You can get no symbol finer than a path, no symbol is more used. Of necessity a path must begin somewhere and have a destination. Of necessity it must cross certain country, overcome obstacles, or go round them. By nature you come at new views from a path and so obtain fresh suggestions. A path entails labour, and by labour ease. It must have a purpose, and so must originate in an inspiration. And yet the man who makes a path ignores, as a rule, the high importance of his task.

It is a peculiar thing that paths made across fields, and made by the very people whose business it is to reach from point to point in the shortest possible time, are never straight. Their very irregularities reflect the nature of man more than the nature of the ground they cross.

So unmethodical is man by instinct that if he were to lay out a garden in the same frame of mind in which he crosses a field, that garden would abound in twisted, tortuous paths, beds of irregular shapes, spasmodic arrangements of trees, flowers, shrubs and vegetables, a veritable hotch-potch. To overcome that he imprisons the wanderings of his mind, divides his garden into regular shapes, and drives his paths pell-mell from point to point as straight as his eye and a line will allow him. This planning of a garden is an absorbing joy. To come new to a fresh place untouched by any other hand and to work your will on it gives one all the delights of conquest, and the pleasant fatigue of a war in which you are bound to win. You can make your own traditions, founding them for future ages—as, for instance, you may so plant your trees as to force one view on the attention. You can emulate Rome and carry your paths straight and level. In fact, that little new world is yours to conquer.

To me a winding path offers the more alluring prospect, just as it is more pleasant to walk on a winding road where each turn opens out a fresh vista, and the coming of every hidden corner is in the way of an adventure. I have just made such a path.

To be precise my path is eighteen feet long and two feet and a quarter wide. It curves twice, really in a sort of courteous bow in avoiding a Standard Rose tree, and begins and ends in a little low step of Box; this to prevent the cinders of which it is made from mingling with gravel of the paths into which it runs.

I began it on a Monday. It is made through a Rose bed that was too wide to work properly. At about nine in the morning the gardener and I stood regarding the unconscious Rose-bed with much the same gravity as men might regard a range of hills through which a tunnel was to be drilled.

I said, “This seems the best place to make a path through the bed.”

The gardener made a serpentine movement with his hand to indicate the possible curve of the path and replied, after an interval: that such a place seemed as good as any.

We then, with a certain lightening of heart after this tremendous thought, walked into the bed and surveyed it. This tree would have to be moved, and that one, and these half standards shifted. Good. It should be done.

It seems that the earth requires a little ceremonial even when the merest scratch is to be made on her surface. I am sure we wheeled a barrow containing spades, a line, and sticks with some feeling of processional pride. The gardener then, having come to a stop with the barrow, spat, very solemnly on his hands. It appeared to be the exact form of ritual required. In a few minutes we had pegged a way.

I suppose a spade is the first implement of peace ever made by human kind. It is certainly the pleasantest to hold. A rake is a more dandified affair, a hoe not so well-formed. The scythe and the sickle have a store of poetry and legend about them, but the rake and the hoe contain no romantic virtues. Although the plough is the recognised implement of peace in symbolical language, it joins hands with war in that same language—“turning their swords into ploughshares”—and so loses much of its peaceful meaning, but the spade remains always the sword of the man of peace, one weapon by which he conquers the ground and makes the earth yield her fruits. For me the spade.

The gardener, having spat upon his hands regarded the earth and sky as if to mark and measure the earth and the heavens, and them to witness his first cut. The spade, lifted for a moment, drove deep into the earth. The soil, pressed by the steel, turned. A new path was begun. How long is it to last?

There are garden paths, so commenced, have made history in their day, why not mine? Kings, Princes, Lords, Queens, Maids of Honour, spies and honourable men have trodden garden paths, measuring their small length and discussing everything in the states of Love or Country to come to some decision. The Poppies Tarquin slew gave their message. The Pinks that Michonis brought to Marie Antoinette grew by some garden path; that very bunch of Pinks in which lay a note promising her safety, brought her death more near. What comedies, what tragedies, vows made and broken, kisses stolen and repented, have not had for platform just such a path as mine.

At the first hint of broken soil a robin, pert and ready, took up a position on a bare limb of Penzance Briar, and began to eye us merrily just as if he, I and the garden were all out for a day’s worm hunting.

Said I, “Dick, we are out to make a garden path, incidentally to make history.” For I had my idea of the “History of Paths” well at the back of my mind.

The robin replied (or as good as replied), “If it’s history you’re after, it’s insects I’m here for, so we’ll come at a bargain.”

Meanwhile the gardener turned another clod.

Said the robin, “I never saw any one so slow.”

