In my own case, as I have said, they belong to a world still more remote than the childhood of most men of “Grandpa” status—a world which has not even the link of language to connect it with the present!
Paradoxically, this is perhaps the reason why I take so much pleasure in finding these happy-hued and odorous things now rising, and living under their right English names, in a garden of my own. To the other denizens of Villino Loki they are part of the excellent general company foregathering in our garden: but to me they are in many ways my intimates. We seem “to have known things together”; things doubtless of no importance, but pleasant to recall in casual intercourse.
IX
The Lilac and Acacia, for instance, were the flower-bearers of the tree-planted playground of that jocund old school where I received the first rudiments of education: the Institution Delescluze, then situate in a kind of backwater of the faubourg St. Honoré at the angle facing the Palais de l’Elysée. It has, alas long since been swept away to make room for modern mansions. This ancient Institution, or preparatory school, would seem to have dated from the distant days, early Louis XV probably, when the north side of the then lengthening noble faubourg must still have been occupied by meadows and orchards.
By the way, it has never occurred to me before to look up that little topographical matter authoritatively. I do so now. I have here a copy of a wonderful work, the “perspective” map of Paris as it stood in the ’thirties, of the eighteenth century. It is called the Plan de Turgot, having been surveyed, and engraved, in lavishly decorative style, by order of Louis-le-Bien-Aimé, under the care of the celebrated Prévost des Marchands. The book is quite the most fascinating of its kind I know—and I think I have handled as goodly a number of such works as any man alive. ‹The nearest approach to it, in point of what one may call picturesque perspicuity, is the wonderful bird’s-eye view of Edinburgh set down by James Gordon of Rothiemay, and engraved at Amsterdam by F. de Wit, about a century earlier.› This plan of Turgot is an elaborate affair indeed—an atlas of twenty large sheets, showing practically every individual house of any importance. Would we had such a work in existence dealing with Georgian London!
Well, to investigate.... Aye, here are the orchards and market gardens, beginning at the very back of a narrow line of houses, covering all the ground of what nowadays is a close network of stone-fronted streets! Here stands the Hôtel d’Evreux, the last, moving westward, of that array of lordly mansions: the Hôtels de Montbazon, de Guébrian, de Charost, de Duras.... A few of these patrician dwellings, each with their own formal gardens stretching southwards to the Champs Elysées, have retained to our own times their dignity unimpaired. But where are now scattered most of these grand French family names, since the tornado of the great Revolution? But, to our map.... Yes, this Hôtel d’Evreux—whilom appanage of Madame de Pompadour, now the aforesaid Palais de l’Elysée; residence, in due rotation, of the swift-changing presidents of the Republic—is here under my finger. And its position unquestionably fixes, some two hundred yards westward, that of the now vanished Institution Delescluze, so interesting to me. And here spread themselves the orchards, of which the existence a moment ago was, after all, only a matter of surmise!