GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



found there. Nor can language alone demonstrate how happy was 

 the thought that converted the old brick arches all that remains 



o 



of the former stables in which Cromwell and Ireton had installed 

 their horses into a graceful arcade, festooned with creepers, 

 through which one catches glimpses of a terraced wall, descending, 

 by one or two steps, to the wilder woodland below, where begins 

 the leafy glade still known as the " Green Lane." 



It was after one of her later continental trips, that Elizabeth, 

 Lady Holland for it is necessary to distinguish between her and 

 her daughter-in-law, wife of the fourth baron brought back from 

 Spain the dahlia a plant that she is erroneously supposed by some 

 people to have been the very first to introduce into this country. 



The flower which it is scarcely necessary to say, is the lovely 

 single variety still grows abundantly near " Rogers' Seat," the 

 famous alcove where the poet Rogers was wont to sit, which faces that 

 bust of Napoleon, by Canova, that, ten years after Waterloo, Lord 

 Holland put up on a pedestal in the " Dutch " or " West Garden." 



I chanced upon that bower accidentally, selecting it as a suitable 

 place in which to eat my sandwiches I chose it simply because it 

 happened to be within a few yards of the point of view that I finally 

 fixed upon for my illustration. Looking up, I read the lines by 

 Lord Holland himself : 



" Here Rogers sate, and here for ever dwell 

 For me, the pleasures that he sang so well." 



Who reads Rogers now ? The couplet was an enigma to me. I 

 speculated on its meaning, associating it vaguely with Campbell's 

 "Pleasures of Hope " which, indeed, Rogers' earlier work had 

 inspired for I frankly confess that I had forgotten if I ever knew 

 that Rogers had written " The Pleasures of Memory," a poem 

 that had great vogue a hundred years ago. Moreover, beyond that 

 I knew Holland House to have been a centre of Whiggism and of 

 culture, I was unversed in its history when I first went there. 



I turned to my work ! And the " Pleasures of Memory " will 

 always be mine when I recall that brilliant summer day when I 

 first beheld the " Dutch Garden." I prefer to call it that, though 

 it scarcely bore out its name at the time, being ablaze, not with 

 such flowers as have come to us from Holland, but with scarlet 

 geraniums. These were astonishing ; never shall I forget the 



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