GARDEN
I
It is easier to begin with our beasts.—First, they are much the most important, and secondly, there are only six of them. Our bulbs lie in their thousands with just a green nose showing here and there now in January and are nameless things: only collectively dear, if extraordinarily so.
It will instantly be perceived what kind of gardeners we are, and what kind of garden we keep. We have scarcely a single plant of “individuality.” We do not spend ten guineas on a jonquil bulb, nor fifteen on a peony. To our mind no flower can be common: therefore we lavish our resources on quantity. I was going to say: not quality, but that is where, in our opinion, the modern kind of garden-maker goes wrong. What is in a name? Where flowers are concerned, nothing! But how much, what treasures of joy and colour, of shade and exquisite texture, of general blessedness in fact, lurk in the beloved crowd of the nameless things, that come to us designated only thus: “Best mixed Darwin Tulips”; “Blue bedding Hyacinths”; “Single Jonquils, best mixed,” and so on! We once descended so far as to order “a hundred mixed Delphiniums at 10s.,” and when, last June, we looked down on a certain bed in the Reserve Garden from the seat under The Beech Tree ‹which commands that enthralling spot› and saw the blue battalion glowing with enamel colours draw up against the moor beyond, we felt not at all ashamed of ourselves—yea, we felt conceitedly pleased.
But our beasts are individual indeed; and, as it was said, there are only six of them.
CONCERNING THE PEKINESE
The first in order of importance is the Pekinese, who, purchased at a moment when we were much under the enchantment of the “Ring,” we ineptly—yet, from the ethnological standpoint, not altogether inappropriately—called Loki: his coat is fiery red, and he is an adept at deceit. When we want to impress strangers we hastily explain that he is Mo-Loki, son of the great Mo-Choki, the celebrated champion. Loki ‹who frequently assures us that he was a Lion, in Pekin› was born on the roof of the Imperial Palace in High Street, Kensington. His appearance and behaviour are such as bear testimony to his princely lineage. We let him run a great deal when he was a puppy, with the result that his legs are a little longer than is usual with members of the Imperial Dynasty, but “Grandpa”—Stop! It is as well to explain from the outset that, since the advent of Loki in the family, Grandpa is the name that has devolved, automatically, upon the Master of the House: the infant Loki’s mistress having assumed, from the very necessity of things, the post and responsibility of mother ‹in Pekinese ma-ma›, it must follow as the night the day that her father “illico” became Grandpa.—To resume: though his legs are a trifle longer than is usual, the Master of the House says he is much more beautiful by reason of this distinction. And we all agree with him.