It is there still, but few visitors to that gloomy Chelsea house, where two geniuses, a man and woman, failed sufficiently to subdue and blend their individualities for so many years, ever walk down the garden to see it. Underneath are the remains of one who could neither read nor write nor frame systems, but who lived the only successful life of the three.
An American Hero
Who was William Allen Richardson? I once asked. Since the publication of the volume of essays in which the problem was so tiresomely propounded many letters have reached me, each with its own solution. All are different; and their differences show how important it was that a warrior for truth should come forward and fling the question in the world’s face. For the growth of legend and myth that has been endangering the fame of this noble deviser of an orange-hearted rose was becoming too rampant. Let me, therefore, who asked the question, now answer it; for I know. By dint of careful pruning I have removed the apocryphal, and the truth remains. William Allen Richardson was—
But you must permit me first to narrate some of the experiences of an essayist who has the temerity to indulge in interrogation marks.
The first letter I received—almost immediately after the publication of the book—gave so lucid an account of William Allen Richardson that I began to think I had made too much of the mystery. “Do you really want to know about William Allen Richardson?” it began; and then this story was told: “William Allen Richardson and his wife loved roses, and the ambition of their lives was to raise an orange-coloured rose. At last they succeeded, and they called the treasure ‘William and Ellen Richardson,’ a rather cumbersome title, but meaning much to these two. Alas, the printer would have none of this sentiment—hence ‘William Allen Richardson.’”
I cannot say that this narrative satisfied me; but there was nothing in it to make one violently sceptical. Why should not William and Ellen have lived this idyllic rose-growing life? Why should not their names have been thus intertwined for ever, even if a little ungallantly? I had seen barges on the Thames called “William and Ellen,” I was sure; why not roses? I therefore went about saying that I now knew the whole history of William Allen Richardson, and the story was not doubted.
But then arrived an anonymous post card with the Paddington postmark: “I am of no importance and my brother is of no importance, but William Allen Richardson was the brother of my brother’s handy man. (At least he said so.)” What of William and Ellen after that? For the time, at any rate, the narrative of their fragrant union passed from my repertory.
That post card will give you an idea of the lightness with which this matter can be approached. I do not mean that the communication in itself is frivolous, for, though easy in tone, it yet states the case briefly and clearly; the lightness that I complain of is in the attitude of the writer’s brother towards this tremendous problem. Here he was, with his brother’s handy man claiming to be the own brother of the great William Allen Richardson, and yet doing no more (apparently) than treating it as a myth—never investigating—never, in short, really caring. Now if I had a brother whose handy man was—— But this is boasting, self-approval; and complacent people conscious of their own rectitude rarely get at the truth.
Other correspondents followed, all strangers to me, and each with a pet theory. One had it that William Allen Richardson had been gardener to a rose-loving duke. Another, that he was a Scotchman who had gone to France, to manage the Ducher nursery. Another, that he was the American editor of a horticultural journal. Then came another more circumstantial story, from a lady in Yorkshire. “I was taught by a dear old country vicar (himself an enthusiastic rose-grower and close friend of Dean Hole) that W. A. Richardson was one of the Quaker firm of Richardson, who had a place near Newry in the north of Ireland.” This so chimed in with my own Quakerish suspicions, as expressed in the original essay, that I was inclined to think we might really be at home at last; but meanwhile an American missive was on its way from Louisville, Kentucky, and when it arrived I saw at once that here was Veritas naked and unashamed.