A Garden of Peace: A Medley in Quietude

by Frank Frankfort Moore

The fact of its being mainly white accounts for the complaint that it conveys the impression of coldness; but it seems to me that this is just the impression which people look to acquire in some part of a garden. How many times has one not heard the exclamation from persons passing out of the sunshine into the grateful shade,—

“How delightfully cool!”

The finest chimney-pieces in the world are of white marble, and a chimney-piece should certainly not suggest cold.

That polished marble loses its gloss when it has been for some time in the open air is undeniable. But I wonder if it is not improved by the process, considering that in such a condition it assumes a delicate gray hue in the course of its “weathering” and a texture of its own of a much finer quality than can be found in ordinary Portland, Bath, or Caen stones.

I really see no reason why we should be told that marble—white marble—is unsuited to an English garden. In Italy we know how beautiful is its appearance, and I do not think that any one should be sarcastic in referring to the façades of some of the mansions in Fifth Avenue, New York City. At least three of these represent the best that can be bought combined with the best that can be thought. They do not look aggressively ostentatious, any more than does Milan Cathedral or Westminster Abbey, or Lyons' restaurants. Marble enters largely into the “frontages” of Fifth Avenue as well as those of other abodes of the wealthy in some of the cities of the United States; but we are warned off its use in the open air in England by writers who are not timid in formulating canons of what they call “good taste.” In the façade of the Cathedral at Pisa, there is a black column among the gray ones which are so effectively introduced in the Romanesque “blind arcading.” I am sorry that I forget what is the technical name for this treatment; but I have always thought, when feasting upon the architectural masterpiece, that the master-builder called each of these little columns by the name of one of his supporters, but that there was one member of the Consistory who was always nagging him, and he determined to set a black mark opposite his name; and did so very effectively by introducing the dark column, taking good care to let all his friends know the why and wherefore for his freak. I can see very plainly the grins of the townsfolk of the period when they saw what had been done, and hear the whispers of “Signor Antonio della colonna nigra,” when the grumbler walked by. The master-builders of those times were merry fellows, and some of them carried their jests—a few of them of doubtful humour—into the interior of a sacred building, as we may see when we inspect the carving of the underneath woodwork of many a miserere.

I should like to set down in black and white my protest against the calumniator of marble for garden ornaments in England, when we have so splendid an example of its employment in the Queen Victoria Memorial opposite Buckingham Palace—the noblest work of this character in England.

I should like also to write something scathing about the superior person who sneers at what I have heard called “Gin Palace Art.” This person is ready to condemn unreservedly the association of art with the public-house, the hotel, and even the tea-room. Now, considering the recent slump in real palaces—the bishops have begun calling their palaces houses—I think that some gratitude should be shown to those licensed persons who so amply recognise the fact that upon them devolves the responsibility of carrying on the tradition of the Palace. Long ago, in the days when there were real Emperors and Kings and Popes, it was an understood thing that a Royal Residence should be a depository of all the arts, and in every country except England, this assumption was nobly acted upon. If it had not been for the magnificent patronage—that is the right word, for it means protection—of many arts by the Church and by the State of many countries, we should know very little about the arts to-day. But when the men of many licences had the name “gin-palace” given to their edifices—it was given to them in the same spirit of obloquy as animated the scoffers of Antioch when they invented the name “Christian”—they nobly resolved to act as the Christians did, by trying to live up to their new name. We see how far success has crowned their resolution. The representative hostelries of these days go beyond the traditional king's house which was all glorious within—they are all glorious—so far as is consistent with educated taste—as to their exterior as well. A “tied house” really means nowadays one that is tied down to the resolution that the best traditions of the palace shall be maintained.

Let any one who can remember what the hotels and public-houses and eating-houses of forty years ago were like, say if the change that has been brought about is not an improvement that may be considered almost miraculous. In the old days when a man left the zinc counters of one of these places of refreshment, he was usually in a condition that was alluded to euphemistically as “elevated but nowadays the man who pays a visit to a properly equipped tavern is elevated in no euphemistic sense. I remember the cockroaches of the old Albion—they were so tame that they would eat out of your hand. But if they did, the habitués of that tavern had their revenge: some of these expert gastronomes professed to be able to tell from the flavour of the soup whether it had been seasoned with the cockroaches of the table or the black beetles of the kitchen.

“What do you mean, sir?” cried an indignant diner to the waiter—“I ordered portions for three, and yet there are only two cockroaches.”

I recollect in the old days of The Cock tavern in Fleet Street it was said when the report was circulated that it was enlarging its borders, that the name on the sign should be appropriately enlarged from the Cock to the Cockroach.