“Exactly,” said Sir James eagerly, “and it is impossible to help triumphing in one’s pity while one reasonably says, ‘Why attempt to grow out-of-doors the tender fruits of a warmer clime in such a precarious country as ours? Or, if you must grow them, why not metaphorically provide your peaches, nectarines, apricots, and choice plums with goloshes, macintoshes, and, above all, with an umbrella?’ I do, and I egotistically take my friends to see the result. Their trees are drenched, desolate, and the saturated ground beneath is strewn with rotting fruit. My trees, on the contrary, have their toes nice and warm; their bodies are surrounded by a comfortable great coat; and, above all, their delicate leaves and still more delicate blossoms are sheltered by a spreading umbrella of glass. In other words I grow them in an orchard house, and the result is that they are laden with luscious fruit.”
“Ah!” said the doctor, “but this is the luxury of the rich, my boy: glass-houses are a great expense.”
“By no means, Jack. If gorgeous glass palaces and Paxtonian splendour are desired, of course I have nothing to say; but the man of modest mind who likes to exercise his own ingenuity to slope some rafters from the top of a garden wall to a few posts and boards in front, and cover in the slope with the cheapest glass, may provide himself at a very trifling expense with a glazed shed, within whose artificial climate he may grow as many choice plants as he chooses, he may begin with five pounds, or go up to five hundred, as he pleases: the fruit would be the same: all that is required is shelter, ventilation, and abundance of light. The heat is provided by Nature, none other is needed—no furnaces, boilers, hot-water pipes, flues, or expensive apparatus of any kind; finally, comprehensively, nothing is necessary but a glass-roofed shed with brick or boarded sides, and, I repeat, the roughest structure will give as good fruit, perhaps as much satisfaction, as the grandest house.”
“Just as poor Hodge enjoys his slice of bacon as much as you do your paté.”
“Exactly, Jack,” continued Sir James, who was well mounted upon his hobby, “there is no secret about the matter. The delicate fruits of the peach family, and even choicer plums, are most abundant bearers; all they want is a suitable climate to produce their stores. That climate, save, say, once in seven or eight years, England does not afford. The troubles of these aristocrats of the garden begin very early in the year, when, according to their habit, every twig puts forth a wondrous display of crimson, pink, and delicately-tinted white bloom, just at a time when our nipping frosts of early spring are rife. The consequence is that in a few short hours the hopes of a season are blighted. In sheltered positions often, by chance, a few blossoms, as a gardener would say, set their fruit, which run the gauntlet of our fickle clime, and perhaps ripen, but more likely drop from the trees in various stages of their approach to maturity, the whole process being so disheartening that, in a season like the past, many gardeners declared that it was a hopeless effort to attempt to grow peaches and nectarines out-of-doors.”
The doctor looked at his watch.
“All! it isn’t breakfast time yet, Jack, and you are in for my lecture. As I was about to say, nous avons changé tout cela. We build our orchard house handsome or plain, according to our means, and in that shelter we have an artificial climate, such as made some gentlemen from the South of France exclaim, when visiting the gardens of the late Mr Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, the introducer of the system, ‘Ah! Monsieur Rivers, voici notre climat!’ In fact the above gentleman, in his interesting work, says: ‘An orchard house in the south of England will give as nearly as possible the summer climate of Toulouse.’ And this, mind, from sun heat and earth heat alone—heat which, so far from needing increase, has to be modified by abundant ventilation.”
“Ah! that’s what I want you to mind, old fellow,” said the doctor; “you are not a plant, and I don’t want you to get yourself in a state of heat under the glass here, and then expose yourself to abundant ventilation.”
“Only like cooling after a Turkish bath,” said Sir James.
“I don’t like Turkish baths,” said the doctor, “the overheating affects the nerves.”