CHAPTER VII 
CHISWICK HOUSE 
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 cld- 
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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