THE FIRST TRANSFORMATIONS
The courtyard is no longer dank: it is widened, levelled, and walled in against its high fir-grown strip of bank. It is guarded by bright green wooden gates, and three sentinel Cypresses that begin to mark the Italian note.
As for the lower reach—the Reserve Garden now—which in former days was a dumping-ground for horrors of broken glass, potsherds and tin cans ‹a dreary patch of weeds and couch grass withal›, it is unrecognizable. Especially this year, when, to the herbaceous border, to the espaliered apple-trees, and to the neat little turfed walks, we have added a Rose-Garden between screens of rustic woodwork which are to blaze in the full luxuriance of the adorable Wichuriana tribe.
Where the jungle waxed thickest, fair paths have been cleared. An avenue bordered by a double row of tall slender Pines runs from top to bottom of the hill, with a view of our neighbour’s buttercup field on the one hand, and of our own Bluebell and May-tree glade on the other. It requires a positive effort of imagination to recall that this was a literally impenetrable thicket when we first came.
A VILLINO ON SURREY HILLS
Nor is the house less altered. As it was hinted before, a small white Surrey house has, by some singular, scarcely intentional process, become enchanted into an Italian Villino. Of course, some structural alterations were necessary.
On entering the red-tiled hall ‹once the pantry!›, at the end of which the glass door giving on the terrace frames Verrochio’s little naked boy, struggling with his big fish, flanked on each side by Cypresses, you might easily fancy yourself at Fiesole or Bello Sguardo, but for the unmistakable northern stamp of the moorland beyond. Passing through the other glass doors into the inner hall, the first object to meet the eye is the big della Robbia over the gracious figure of the Madonna kneeling against a blue sky with dear little green clouds upon it. Through the open dining-room door you have a vision, all golden orange, of different deep shades. The Scotch builder we employed for the construction of the two new wings opined that “the scheme was verra’ daring.” Personally, every time we go in, it warms the cockles of our hearts. We had the golden-hued carpet especially dyed. We chose the tangerine distemper for the walls. We had, indeed, considerable difficulty in obtaining the higher note for the curtains. Antique chairs, with seats and backs of brown leather tooled like old bindings, we brought from Rome; from whence also came the yellow marble sideboard table on its gilt-carved legs, above which a bronzed cast of Gian di Bologna’s Mercury springs out from that orange wall on a flamboyant gilt bracket, with a grace we have never seen that adorable conception display anywhere else. We found a handsome, but anæmic, oak fitment in this room, filling the whole right wall with cupboards, panelled overmantel, and bookshelves. It is no longer anæmic, but polished by our industry to a pleasing depth of amber gloss.