when we watch them pruning roses, or splaying fruit- trees against the wall,-their delicate dexterity makes us feel that all our own fingers are thumbs. It is not merely that their patience is an example to this hurried and angry world; it is not their skill only that compels admiration; it is the way that they touch the plant as if it were a sentient being, almost whispering to it words of solace and encouragement. Surely such excellent men should not be allowed to become the victims of mechanical benevolence or be sundered utterly from the craft they love. I feel with Plutarch that those of us who derive pleasure from flowers and do nothing to help the appeal of the Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Institution are possessed " of very mean minds."
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