HOLLAND HOUSE AND GARDENS 



days, have I turned up Holland Walk to the spot whence, standing 

 on the public pathway, it was possible, at that time, to catch 

 a glimpse across the stately avenue, of the courtyard and principal 

 entrance, and I have wondered, and wondered, what lay beyond ! 

 Nor was this in the least from idle curiosity ; I cared not who 

 came out. Had any done so it would have destroyed the spell 

 of romance and of mystery that Holland House, its gables, its 

 turrets, and all that could at that period be seen of its terraces 

 and arcades, had, almost all my life, laid upon me. That glimpse 

 of the interior at such times vouchsafed, was a glimpse into the 

 world of romance for I then knew little or nothing of the actual 

 history of the place. It was the positive architectural charm 

 and picturesqueness of that particular corner, added to its mystery, 

 that always fascinated me so that returning under the stately 

 trees, where the twisted roots of the giant elms still push them- 

 selves up through the soil, and their branches interlace overhead 

 to the dusty pavements, the dull brick and mortar of Kensing- 

 tonia to the daily round, the common task (for an artist's 

 serious training has its irksome side), was much like receiving 

 a chilling welcome from the Present after an excursion into the 

 fanciful Past. 



And Lord Holland himself ? Looking very lonely and solitary 

 as he sits there behind his iron grid as though counting the 'buses 

 that pass the boundaries of his ancestral acres not the real Lord 

 Holland, of course, but his counterpart in bronze. 



Stationary, unmoved, and immovable hatless, whether in 

 summer heat or winter's frost. Why is he there ? Does he watch 

 the realization of much he had dreamed of and striven for the 

 freeing of the slave, Catholic Emancipation, Reform reform of, 

 and for, the masses the greater happiness of the greater number ? 

 If not, what else can he see in these new men and women with 

 their new-fangled manners and dress ? these hurrying, hustling 

 crowds of the twentieth century, who, whether of the leisured 

 or the w r orking classes, pay no heed to him ? W T hy does he not 

 turn his back on the long, unlovely street ? 



The reader will know before this chapter closes. 



The air of aloofness, of mystery and repose, in which Holland 

 House is now more than ever enveloped for new and thick plan- 

 tations of trees are growing up rapidly between the old house and 



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