152 The Landscape Gardening Book 



mistakes not infrequently made by those who ought to know 

 better, are anything to judge by. It is a lamentable fact that 

 there is an amazing lack of comprehension of true fitness dis- 

 played in many pretentious gardens. And until it is the rule 

 for us to think first and think intelligently, I am afraid that such 

 errors will go on being made. 



The pergola madness results from one of them. Who the 

 man was that perpetrated it in the first place, no one knows; but 

 over the length and breadth of the land it has spread — and the 

 end is not yet. Jacobean mansions, EngUsh half-timbered cot- 

 tages, Swiss chalets, French chateaus, and our own comfortable 

 Colonial manor houses alike display, with astounding impartial- 

 ity, a riot of (alleged) Italian pergolas, at front or back or sides, 

 or maybe all four and again in the garden ; to say nothing of the 

 nondescript dwellings of the nondescript class which have added 

 or been added to, a pergola. 



Nothing in architecture has caught the popular fancy to such 

 a degree since the deluge of " Queen Anne" style which engulfed 

 the builders of a generation ago. And just as the good and 

 charming Queen Anne domestic architecture became sponsor 

 in those days for dreadful monstrosities, little and big, so the 

 lovely pergola of Italy is to-day responsible for endless absurdities. 



Perhaps if the foreign word were dropped and the literal 

 translation substituted, it would be possible to consider these 

 structures in a more rational manner. "Pergola" is literally 

 " arbor, " " pergula, ' ' from which it is derived, being " vine arbor. " 

 Here surely we gain a better sense of relation — and proportion. 

 The English equivalent, being honest, is more conducive to 

 honesty — for who would build an " arbor ' ' in place of a roof, over 

 a porch? Yet many have put "pergolas" there; and as a 

 crowning absurdity we hear therefore of the "pergola roof." 



