The Happy Garden 



spinet you see the room like a Dutch painting, a 

 Peter de Hooch, with a glimpse of the courtyard 

 and the umbrella roses beyond. All through the 

 summer months I have purple and mauve sweet 

 peas in the copper bowls, and they show finely 

 against the green net curtains which I discovered 

 after a long and desperate search for something 

 to replace white muslin and silk as a foil to chintz. 

 They fade in the sun, but that makes no difference. 

 We have a dyeing-day, and dip them and the 

 darkish-blue tablecloths, and the man's shirts, and 

 anything else that clamours to be blue or bluer 

 than it is. 



Here at the windows, to hold back the chintz 

 curtains, are apples of green glass with ormolu 

 leaves, which set me thrilling when I look at them, 

 though I have had them for more than three years. 

 I'm afraid they are Empire, and, strictly speaking, 

 out of place in a room devoted, like most of the 

 house, to Queen Anne ; but principles and rules are 

 most effective when they are broken here and there, 

 and, after all, Queen Anne is dead, and the Empire 

 and many other fashions have passed over her 

 memory. And certain things are so charming that 

 I must and will have them, whether the rest of the 

 furniture likes it or not. What is a chair or a table 

 that it should dictate to a free English woman ? 



34 