Slow as we might have been we were quick enough in imagination. For one thing there was the question of edging. Tiles, bricks, box, stones, which was it to be?

Half-way down the trench we had made, just at the acute point of the greater curve, the gardener propounded the question of the edging. He leaned on his spade, and turning to me asked if I had thought to something to edge the path with. Now my thoughts were far away from that idea and were hovering like butterflies over a vision of the Path Complete. I saw, for Springtime, a row of Daffodils nodding and yellow in the breeze. For Summer I saw Carnations gleaming richly, and the Roses all blooming. Overhead the driven sky hung out blue banners of distress as if signalling for fine weather. Plumb to earth my thoughts came.

“About something to edge with?”

Almost before I had time to speak, he continued. I had begun with the word, “Box.”

Every one knows what it is to come on the rocks in the soil of a gardener’s mind. It is, as a rule, some old idea taken deep root which forms a rock of resistance. Sometimes it is a rock idea about taking Geranium cuttings, sometimes an idea about the time for pruning fruit trees or the method of pruning them, sometimes it concerns certain plants which he refuses to allow will live in the garden and so lets them die. One is never quite certain when or how the objection will arise. I had sent out a feeler for Box and I struck a rock.

“Box!!” he said in a voice of awe, as if the gods overhearing would be angry. “Where am I to get Box from? And if I was to get Box, Box don’t grow so high,”—he held his hand a mustard seed height from the ground—“not in ten years. It’s awkward stuff, Box, to deal with. In a garden this size that needs an extra man—and plenty of work for a boy too, when all these leaves is about—growing hedges of Box or what not is not possible. Not that I have anything to say against Box, far from it. No. It looks well in some places, but if you was to ask me, sir, I think it’ud be the ruin of this Rosebed.”

Said the robin to me, “The man’s mad.”

I answered quickly, “It was merely a sudden idea of mine.”

He relapsed into silence for a moment. Then he said, “flints.”

I knew it was to be a battle. I hate flints. Nasty, ugly, tiresome eyesores. Gardeners love flints just as many of them love Laurels and Ivy.

I said very rashly, “But where are we to get flints?”

Of course I should have known that he had a cartload of flints up his sleeve. He scraped his boots, walked away, and returned with a jagged thing like one petrified decayed tooth of a mammoth. This he thrust into the ground, and then surveyed it with pride.

“That,” he said, “is something like.”

“Something like what?” said I.

“A double row of these,” he said, “with here and there one of a different colour would never be equalled.”

I agreed with him sarcastically. “Never,” said I, “would they be equalled for utter hideousness. Far be it from me,” I said, “to fill the hearts of my neighbours with envy of this border.”

“You don’t care for them?”

“Chuck it at him,” said the robin.

“I wouldn’t be seen dead in a path bordered with flints,” I said.

More in sorrow than in anger he removed the offending flint, and we resumed work. The last time we had used bricks for an edging they had all cracked with the frost, so that idea was left alone. Not, of course, that all bricks crack, but the bricks about here seem to be very soft.

I asked if we had any tiles.

He knew of some tiles, a lot of them, nearly buried in the earth and covered with Moss. They were an old line running by the path inside the wall by the paddock; the path by the rubbish heap.

“But,” he said, having the rout of the flints in his mind, “it would take a man all day to dig them up, and scrape them and wash them, and then he couldn’t say they would be any use when it was done. And in a garden where an extra man——”

“I will do it myself.”

“Fight it out,” said the robin.

More or less in silence, and really in excellent tempers, we finished the trench that was to receive the cinders and ashes.

I washed the tiles. There were exactly ninety of them required. I started to wash them in the cold water of a stable bucket, and I regarded each one as a thing of beauty as I did it. After having done forty I began to think it would be a good thing to give prisoners to do to teach them discipline. After seventy, I decided to recommend that particular form of torture to some Chinese official. By the time I had finished I felt that some medal should be struck to commemorate the event.

The gardener, at the close of that day, looked at my heap of tiles.

I said, “I have finished them.”

He replied, “I was just coming to lend a hand.”

To which, as I was not going to let the sun go down upon my wrath, I answered, “Thank you.”

