February 21, 1865. ] 



JOTJENAIi OF HOETICULTUBE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 



147 



waste was accounted for by such things as those gai-den 

 improvements which had cost ^£2500 this year, and which 

 were no improvements at all; they, perhaps, might have 

 been had they been done at the Brompton Cemetery. Xow 

 he came to a matter which really was shameful. He be- 

 came a life-composition member on the guarantee of what 

 he imagined was an honest and honourable Society ; but 

 now he had nothing to look back to, for, owing to the bank- 

 rupt state of the Society, subscribers would withdraw. The 

 debenture-holders, too, had very small prospect indeed ; 

 and all he could say was, that it was utterly hopeless for 

 them ever to expect anything unless a committee of in- 

 vestigation was granted. It was a gross breach of the 

 Charter taking the money of the life-compositions for 

 bear's grease shows and to buUd up a number of rubbishy 

 things which were no better than skittle-alleys and bowling- 

 greens. There was such an overwhelming' majority for the 

 South Kensington JIuseum on tlie Council that he could 

 not hope for any redress in behalf of horticulture. But 

 whether he obtained his point or not he cared not ; he should 

 endeavour to put the Society in a straightforward course. 

 Xow he would say one word with regai-d to the future. 

 They would this year- have to start with a deficit of d£4000, 

 and the income would most probably be less than it had 

 been last year. Of coui-se, the CouncU considered they had 

 a brilliant prospect for the future; indeed he never knew 

 when they had not a brilliant prospect, but they had never 

 yet realised it. Suppose they had an income of ^13,000, 

 out of that they owed ^£3000, leaving them ^£10,000. The 

 necessary outgoings, independent of the rent, would amount 

 to £5000 ; thus igoOOO was left to defray the expenditure, 

 which expenditure in 1S63 was .^19,000, and last year ^£20,000. 

 Deducting the outgoings of which he had spoken, there was 

 j615,000 left without a farthing to meet the deficiency. 



Mr. A. Westo>.~. — Without agreeing in every respect with 

 what has been said, may I be permitted, before secomiing 

 the resolution, to give my opinion on some points, which 

 opinion is shared by a considerable body, if not by a large 

 majority, of the Fellows of this Society ? Setting aside the 

 eligibility of the site for horticultural purposes, I would call 

 your attention to the position of the gardens, and to the 

 act that at the present time (except upon sufferance), we 

 have but one access to them — the two side entrances being 

 the property of the Commissionere of the Exhibition of ISol, 

 who can at any time take possession of them for building or 

 other purposes by giving three or six months' notice to 

 that effect. I do not presume to offer an opinion as to the 

 management of the gardens, but cannot conceive how the 

 science of horticulture can be promoted by the exhibition of 

 soap and scents in the conservatory, or the performance of 

 Mxunbo Jumbo in the arcades. Such sights ai-e more worthy 

 of the Crystal Palace and Cremorne ; and we have already 

 lost the services of more than one able professor, who felt 

 that tliey could not conscientiously approve of the Horticul- 

 tural Society being made subservient to other interests. 

 I shall say little ot finance. I believe we are very consider- 

 ably in debt, and the number of Fellows is decreasing. 

 TJnder these circumstances I think the CouncU were hardly 

 justified in giving iSlSOO for the great unsightly tent whose 

 bare poles ai-e now such an eyesore to the neighbourhood. 

 The greatest calamity that has happened to the Hortical- 

 tnral Society has been its amalgamation with, or rather its 

 absorption by, another body. Public opinion has spoken 

 loudly through the press on these subjects : but nothing 

 can be done tUl we free ourselves from the influence of the 

 smaU knot of individuals, the self-styled patrons of the arts 

 and sciences, who are sacrificing our property and destroying 

 otir Society. 



Mr. Cole rose to reply. I shall confine myself, he said, 

 to the correction of a few mistakes 5Ir. Godson has fallen 

 into. He commenced by upbraiding us with carrying over 

 ^00 for sculpture, which is stiU a debt. Now the sculptor 



Q^- ) had a commission — he has not executed it, and 



therefore has not been paid. Mr. Godson, in commenting 

 on the accounts, said that the daily admissions had fallen 

 off. Now I find that the daily admissions for the year 1S63, 

 as distinguished from the exhibition receipts, were ^£134; 

