FULHAM PALACE 



Nor do I attempt to mention those worthies of England nearor 

 to, and of, our own day, men of light and leading, and of letters ; 

 learned divines, novelists, poet-laureates, politicians ; in a word, 

 half the illustrious men and women of the Victorian age. They 

 must all have crossed the picturesque quadrangle where even 

 now the fountain can toss its iridescent spray much higher than 

 the red-tiled roof to reach the hospitable palace in which, from 

 the eleventh century to the twentieth, the Bishops of London have 

 welcomed the coming, and sped the parting guest. 



But to return to the Gardens ! I had no personal acquaintance 

 with them before the spring of 1915, when the compelling demands 

 of the most terrible war on record disturbed their tranquillity. 

 They are charming now, and must have been exceedingly lovely 

 in the summers before 1914, when all God's peace was upon them ; 

 for their seclusion was complete the encircling moat cutting them 

 off from the noisy world of Fulham as entirely as a high stone 

 wall would have done although, indeed, one of the surprises in 

 most of the larger London gardens, is their strange repose, their 

 singular aloofness from the turmoil outside. 



Here and there in the Fulham grounds, as elsewhere, it was 

 even then obvious that the great strife had called away to the 

 colours, all the younger men among the gardeners, and that the 

 staff had been necessarily reduced though apparently not to the 

 same extent as in some still more extensive grounds of which I 

 know, where one boy and sundry elderly men, attempted to do 

 the work of thirteen, active under-gardeners. At Fulham the 

 War had transformed the once beautiful park and warren which 

 are separated from the flower gardens only by a low wire fence 

 into a vast drilling ground. The oaks and the elms, during all 

 their long existence, had never looked upon a stranger and sadder 

 sight, for the bridge of boats from Fulham to Putney in Cromwell's 

 day was far less significant of suffering. Nevertheless the park, 

 when I saw it, with the figures of men and horses moving among 

 the trees, was not unpicturesque ; for khaki is, to use a painter's 

 adjective, a " retiring " colour, blending better with the various 

 greens of nature than scarlet used to do. 



Often, when proceeding to my work in the mornings, I 

 paused for a moment to watch the eternal marchings and 



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