GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 
it has been turned into a stable or a warehouse ; and, sighing, 
one exclaims, ‘‘ What sacrilege ! ” 
No trace exists of the gravestone of the bullfinch ‘ Dick,” on 
which he roughly etched its name and epitaph with a nail; nor yet 
of the tomb of Pompey, the dog; but the famous mulberry tree, 
beneath which tradition says he feasted the country children with 
luscious fruit, survives, or did so a year ago. It occupies a 
subordinate place in the centre of my drawing, and is partly hidden 
by the intervening trees. 
The level of the garden is below the roadway, and when the heavy 
old gate, or door, in the wall to the left, is opened, we see a well-kept 
acre, gay in spring-time with daffodils and yellow wallflowers. In 
the sequence of the seasons, these are followed in May by irises and 
pansies, and a month later the air is heavily scented with the 
fragrance of a magnificent snowy syringa. This is the signal for 
the garden to don its summer dress, a lavish mantle of scarlet 
geraniums, beautiful in themselves, but somewhat out of keeping 
with the memories the place enshrines. 
It is a peaceful, retired spot, an oasis in a dreary wilderness of 
dingy brick, and shabby stucco. In respect of its situation among 
houses, it is not unlike the Chelsea Physic Garden described in 
another chapter; but the surroundings of the old botanic garden 
are fashionable, and speak of prosperity, while on three sides it is 
overlooked ; the environment of Hogarth’s garden, on the contrary, 
though not exactly squalid, is dreary, ugly, and vulgar; and if 
poverty is not actually present, its spectre seems to hang over it 
and point at it a threatening finger ; but from without nothing of 
the garden is visible, and but little of the house occupying an 
angle of it. 
During the not inconsiderable time that I was going backwards 
and forwards to and from Hogarth House, the place was nearly 
deserted. It is open to the public on Mondays, Wednesdays, and 
Fridays, at the modest charge of sixpence ; yet not more than half 
a score of visitors came near it, and the caretaker’s office is a 
sinecure. Is this because interest in the work of this unique 
artist has waned ? that his art itself is discredited ? Or is it that 
few have the courage to make the unpleasing pilgrimage to his 
shrine, through the grey back-lanes of Chiswick, for they are green 
lanes no longer? To such I would say, ‘‘ The game is worth the 
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