 this year, excluding the Rhododendron Show which is put 

 amongst them, they amount to nearly £700. TTe had the 

 misfortune last yeao: of not receiving so much a« we usa^y 



did for exhibitions. Two of the days, as will be in the 

 recollection of members, were extremely unfavourable as 

 regards the weather, and such as to deter the public from 

 coming out. That was a piece of ill luck which was the 

 great cause of the decline of the exhibitions at Chiswick ; 

 and I am afraid this dependance upon the weather is one 

 whicn can hardly be cured, except by ther course the Council 

 has taken — that is, of haviug places under cover. "We have 

 now provided places under cover of various temperatures, 

 where plants are well exh\bited, and to a great extent we 

 are independent now of the elements. We were not, how- 

 ever, last year provided in this respect to the same extent 

 as now. And then Mr. Godson coupled his observation 

 by an extremely courteous remark, or, rather, I should 

 say, a comparison between ourselves and another society. 

 He asserted, to my great astonishment, that whilst we had 

 lost, that Society had gaiued £2000. I am afraid this is one 

 of his usual dreams. If he will consult the accounts of that 

 Society he will see they have had apparently a surplus of 

 £900; but they have never charged themselves, and never 

 do until the following year, with the extra expenses of those 

 exhibitions. Therefore it is impossible to say at this moment 

 whether the exhibitions of that Society were or were not 

 paying ; but we have the published fact that in the previous 

 year they lost £500. Then Mr. G-odson flies into this curious 

 mistake : he goes into an estimate of what he calls a loss on 

 the perfume exhibition, and he estimates that we lost £10 

 daily, and our working expenses are £10 daily. That is one 

 of those odd mistakes people will fall into. It is certainly 

 quite true that these Gardens cost £3000 a-year to keep 

 them in order, and you may, if you like, say it costs us £10 

 a-day. The working expenses of the Gardens upon ordinary 

 occasions go on whether or not. Tou must have your door- 

 keepers, your superintendent, your man at the engine, and 

 so on; but Mr. Godson does not seem to be aware, whether 

 we take Is. or £100 a-day, the expenses must go on. As 

 to his remarks about the Journal, it is a matter of taste 

 whether or not it conveys information. Then he tells us 

 that we ai-e spending £20,000 a-year, and next year shall 

 have only £5000 to meet it. Now he has made a mis-state- 

 ment of the expenditure of last year. The current working 

 expenses of last year were less than the year before ; never- 

 theless our outlay last year was very large, as is well known 

 to the members of the Society. They will recollect that at 

 the last annual meeting it was stated that the Commis- 

 sioners of 1S51 would make an outlay of £13,000 to cany 

 out certain works in the Gardens. The Fellows agreed ta 

 spend £5000, and we spent £3000, and we made some further 

 outlays, but these are outlays, not cui'rent expenses but 

 all capital. The hon. member then twits the Council by 

 saying we have spent the life subscriptions. Well, it is a 

 matter vrithin the discretion of the Council ; it is a matter 

 of the Charter whether or not it is not most to the interest 

 of the Society to have the life subscriptions in the bank 

 paying £4 per cent, or expended in improvements on the 

 Gardens. I hold in my hand a paper which refers to the 

 time when that gentleman was very rampant in the Society^ 

 the annual Report of 1S60, the pith of which is this — that 

 at that time, as bearing oa thi Kensington interest, there 

 was a debt on Chiswick Gardens amounting to more than 

 £10,000, which somehow or other was wiped off by the sub- 

 scriptions to the South Kensii;gton Gardens [No, no]. Then, 

 I suppose, the gentleman paid it out of his own pocket. 

 I find it here [Reads the passage]. They had a Report in 

 1S59, and they had an income which, though reviving, stfll 

 was inadequate for the year, which had increased within the 

 year £600. The debt bearing no interest, beginning in 

 1859, amounted to £8000, wiiieh, exclusive of a contract 

 debt of £2700, had become m-gent. Now, the state of 

 matters in 1859, before South Kensington was heard of, 

 was that the Society was £10,000 in debt, and this was paid 

 off. But how paid off? I say by the subscriptions of gen- 

 tlemen who have been kind enough to join South Kensing- 

 ton [No, no]. I should like to have it shown that it was 

 paid off in any other way. I have yet to learn that Mr. 

 Godson paid it off, and I take it for granted that by a very 

 simple process it was paid off. Then he goes on to say, 

 this is not a true account, which, ef course, is not a very 

 high compliment to the Auditors who have certified to the 

 aflcoflntg, "Honest" was another word he made use of; but 



