THE LURE OF THE GARDEN 



a favorite was often the signal for a free fight. Then, 

 as evening drew on, long tables were spread under the 

 trees, loaded down with huge pasties and bowls of sack, 

 great quartern loaves and roast suckling pigs. 



The eighteenth century in England was not only the 

 time of the drawing-room reunions of wits, blue-stock- 

 ings, and literary folk of various degrees, but also of a 

 somewhat ostentatious return to nature ; a time when poet 

 or playwright planted his own garden and walked therein 

 or bid his friends to tea there, with a careful eye of 

 honest approval upon the excellent sylvan figure he cut 

 on his trim lawn among formal parterres and neat 

 hedges. Nevertheless, these little parties must have 

 been singularly pleasing. Pope's place at Twickenham 

 witnessed gatherings of his friends, chosen from those 

 with whom he was not at the moment quarreling, gath- 

 erings that for brilliancy of talk and variety of interest 

 can hardly be matched in tea-table history. Hither 

 came Gay, Swift, Lord Bolingbroke, Steele, Richardson, 

 Walpole, with many another famous wit. The garden 

 with its view of the Thames was charmingly secluded, 

 with an arbor of rose and honeysuckle where Pope's 

 mother kept her tea-table. "God forbid you should be 

 as destitute of the social comforts of life, as I must when 

 I lose my mother," Pope once wrote to Swift. A pretty 

 picture it must have been, the old lady under the vine- 

 covered trellises, bending over the handleless cups and 

 huge teapot, the buttered scones and cakes, offering her 



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