MARLBOROUGH HOUSE 



tried to repeople it with the men and women of long ago, I 

 could not do so. Partly because a garden Should be associated 

 with summer with hot sunshine and leafy shade, dewy mornings, 

 glowing noons, and calm, delicious evenings spent out of doors. 

 People do not promenade for pleasure in gardens, on bleak days, or 

 when rain threatens. Eden itself under such conditions would 

 have ceased to be Paradise. 



Or ever I saw Marlborough House the summer of 1915 had 

 departed, leaving behind it a reputation as regards weather, nearly 

 as evil as that of 1916, though it is only those whose play, or work 

 as does my own, demands steady sunshine, who can realize how 

 very bad the meteorological records of both years have been. 



It was early September, yet autumn had set in. The leaves 

 of the noble trees upon the lawn were falling sooner than is usual 

 in normal years ; and they were brown and faded, and in far from 

 agreeable contrast with the vivid, emerald-green sward on which 

 they lay for, kept verdant by the heavy rains, the lawns looked 

 curiously cold, and phenomenally green. There were rapidly- 

 widening gaps in the foliage, and sundry patches of bright sky 

 were visible where but a fortnight earlier there had been no break. 

 A day soon followed of alternate sun and clouds, when gusts of 

 wind blew off the drier leaves in showers, tossing them mischie- 

 vously to and fro, sending them whirling in the air, and dancing 

 gleefully on the gravel walks like the giant, upright drops of 

 thunder-rain upon the pavement, that, when we were children, 

 watching from a window, we called " pennies.'.' 



That week Queen Alexandra's gardeners had need of patience, 

 for the task of brushing them up was scarcely ended ere it had to 

 begin all over again ! 



Thus it came about that when at Marlborough House I failed 

 to visualize the eighteenth century mentally. I had no thought 

 of the ducal pair who had planned the gardens, in days when both 

 were still handsome, and very, very rich, though elderly, and 

 declining in the Royal favour. I ought not to have forgotten them, 

 for the Churchills belonged to the place, and the place to the 

 Churchills ; and in their day a brave company must at times have 

 gathered there. Up and down, up and down, the broad walk 

 (the walk which appears in the frontispiece) have paced in summer 

 days, the brightest luminaries of a very brilliant literary era 



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