Something stirring in the blazing June jungle of Notting Hill
Struggles with manuscripts and proofs, urgent demands from editors and publishers and, let us admit it, the lure of exotic parties have prevented me from going down to Somerset much in recent weeks. So I have been enjoying the sunshine in London. As the Tate exhibition The Art of the Gamlen reminds us, there is no shortage of greenery in the capital, nor is it necessary to go to Hampton Court or Kew to find it. Some gardens are secret, of course. One I have just discovered, locked away in Kensington Palace, was the scene of a recent party given by the delectable Princess Michael of Kent, a much maligned lady who has been more lied about than any other personality in the entire lamentable history of the British media. Another is the Chelsea Physic Garden, scene of Tom Stoppard's annual shindig, one of the highlights of the season. And there is the amazing 1930s garden at the top of what used to be Deny and Toms, just off Ken High Street, which has a variety of surprises on offer, including pink flamingos. but it is not always open to the public as it can be hired by knowing nobs for their raz-mazzes.
Actually I spend most time in my own garden, which at this time of year is heavy with the scent of roses. An iron spiral staircase, which I installed, leads down from the peat double windows of my library and its balcony into this little oasis of green, the spreading vine on either side intermingled with pungent honeysuckle. I sit under giant shades, two walls of green to east and west, the south side ending in my studio. The lawn is not perfect but it will do. The pear tree leans a little tipsily but it produces abundant and delicious fruit. At this time of year, the winter-flowering prunus is not in bloom but its foliage is magnificent, and this tremendous specimen, planted ten years ago, is now more than 20 feet high. My American thunder-tree, installed soon after, is also going great guns. It was installed to replace a pestilential black poplar which Westminster Council gave me permission to uproot after I discovered its serpentine roots were damaging my house. Nor must I forget the elderflower, which covers the top end of my studio and is annually harvested to make a valuable vintage of cordial, the best of all summer drinks if you make it at home. Our recipe, given to us by the Dowager Lady Hesketh, is made with 36 elderflower heads, as white as possible, a kilo of sugar, two and a half pints of water and 70 grams of citric acid. (This last is now hard to get, apparently because druggies use it for their nefarious operations; Boots will not stock it for this reason, but obscure chemists still oblige.) You mix it in a large bowl until the sugar dissolves, stir daily for four or five days and then strain into bottles. You dilute it to drink or use as a nutrient syrup to pour over soft fruit and salads. The difference between this cordial and the listless stuff sold in shops is magical.
A London garden is not complete without statuary. A decade ago I bought from an Italian firm in the neighbourhood a replica of Donatello's 'David', whom the old boy cast for Cosimo de' Medici in about 1459 and is now in the Bargello. The original is bronze, of course, but my replica, made about 1800, is of crushed marble and I prefer it. The blade of David's sword is missing, alas, and I have found no way of remedying this defect, but the statue is still pretty impressive and immensely heavy: it took five sweating men to get it into place, so there is little danger of garden thieves pinching it. Also heavy, thank God, are my two Rodin bronzes. 'The Age of Bronze' and 'The Athlete', presented to me by Taki for getting a nasty (and untrue) gossip story about him suppressed. I warn potential thieves who may read this that Rodin bronzes are not as saleable as they may think, for Rodin, using his army of carvers, operating pointing machines to copy his master models, patinators and founders, working from his network of studios, manufactured his own replicas. There were, for example, more than 300 bronze copies of his 'The Kiss' on the market by 1917, in addition to marble versions made to order. My Rodins are quite authentic and signed on the base, but I don't know the size of the editions — since international regulation of sculpture, limiting editions of bronzes to only 12 copies, did not come into force until as late as 1978.1 also have a beautiful marble head of a girl, sculptor unknown, which used to rest precariously on a marble shelf in the flower border but was then knocked over one night by struggling tomcats, who occasionally invade my premises and on whom I wage ferocious war. The head survived undamaged but the shelf was broken, and what to do with the head is one of the many aesthetic problems (others are where to put my Guido Reni and my immense John Glover) which bedevil my house and will probably remain unsolved until death ends my worries.
The reason I hate the cats is that they kill and frighten the birds in which my garden abounds. I am thinking not so much of the pair of fat, greedy and lethargic wood pigeons who have set up house here — and whom the cats leave severely alone — as of the multitude of sweet-singing blackbirds, thrushes, tits and robins. It may be that robins, as some say, are nasty, cruel birds, but I have never actually seen them doing anything wrong. I love their perkiness and courage, their bright-eyed opportunism and their resourcefulness. They are, if I may put it this way, entrepreneurial birds, suitable to a capitalist system and an age of free enterprise. Thatcherite and Reaganesque birds, who operate as Friedrich Hayek said animals ought to do and will, if left alone by socialist organisations like the authoritarian RSPB.
The blackbirds are more of a problem. Their singing is excellent but once a year, when our vine produces its grapes in vast quantities, the word gets around on the blackbird net that the Johnsons are holding open house, and they descend in some force, gobble up the fruit long before it is ripe, making a quite extraordinary come-to-the-cookhousedoor eating noise (bird language for 'What bloody fool said there was no such thing as a free lunch?') and then spit out the pips all over the balcony. What to do? I don't know. I have tried netting but it is no good. Blackbirds are streetwise, one reason why they have replaced the horrible starlings as London's most numerous birds. I have actually seen two of them holding up the netting to let a third enter, despoil and get out. They are quite capable of mobbing a cat — indeed, during their grapepicking season I notice that the neighbourhood cats give our garden a miss. So I let them get on with it. One thing I am grateful to them for is that they seem to have driven off the grey squirrels. Now, I like squirrels, even the grey ones. They are graceful and amusing to watch, courageous, obstinate and clever as well. Unlike the birds, they understand the nature of glass and that, provided my library windows are shut, the threatening faces I pull at them are no danger at all. But they are destructive and antagonistic and mortal enemies of the small birds in my garden. From my observation, they and the blackbirds cannot co-exist, at any rate in such a small area as my garden. The blackbirds have won, for the time being, and the squirrels have pushed off.
So there I sit in my garden, often entertaining visitors to breakfast, morning coffee, lunch or tea. It is a wonderfully secret enclosed space, the nearby buildings invisible. In short, I preside over a little paradise of verdure, scented flowers, avian activity and mysterious rustlings in the undergrowth, and I only wish all my readers could share my pleasure.
Previous page