I think an ash-heap is the most desolate object I know. The dreary remains of burnt-out fires make a melancholy sight, but I remember that as a child that corner of the garden where stood the heaps of ashes and ancient rubbish was as the mines of Eldorado to me. Here, if one dug deeply enough, one found pieces of broken pottery, in themselves equal, by power of imagination, to any discovery of Roman remains. To the whitened bones I found I gave names, building from them adventures more lurid than those of Captain Kydd. To the ashes I gave gold and jewels, delving as if in a mine, sifting, with childlike seriousness, the heap of fire slack, and coming on some bright bit of glass that shone for me like a kingly diamond, I held it to the light and renewed the ardour of my soul in its gleaming rays. After all, are not pieces of broken glass as beautiful as many jewels if they are self-discovered and lit by the light of joy? That corner of the garden, hidden by shrubs, by low-growing nut trees and shaded by ancient Elms, has been for me the Forest of Arden, of Sherwood, the deeps of the Jungle, an ambush, a hiding-place, a tree covered island, each in its turn absolutely satisfying to my mind. The sun’s rays shooting down through the branches have found me seated, dirty, dishevelled, but incomparably happy,—a King with an ash heap for a throne.

To an ash heap, then, I repaired on the following day, there to gather loads of cinders and slack for my garden path. Already in my mind the Roses bloomed by the path side; the tiles, evenly set, were leaned against by blue-eyed Violas; Carnations waved gorgeous heads at my feet.

My friend the robin was there betimes and took upon himself to sing a little song to cheer me. After that, with his bright eyes glinting, he hopped upon the bed and inspected my labours.

The gardener coming upon me glanced at the row of neatly placed tiles.

“I’m glad I thought o’ they,” he said.

“Hit him,” the robin chirruped.

“You think they look well?” said I.

“As soon as I thought of they tiles,” he answered, “I knew I’d a thought of a grand thing.”

So he took all the idea to himself, and went on solemnly pounding down the cinders with a heavy stone fastened onto a stick.

And now the path is finished, and curves smooth and sleek between the Rose trees, and answers firmly to the tread. All day long I have been planting cuttings of Violas alongside the path; and behind them are rows of Carnations.

I wonder who will walk upon my path in a hundred years time, and if by then they, whoever they be, will think our methods of gardening very old-fashioned and odd. And I wonder if we shall seem at all quaint to people who will come after us, and if our clothes will be regarded as odd and wonderfully ugly.

Once, I remember, I saw into the past in such a vivid way that I still feel as if I were living out of my date by living now. It was on the occasion of some fÊte in the country which was to be held in some big gardens. Certain ladies were presiding over an entertainment that set out to represent a series of Eighteenth Century booths. The daughter of the house where I was stopping had spent time, money, and taste in getting very accurate and beautiful dresses of about 1745. They wore these, powdered their hair, and placed patches on their cheeks, and prepared baskets of lavender tied up in bundles to sell at the fair.

I saw them one morning start for the place where the fair was to be held. They came into the garden all dressed and in white caps, and they walked arm-in-arm down a path bordered with Pinks and overhung with Roses, and the sun gleamed on their flowered gowns and on their powdered hair. I could almost hear them say—“La, Mistress Barbara, but I protest it is a fine morning.” There was nothing incongruous in sight, just these walking flowers passing the banks of Roses, pink as their cheeks, and the Pinks white as their powdered hair. I felt at my side for my sword, and put up my hand to my neck to smooth the fall of my lace ruffles, but, alas, nor sword nor lace was there.

In the ordering of paths such as I have written there are many ways, and some are for paths all of grass, and some for tiles, and some for flags of stone, some for gravel, and some for brick laid herring-bone ways. Each has its proper and appointed place, as, for instance, that flags of stone are proper by a balustrade where are also stone jars to hold flowers and stone seats arranged. And brick, which of all the others I most prefer, as it is more warm to look at and helps the garden by its rich colour, is good in intimate small gardens as well as in big, and gives a feeling of cosiness to old-fashioned borders, and is nice near to the house, and is good to set tubs for trees on, or tubs filled with gay flowers. Of grass paths, in that they are soft and inviting, I like them well enough, but they are wet underfoot after rain and dew, and need a deal of care and trimming; but in such cases as small set gardens with queer-shaped beds and low Box borders, I mean bulb gardens, to be afterwards used for carpet bedding or for a show of some one thing, as Begonias, or Zinnias, or Carnations, they are without equal. They should be kept very precious, and well free of weeds, otherwise their beauty is gone and they have a lack-lustre air, very uncomfortable. As for gravel, it is a good thing in place where the ground is low and moist, for it will remain dry better than anything if it is properly rolled and well made. Often it is not properly curved and drained, and Moss and weeds collect at the sides, whereby your garden will seem unkempt and dull. Indeed the garden paths are of supreme importance to the appearance of your garden, as if they be left dirty, or covered with leaves or moss they will spoil all the neat brightness of the flowers, and are apt to look like an unbrushed coat on a man otherwise well dressed. This is especially the case with broad paths and drives. How often one has judged of a gardener by the appearance of his drive! The first glance from the gate up the drive will give you a fair guess at the gardener and his methods, and you can tell at once if he be a man of decent and tidy habits, or a man to leave odd corners dirty and full of weeds. That last man is just such an one as will burnish up his place on the eve of a garden party, and give everything a lick and a promise, and will stand by his greenhouses with an expression on his face of an holy cherub when the visitors are being shown his stove plants. That man will be for ever complaining of overwork and will wear a face as long as a fiddle if he is asked pertinent questions of unweeded paths. “Such a work,” he will say, “should be done by an extra boy. As for me, am I not by day and by night protecting the peas from the birds, and the dahlias from earwigs, and the melons from the ravages of slugs?” And you may know from this that he is the type of man who loses grape scissors, and who leaves bast about, and mislays his trowel, and neglects to give water to your favourite plants, so that they wither and die. No. Look well that you get a man who is fond of keeping himself clean, and he will keep his paths clean, as is the case in a man I know who started a fruit garden in the country. He, it was, who showed me his men working on a Saturday afternoon at cleaning up the paths. And when I stood amazed at this he took me into the shed where the tools were kept, and there I saw spades shining like silver, and forks burnished wonderfully, and everything very orderly. I clapped my hands, and looked round still in wonder, for I marvelled to see such neatness and order in a place that is the shrine of disorder—as tool sheds, potting sheds, and the like, which are a medley of stick, earth, leafmould, old pricking-out boxes, tools, wire, and other miscellaneous objects. And I marvelled still more to see through the open door men at work—on the afternoon devoted to holiday—picking leaves from the paths, and setting the place in order.

