A Dutch gentleman once said to me in Rotterdam, “If you want to see a real Dutch garden you must go to the Cape, or, better still, to England—for it.”
He meant that in both places greater pains are taken to maintain the original type than, generally speaking, in Holland.
I know that he spoke of what he knew, and with what chances of observation I have had, I long ago came to the conclusion that the elements of what is commonly called a Dutch garden do not differ so greatly from, those that went to the making of the oldest English herb and flower garden. This being so, when I asked myself how I should lay out a foreground that should be congenial with the picture seen through the window of the marble-panelled room, I knew that the garden should be as like as possible that which would be planted by the porter's wife when the Castle was at its best. The porter's lodge would join on to the gate, and one side of the gateway touches my ground, where the lodge would be; so that, with suggestions from the Chatelaine, who had seen the world, and the Chaplain, who may have been familiar with the earliest gardens in England—the monastery gardens—she would lay out the little bit of ground pretty much, I think, as I have done. In those days people had not get into the way of differentiating between gardens and gardens—there was no talk about “false notes” in design, men did not sleep uneasily o' nights lest they had made an irremediable mistake in giving hospitality to a crimson peony in a formal bed or in failing to dig up an annual that had somehow found a place in a herbaceous border. But a garden bounded by walls must be neat or nothing, and so the porter's wife made a Dutch garden without being aware of what she was doing, and I followed her example, after the lapse of a few hundred years, knowing quite well what I was doing in acting on the principle that the surroundings should suggest the garden. I know now, however, that because William the Conqueror had a fine growth of what we call Dianthus Caryophylla at his Castle of Falaise, we should have scrupulously followed his example. However, the elements of a Dutch garden are geometrical, and within four walls and with four right angles one cannot but be geometrical. One cannot have the charming disorderliness of a meadow bounded by two meandering streams. That is why I know I was right in refusing to allow any irregularity in my treatment of the ground. I put my sundial exactly in the middle and made it the centre for four small beds crossed by a narrow grass path; and except for the simple central design there is no attempt at colour effect. But every one of the little beds is brilliant with tulips or pansies or antirrhinum or wallflowers, as the season suggests. There is the scent of lavender from four clumps—one at each angle of the walls—and over the western coping a pink rose climbs. To be consistent I should confine the growth of this rose to an espalier against the wall. I mean to be consistent some day in this matter and others nearly as important, and I have been so meaning for the past ten years.
I picked up some time ago four tubs of box and placed one in each corner of the grass groundwork of the design; but I soon took them away; they were far too conspicuous. They suggested that I was dragging in Holland by the hair of the head, so to speak.
It is the easiest thing in the world to spoil a good effect by over-emphasis; and any one who fancies that the chief note in a Dutch garden is an overgrowth of box makes a great mistake. It is like putting up a board with “This way to the Dutch garden,” planted on its face.
I remember years ago a play produced at the Hay-market, when Tree had the theatre and Mr. J. Comyns Carr was his adviser. It was a successor to an adaptation of Called Back, the first of the “shilling shockers,” as they were styled. In one scene the curtain rose upon several of the characters sucking oranges, and they kept at it through the whole scene. That is what it is termed “local colour”; and it was hoped that every one who saw them so employed was convinced that the scene was laid in Seville. It might as well have been laid in the gallery of a theatre, where refreshment is taken in the same form.
M. Bizet achieved his “local colour” in Carmen in rather a more subtle way. He did not bother about oranges. The first five bars of the overture prepared us for Spain and we lived in it until the fall of the curtain, and we return to it when one of the children strums a few notes of “L'amour est un oiseau rebelle,” or the Toreador's braggadocio.
But although I have eaten oranges in many parts of the world since I witnessed that play at the Haymarket, I have never been reminded of it, and to-day I forget what it was all about, and I cannot for the life of me recollect what was its name.
So much for the ineffectiveness of obvious effects.