A Vacation Among New England Gardens— By Lucuihs, Jr. 



CONFESSIONS OF A GARDEN GLOATER WHO HAS DISCOVERED AN ARTISTIC WAY OF 

 LOAFING, WITHOUT GETTING HOT, THINKING, OR LEARNING ANYTHING USEFUL 



T^OR fifteen successive years I have 

 A spent my vacations among gardens, 

 and, if I live, I expect to spend fifteen more 

 that way. Marooned in a raw, mining 

 town, where gardens and culture are un- 

 known, with August my only chance for 

 escape, and then only for a fortnight, I 

 work up during the rest of the year such a 

 tremendous appetite, for the mellow old 

 New England country where my ancestors 

 for ten generations lie in quiet country 

 burying grounds, that on the appointed day 

 I shoot out of camp, as if discharged from 

 a Krupp gun. The touring car has been 

 sent ahead and Seymour has telegraphed 

 me that it has reached the quiet old inn by 

 the sea where I first sniff the salt and take 

 my long-and-lovingly-anticipated plunge. 

 Then follows the best night's sleep of the 

 whole year, and the next morning, over the 

 sword-fish and coffee I inquire, "Well, 

 Seymour, where to, this year?" 



I spare you the flood that follows. My 

 cousin, Seymour Gardens, is, I believe, a 

 perfect guide. A perfect guide is a fellow 

 who knows it all but keeps still about it, 

 unless you turn on the spigot, and when you 

 turn him off, he quits. The one subject 

 on which I decline to be enlightened too 

 much is gardens. In every other branch 

 of human knowledge my heart's fondest 

 illusions have been dispelled, but around 

 my own pet hobby I have built an 8-foot 

 wall of stone, capped with broken glass 

 and cruel spikes. So when Seymour gets 

 on a high horse, and begins to evolve 

 15,000 calories about landscape design, 

 quotes Ruskin, and talks about the "soul 

 of things," I inquire heavily, "How much 

 manure did you say for that effect?" 

 Then Seymour looks off at the purpling 

 hills like a dying fawn and subsides. 

 That's my idea of a good sportsman, a 

 fellow who has the technique but won't 

 show off, and will never peep a word of 

 "shop" after supper, if your eye begins to 

 glaze. Seymour is my guest, so perhaps 

 that is why he eats out of my hand and 

 agrees to the rule of "Horticulture strictly 

 barred at meals." Such restraint is truly 

 noble, for Seymour is one of these editor 

 fellows, and a dilettante designer, lecturer, 

 and Heaven knows what beside. 



Seymour's idea of luxury is different from 

 mine. His greatest delight is to improve 

 his mind, and his idea of bliss is to motor 

 through New England country places 

 -with a Bodleian Library in the compart- 

 ment where I keep insurance against dying 

 of thirst in case we should break down in a 

 •desert. The first year that automobiles 

 were good enough he wanted to carry six 

 volumes of Bailey's " Cyclopedia of Ameri- 

 can Horticulture" and three of Britton's 

 "Illustrated Flora" so that we could name 

 every flower we met, whether wild or culti- 

 vated. Another year he was crazy about 



old trees, and he smuggled Sargent, Hough, 

 Dame and Brooks, and Rogers into the 

 locker before I could protest. Again, he 

 was so bitten by Wm. Robinson that he 

 could see nothing in nature, except through 

 the spectacles of the "English Flower 

 Garden." And one summer he got the 

 ecological bug, and was always getting his 

 landscape motives and garden themes from 

 some bog or "plant society," and I got so 

 sick of Kerner, Coulter, and Barnes, I 

 made him sit on the back seat 



My idea of luxury? Well, in the first 

 place, it is to cut all that. August is the 

 one time when I flatly refuse to think. If 

 I have to prod my brain fifty weeks in the 

 year, why shouldn't I loll during the other 

 two? " On vacation," said old Doc Walter, 

 "everyone should change the time of his 

 heart beat. Therefore, living in a high 

 altitude the year round, you ought to go to 

 a low altitude for your vacation." Con- 

 sequently I assume an expression of "This 

 social whirl is killing me" and take for my 

 motto "Let George do it." Seymour 

 was forever sticking his nose between the 

 red covers of Baedecker's "United States" 

 until I got tired of being laughed at and 

 making explanations, and insisted on his 

 re-covering that invaluable work in mouse 

 color. Seymour has an insatiable appetite 

 for historical societies, oldest inhabitants, 

 best local guides, nurserymen, landscape 

 designers, and other riff raff which he often 

 dumps into the back seat for a day at a time. 

