CHAPTER VII 

 CHISWICK HOUSE 



I HOPE the reader will forgive me if I begin my chapter on 

 Chiswick House with a page of personal retrospection ; the 

 more so that it describes a garden that, though neither cele- 

 brated itself, nor the garden of a celebrity, had not a little to do- 

 with my first introduction to the famous Palladian villa of the Duke 

 of Devonshire, concerning which it is my business to write. 



The happiest childhood is one that is spent in a garden. Of 

 this I am convinced. When I was a very little girl I lived with 

 my parents, who had come from the north, in a somewhat eld- 

 fashioned house near the river Thames, a house that stood by 

 itself in a delightful garden, shut in on every side by high walls, 

 on the top of which wallflowers and snapdragons grew. There 

 was a favourite corner on these walls, so overgrown with yellow 

 stonecrop that it formed, in the angle, a broad and softly-cushioned 

 seat. Up to this, by means of the gardener's ladder, I have many 

 times climbed, like Cowper's cat, " to sit and think," to read a 

 fairy-tale, or "do my lessons ; " but still more often, I fear, to 

 watch, with other children, the friendly nuns who were our neigh- 

 bours. For there was a convent garden on the other side of the 

 wall, concerning which, as we could not see very much of it, we 

 were frankly curious. The good sisters did not appear to resent 

 our observation, which indeed was very intermittent ; for in June, 

 a white-heart cherry-tree, trained against the wall, and laden with 

 fruit, became vastly more interesting than the convent ; and in 

 August the mulberries were ripe, and diverted our attention from 

 the nuns. This, at least, was so on week days. On fine Sunday 



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