GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



This first enclosure leads to another abounding in old-fashioned, 

 sweet-scented flowers. Here there is a mulberry tree of great 

 age ; and at the farther end a highly picturesque, rather tumble- 

 down conservatory which has still, suggestions of quite aristo- 

 cratic beginnings ; and over this sweet peas stacked in rows, and 

 tall hollyhocks standing in battalions, seem to mount guard. I 

 am speaking, be it remembered, of the Kelmscott House garden as 

 it was some three or four years ago. Since then it has changed 

 hands, and as the new owner has, with lamentable vandalism, 

 pulled down the red-tiled wing, formerly coach-house and stables, 

 in which Ronalds made his first experiments in telegraphy, and 

 Morris installed his carpet looms and held Socialistic meetings 

 he has probably replaced the pretty old greenhouse with a spick 

 and span new one. Alas, the founder of the " Anti-Scrape " is 

 no longer here to utter a word of protest ! 



This part of the enclosure shows some disposition to change its 

 character and to deviate into the ways of a kitchen-garden ; but 

 the result of this irresolution is delightful ; it always is, when 

 cabbages and Canterbury bells, and mint and mignonette, claim 

 kinship as being all part of the same vegetable kingdom ! 



The kitchen-garden proper, however, is beyond all this. It 

 straggles down almost to King Street, Hammersmith ; a postern 

 door that shuts with a spring in the old buttressed wall gives 

 upon a narrow passage called euphoniously Hog Lane and this 

 by devious ways leads to the shops and the trams, and the bustle, 

 of the outside world. 



But within, all is charming and peaceful enough it is but 

 slightly overlooked, and like the middle garden, it also boasts a 

 mulberry tree. Is the plant very slow growing ? if so, these 

 Kelmscott trees must be of great antiquity for each now greatly 

 exceeds the dimensions of a " bush," and pray remember that it 

 was a mulberry bush, not a mulberry tree, round which, in the 

 '' luxury of vain imagination " (for never was either shrub or 

 tree present), we have all danced in childhood " on a cold and 

 frosty morning." In any case, the game is as old as the tree. 



I mentioned elsewhere that according to tradition, Queen Bess, 

 but more probably King Jamie, fired with the ambition to estab- 

 lish the silk industry in this country, caused many mulberry 

 trees to be planted near London, and it is true that there is scarcely 