I said, “This is well done indeed.”

And he answered, that this was the secret of all good gardening, pride and carefulness, and that now he had shown them the way his men were so proud of their tool-shed that they brought admiring friends to see it of a Sunday afternoon. Then I knew if there was money to be made growing fruit in England (which there is) then this man would make it (which he does).

Now this talk of paths gives one the idea that people do not here make enough of their paths, as the Japanese do, for there they are skilled in small gardens, and especially in landscape gardens on a tiny scale, making little hills and woods, and views, lakes, streams, and rock gardens in a space about the size of the average suburban garden. Then they are very choice of trees, and value the turning colour of Maples, and the droop of Wisteria, and the shape and blossom of Plum and Cherry trees as fine garden ornaments, while we grow our wonderful lawns. Our lawns, indeed, are remarked by all the world, and wherever you see the words “English Gardens” abroad you will know that the people have made a lawn and watered it, and are proud of its fat smooth surface of velvet. But we make the mistake, I think, of growing forest trees on the edge of our lawns and do not enough encourage the wonderful and beautiful varieties of flowering shrubs that there be. Above all we seem to have a passion for dank, black, lustreless Ivy, beloved only of cats, spiders and snails. I have seen many beautiful walls of stone and brick utterly destroyed and defaced by ill-growing Ivy, where the bare walls would give a fine warm background to our flowers.

The great thing in paths is to make them a little secret, leading round trees to a fresh view, and interlacing them in pretty and quaint ways, but we, a conservative people, are ill-disposed to cut new paths except in new gardens, and often leave badly designed paths for lack of a little good courage. But we are learning by degrees, and I think the abominations of gardening are leaving us, such as the monkey-puzzle tree in the centre of a round bed, and the rows of half-moon beds cut by the side of our lawns and filled with Geraniums and Lobelias, and the rustic seat (horror!), and the rustic summer-house made of rough pieces of tree limbs badly nailed together (horror of horrors!). Now we know more of the way to make pergolas, and terraces, and how to build summer-houses, and the curse of the Mid-Victorian gardening is come to an end with the antimacassar, and the wax fruit under a glass case, and the sofa with horsehair bolsters.

Of course, true gardening is the work and interest of a lifetime, like the collecting of objects of Art, and as such inspires much the same eager passion and healthy rivalry. Therefore let the setting of your collection be as perfect as possible, and those paths leading to the choice collections as fine as the velvet on which priceless enamels are laid. Indeed enamel is a happy word, for what do your flowers do but enamel the earth with their sweet colours, and in pattern, choice, and variety, will surpass all things made by man alone.

And here I take my leave of paths, that great subject that should indeed be a book to itself, for if a man sit down to think of paths he begins to follow one himself, and, starting from the cradle, ends at the grave, or, pursuing some path of history, comes into the broad high-road of all learning, or looking up and observing the stars finds a train of thought in following the path of a star. In a garden path, or from it, he may meditate all these things with right and proper circumstance of mind, for he has flowers at his feet full of the meat of good things, rare remembrancers of history, and exquisite things on which to base a philosophy; while, as for the stars, are they not the Daisies of the Fields of Heaven?