 But I snooze happily through the learned 

 discussions and thus escape the "taint." 

 And I let the procession of Seymour's 

 clubs, private art galleries, charming host- 

 esses, gardeners in overalls, genealogists, 

 botanists, and cemetery superintendents 

 flow along like a dream, eschewing with 

 equal impartiality those that interest too 

 much or too little. 



"How, then, do we get along?" you ask. 

 Famously, because Seymour loves to stew 

 and the harder he works the more I rest. 

 No one can know the true joy and interest 

 of life until he has hung over a railing and 

 watched men excavating dirt for an office 

 building. I value Seymour for background. 

 He is always chasing in the hot sun that 

 ignis fatuus the "best garden ever," while 

 I love to sit on a cool piazza and watch the 

 great opportunities slip by. And I always 

 win every time because at the approach of 

 dusk I am several juleps ahead, and some- 

 times find an interesting chapter in the 

 one novel I faithfully read every year. 

 Seymour, on the other hand, always comes 

 back hot, dusty, tired, and in the dumps. 



"Any good ones?" I inquire, as I brew 

 his tea. 



"Same old story," he groans. "All 

 disappointing. Some good in spots, but 

 none as fine as they should be. The best 

 ones all miss their big opportunity." 



15 



After his second cup, I casually remark, 

 "Nothing worth going to this evening, 

 then?" 



"Well, there was one little garden that 

 none of the experts spoke about," says 

 Seymour. "We might try that." 



Good old Seymour! The first glimpse 

 he gets of a good garden he backs out and 

 saves it for me. Straightway he begins 

 to dicker for the privilege of coming in 

 the early morning before the family are up, 

 and if he can't arrange to have the bulldog 

 muzzled, we have to go at dusk. For he 

 knows that two gardens a day is all I will 

 see— one at each of the poetic moments, 

 dawn and dusk. The time is long past 

 when I will endure August flowers in the 

 garish light of day. Scarlet sage and red 

 cannas at noon are as bad as the hot room 

 of a Turkish bath. The glare of the over- 

 head sun on white flowers makes my eyes 

 and head ache, in spite of orthochromatic 

 goggles. And the piercing discords in the 

 average collection of phlox in the average 

 garden fill my soul with turbulence and 

 rebellion. Nothing happens between 12.30 

 and 3 p. m. that interests me, except a 

 siesta, the grandest invention of any age. 

 For there are no petticoats upon which I 

 must dance attendance, I have no dress 

 parade to attend, and I am not condemned 

 to do ten hours' penance in the broiling sun 

 between licensed roadside inns, like the 

 unfortunate speed maniacs and gourmands 

 who are constantly chasing and escaping 

 happiness. All gardens are bad in the 

 midday of an American summer. All bad 

 gardens everywhere are good at dusk and 

 dawn. After fifty weeks of sordid prac- 

 ticality I will have my fortnight of poetry, 

 if it kills me. But it doesn't kill me to 

 get up at dawn, and it never hurt any 

 hunter yet, and what is vacation for, any- 

 how, if not for siestas? 



In the callow old days when we used to 

 stalk our quarry with horses, I used to 

 take gardens seriously, and our technique 

 was fearful, including midday visits, pom- 

 pous luncheons with owners of great estates, 

 improving talk, tiresome arguments, and 

 other horrors. But the worst of these 

 evils was the proud proprietor who in- 

 sisted on being showman. At first, Sey- 

 mour used to delight in trotting out his 

 portable Bodleian, to confute a bumptious 

 gardener or set down a chesty owner, but 

 that sport soon palled. I got my first 

 lesson in the luxurious art of seeing gardens 

 from Washington Irving. "Make it an 

 invariable rule," he said (I am too lazy to 

 quote exactly and besides, my version will 

 be briefer, "never to accept a man's invita- 

 tion to see his place. Go there the next 

 day when he has gone to town, if you would 

 escape boredom and banality." 



On the other hand I am no sybarite, I 

 do not claim to have things down as fine 



