Green Gardens
THE earliest recollections of childhood are retained in the mind as pictures of places. As a rule the first is the picture of an interior as clear in outline, as definite in colouring as that of a Dutch master. After that comes a scene from outdoors. For many Londoners this is ugly enough ; sooty walls with windows in them are what they see even when they remember the spring. But this is not true in all cases. Many of London's most true-hearted lovers seem to themselves to have opened their eyes for the first time upon a garden, with brilliant green lawns embroidered with crocuses, shining under a pale gold light in startling contrast to the black tree trunks. Or if spring has made a fainter impression than " mid-summer pomps " they may remember a hot sun, and great refuges of thick green Shade and massesof scarlet flowers, dazzlingly desirable, the forbidden fruit of a nursery Eden.
The green gardens of London have been extolled by her luckiest sons ever since William FitzStephen in the reign of Henry II wrote of her " smooth fields " among the houses and " gardens_ well furnished with trees spacious and beautiful." In spring they are still her chief ornament. Every Londoner. who deserves the name, who is not content to live in LondOn by bread alone, must, if he thinks at all, realize how precious they arc. But Most of us are too busy to think ; we clo_not realize that these treasures are not really safe. There is recurrent talk of building upon some of the best of them Two large ones--Mornington Crescent and Endsleigh Gardens— have been already destroyed, and several gardens in the centre of Bloomsbury are still threatened, even if the most imminent danger of their destruction is past. " When the necklace is broken the beads begin to run."
A pamphlet lies before us issued by The London Society, called " London's Squares and How to Save Them." It is a charmingly got up little brochure full of really interesting pictures, and it only costs a shilling. We do urge our readers to look it through and expend a few minutes' consideration upon its pictures and its warnings. Nothing but public opinion can permanently free these open spaces from the danger of bricks and mortar. No doubt so many acres of land could be put to very useful purposes, so could our picture galleries and museums, so could the sites and stones of most of our great public buildings, but so to use these great possessions would be plainly the act of madmen.
From time immemorial there has been this recurrent tendency for London to despoil herself, but in the old days the town was not so huge, the open country was not so far off. Far away in the twelfth century in the Deseriptio Londoniae it was said that " on the north side are fields for pasture and a delightful plain of meadowland inter, spersed with flowing streams on which stand mills whose clack is very pleasing to the ear." Such are the delights of small cities I By 1478 the question of space is becoming important. Stow tells us that about fifty years before his own birth London gardens in which boys played and " ancient persons walked for pleasure " were destroyed. He is always lamenting the tendency to impinge upon public pleasure grounds and open spaces. He tells of city churchyards, " large but once far larger," of encroachments " upon " the plain " below' Tower Hill of " a common field " near Whitechapel, once " The -beauty of this city on that part" now "so pestered" with " filthy cottages " that " there is no longer a fair pleasant and wholesome way for people to walk on." Now and then public opinion was roused and some " benefactor " gave a new garden to replace the old, or beautiful waste land to increase the amenities of the city. We hear of an ancient Jewish burial ground which was dug up and made into " a fair garden."
The problems of Elizabethan London were not very unlike our problems now—if we are to believe Stow. He is exercised about the dangerous traffic, but he re- flects that considering the immense size of the city, its beauty, its space, and its security are wonderful. Despite the disturbance caused by the " naughty packs " of slum dwellers, the great majority of citizens live very quietly " in true mediocrity " being " neither too rich nor too poor," and " earnestly bent upon honest labour." His middle class love of mediocrity notwithstanding, he feels that the great merchants are an asset to London, because they can make gifts ; " beggarly merchants do bite too near."
Bloomsbury was, of course, an " improvement " which Stow never saw. In 1623 there were 136 houses in Bloomsbury ; they formed the nucleus of a wonderful attempt at town planning. It became a splendid and dignified quarter of the town full of light and air. No other residential quarter is quite so well provided with small open spaces, and now it is at least possible that its whole dignity and amenity may be lost. Do educated and prosperous people care less -for light and air and green gardens than they cared when Bloomsbury was planned ? They care far more. They care so much that they want to get out of London altogether. They regard it as a huge workshop, a gigantic office, to lx deserted every night—or every week-end, or at least for the best part of every summer. It is their own little gardens in the country about which. Londoners are thinking. Surely all the same it is very selfish to let her. beauty perish. We are still Londoners, even if improved methods of transit sometimes make us doubt if we belong .anywhere.. Or is our indifference perhaps to be explained by the fact that unless we live in the houses surrounding the square gardens we ,hardly sec them ? If so, the thick hedges which enclose them should come down and every passer-by should be able to feast his brick-weary eyes upon their lawns and flowers.- If they are seen they will surely be saved.
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