12 
HO USE & GARDEN 
I N old days, when I was 
a Fellow of the Col¬ 
lege, I lived in ground- 
floor rooms in the building 
which holds the wonderful 
library left us by Pepys, 
where the famous diary is, 
and the navigating-chart 
of Francis Drake and 
many other treasures. My 
low mullioned rooms 
looked out on the garden; 
I was writing my book, 
the College Window, and 
on moonlit summer nights 
I used to let myself out 
into the garden by a pri- 
The three Benson brothers: 
E. F., of the delectable 
“Dodo” fame, on the right; 
the late Monsignor Hugh 
Benson, likewise author of 
novels; and to the left, 
Arthur Christopher Benson, 
whose essays of rare charm 
are known the world over. 
The paper above has pecu¬ 
liar interest, in that it de¬ 
scribes the garden which 
gave A. C. Benson the in¬ 
spiration for that book which 
first brought him fame on 
this side of the Atlantic: 
“From a College Window” 
the reeds to the bastions of the fort. 
The monk who had seen the vision said 
that this was certainly the place. They 
landed, and there among the thickets 
stood an old stone tomb, ready to their 
hand. This they conveyed to the boat, 
it was re-erected at Ely, and the Saint 
was buried in it. So says the old legend 
of the Book of Ely. But where was the 
place and the dividing of the river? 
N OW about a century ago an old 
cupboard was taken to pieces in a 
little house at Ely, and it was found that a part of it had been 
made out of a painted mediaeval panel, containing a repre¬ 
sentation of the tomb of St. Etheldreda, which was destroyed 
at the Reformation; and it is undoubtedly a Roman sarcoph¬ 
agus, with circular plaques of mosaic. That was the first 
confirmation of the story. 
A year or two ago an archaeological society got leave from 
the college to dig a trench across the garden from the bastion 
to the river. They began by finding many Roman remains, 
and a little paved causeway, which went some way into the 
orchard and then suddenly stopped. Then for some yards 
there was nothing but gravel and fresh-water shells; then the 
Roman remains began again. The mystery was explained. 
We had found the missing channel. The little causeway was 
a landing-place for boats, and the space of gravel and shells 
w-as the' old river-bed, where it divided. 
This then was doubtless the place where the tomb was 
found; on the flat ground below the bastion there had been a 
Roman cemetery, as the many fragments of urns clearly testi¬ 
fied. The ruined fort was the Castle; and it was no doubt 
in the College Garden itself that the monks landed and obtained 
the sepulchre for the royal 
Saint! 
Moreover, the old name 
of the garden was the 
Pond-yard, and it is clear 
from old maps that there 
was once a long piece of 
water in the orchard, used 
as a fish-pond by the Ben¬ 
edictines, when they first 
settled at Magdalene, and 
built a hostel for their 
novices to attend Cam¬ 
bridge lectures—a build¬ 
ing which was included 
by Lord Audley in his 
college when he founded 
it a century later. This 
fish-pond was what was 
left of the old channel. 
That is a strange and 
fascinating little bit of his¬ 
tory to be included with¬ 
in the walls of our se¬ 
questered garden. It links 
the old and the new to¬ 
gether, and touches to 
light dim and far-reaching 
memories. 
vate door, walk up and down on the turf 
over the shadows of interlacing boughs, 
and watch the moon rising above the sil¬ 
vered roofs and high chimneys of the 
beautiful little College. A homely spot, 
with its orchard and shrubberies, and the 
river softly lapsing past the privet- 
fringed bank. 
It was a strange rapture, not unmixed 
with melancholy, to feel oneself for a 
short space the inheritor of all those 
clustering memories, and to look forward 
to a future, still rich in life, in which one’s 
own past, that seemed so full and active now, would be pre¬ 
served at best in a half-remembered name! 
I N such an hour, in such a garden Nature would seem to 
draw aside the curtain of her silences that there be re¬ 
vealed to us some glimpses of her mystery. Ear may not 
hear nor eye behold. Rather, in our poor comprehension, are 
we linked spiritually to all those growing things. Rather are 
we gathered up, as in the arms of an infinitely tender mother 
whose word brings surcease and relief. And into our souls 
enter the abiding strength of the wind-embattled oak, and the 
tenderness of fragile blossoms. A whiteness as of lilies de¬ 
scends upon us to cleanse and purify. Upon our torn spirits 
is poured out the fragrant balm of countless flowers and they 
know the soothing touch of gently stirring things. 
Doubt then grows very far away, and grief becomes to us 
but the ghost of a memory. We tread the silent paths, re¬ 
joiced, as one who has looked upon terrible things unafraid. 
At such a time there comes what, for all its sadness, is yet 
a consoling and sustaining thought, that each one of us belongs 
to the scene and surroundings where our life is lived, more 
than the scene and sur¬ 
roundings belong to us. 
That it is the place, and 
the life of the place, which 
is the more permanent, 
not the hand that labors 
and the brain that plans, 
or even the very heart that 
loves it all; we can but 
give our best and pass on, 
thankful if we have faith¬ 
fully handed on the old 
tradition and enriched the 
growing experience; and 
grateful, too, to have 
been intertwined with it 
all, exactly in that little 
space of rain and sun, of 
summer and winter 
weather, before we depart 
like the home-seeking bird 
for our journey over the 
wild waste of sea. 
