And Dicky Travers, who, though also quite dead to the martial spirit, was a most patriotic man in sporting matters, called Bassett a “dog-shooter”!
This, however, was merely repartee, of which Mr. Travers was a complete master. In fact, he had invented a nickname for everybody in the Department, and at his wish, having a slight turn for rhyming, I made up a long poem of thirty-eight verses, being one verse for each man in the Department. The mere poetry, which was nothing, was mine; but the rich humour and subtle irony, not to say satire, was the work of Dicky Travers. Each verse of this poem was arranged in the shape of a “Limerick,” which is a simple sort of rhyme well suited to humour combined with satire; and it showed the delicate skill of Mr. Travers and his surprising knowledge of human nature, that each person who read the poem invariably laughed very heartily at thirty-seven verses—in fact, all except the verse about himself. I noticed this peculiar fact and was rather astonished at it; but Travers was not astonished. He said:
“My dear Corkey, when you are as old as I am, you will find that to see your friends scored off is one of those trials in life which you can always manage to get over. But the feeling is entirely different when anybody scores off you.”
I may give a glimpse of yet another first-class and original man before concluding this short chapter and proceeding to more serious business.
In some ways Mr. Bent, who lived at Chislehurst, was among the most naturally gifted of the staff of the Country Department of the Apollo. His talent, or you might almost say “genius,” was purely horticultural; and by dint of long and patient study, and devoting his entire spare income and all his spare time to the subject, he had gradually arranged and planted a garden that would undoubtedly have become historical, if only it had been a little bit larger.
It was his custom to give the Department a taste of his great skill during the summer months, for flowers were to him what a sporting paper was to Tomlinson, or a rifle to Bassett—in fact, the breath of his nostrils.
On his desk he had two vases, and in these vases always stood choice blossoms during official hours. Sometimes I recognised them, and oftener I did not; but when I did not, Mr. Bent, who was a man of mild expression and thin and stooping appearance, told me the names, such as Alströmeria and Carpentaria and Berberidopsis and Oncocyclus Iris and Pardanthes and Calochortus and Magnolia and Mummy Pea and many another horticultural triumph of the rarest sort. After the day was done, with the generosity of the born gardener, he would give away these precious things to anybody who wanted a buttonhole; but there were times when he naturally expected some return for magnificent hothouse exotics, which he brought to the office in the depths of winter or early spring, when flowers were worth money. Such things as gardenias and Maréchal Niel roses and Eucharis lilies he invariably raffled—not, as he told me, for gain, but simply to pay, or help pay, for the expense of buying coke for his hothouse, the temperature of which had to be kept up to fever heat, as you might say, in order that the various tropical marvels grown by Mr. Bent should survive the English winter.
Finding that I was very anxious to understand gardening, because I knew that many famous actors had said in newspapers that they occupied their leisure in their palatial gardens and orchid houses, Mr. Bent most kindly allowed me to go down one afternoon after office hours, not only to see his garden, but, better still, to watch him gardening in it.
“It is a pursuit that needs certain gifts,” he told me, as we rode in the train to Chislehurst. “You must, of course, first have the enthusiasm and love of the science for itself but that is not enough. You must make sacrifices and read learned books and study the life-history of plants and their various requirements. Some, for instance, like lime and some die if you give them lime. A lily, or a rhodo. or an azalea hates lime; a rose likes it. Some alpine plants must have limestone chips to be prosperous; others, again, like granite chips. My son, a child of tender age but already full of the gardening instinct, once gave a choice saxifrage a pennyworth of cocoanut chips—under the infantile hope that what pleased him so well would please the plant. A touching story which does not in my opinion spoil by repetition.”
In this improving way Mr. Bent talked, and when we reached his home he disappeared instantly to don his gardening clothes, while his wife gave me some tea. She, too, was a gardener and very kindly advised me to be especially delighted with a plant called Mysotidium, which Mr. Bent had flowered for the first time in his life. It was rather like a huge forget-me-not with rhubarb leaves, and it came from New Zealand and cost five shillings.