i872 HOUSE IN MARLBOROUGH PLACE 



413 



on the other side of which again is a Jewish synagogue. 

 The irregular front of the house, with the original cottage, 

 white-painted and deep-eaved, joined by a big porch to the 

 new uncompromising square face of yellow brick, distin- 

 guished only by its extremely large windows, was screened 

 from the road by a high oak paling, and a well-grown row 

 of young lime trees. Taken as a whole, it was not without 

 character, and certainly was unlike most London houses. 

 It was built for comfort, not beauty ; designed, within strin- 

 gent limits as to cost, to give each member of the family 

 room to get away by himself or herself if so disposed. 

 Moreover, the gain in space made it more possible to see 

 something of friends or put up a guest, than in the small 

 and crowded house in Abbey Place. 



A small garden lay in front of the house ; a consid- 

 erably larger garden behind, wherein the chief ornament 

 was then a large apple-tree, that never failed to spread 

 a cloud of blossom for my father's birthday, the 4th of 

 May. 



Over the way, too, for many years we were faced by a 

 long garden full of blossoming pear-trees in which thrushes 

 and blackbirds sang and nested, belonging to a desolate 

 house in the Abbey Road, which was tenanted by a soli- 

 tary old man, supposed to be a male prototype of Miss 

 Havisham in Great Expectations. 



The move was accompanied by a unique and unpleasant 

 experience. A knavish fellow, living in a cottage close to 

 the foot of the garden, sought to blackmail the new-comer, 

 under threat of legal proceedings, alleging that a catchment 

 well for surface drainage had made his basement damp. 

 Unfortunately for his case, it could be shown that the pipes 

 had not yet been connected with the well, and when he 

 carried out his threat, he gained nothing from his suit in 

 Chancery and his subsequent appeal, except some stinging 

 remarks from Vice-Chancellor Malins. 



I am afraid the brute is impecunious (wrote my father after 

 the first suit failed), and that I shall get nothing out of him. 

 So I shall have had three months' worry, and be fined £100 or 

 so for being wholly and absolutely in the right. 



