Eric Parker

The Woking of the Surrey Thames.—Peasants in the field.—Ham House.—The Cabal.—Petersham.—Richmond Hill.—The Heart of Midlothian.—Deer in the sunlight.—Queen Elizabeth dying.—Kew Palace.—The secret of the Gardens.

Woking is the centre to which it is difficult not to return in exploring the Wey and the Wey villages: Surbiton is the centre of the roads about the Surrey Thames. Surbiton has tramways besides a railway, and Surbiton station is perhaps the most convenient starting point either for Hampton Court on the Middlesex bank, or for Kingston, or through Kingston to Ham and Richmond and Kew. Kingston, in one direction, has its own chapter; so have the Dittons and Walton in another; beyond Kingston lies a walk (not often taken, perhaps), along the river bank to Ham and Petersham; a walk that leads to Richmond Park and its deer dozing among the bracken in the afternoon sun, and Kew Gardens waiting in the evening—the best hour of all the day among those ordered flowers and trees.

I never saw Ham until one day, walking out from Kingston, I suddenly found myself in the fruitful spaces of market gardens and farms. It is the suddenest change. Kingston, with the oldest memories of all Surrey towns, is as new and noisy as a thoroughly efficient service of tramways can make it; and then, within a stone's throw of bricks and barracks, you come upon acres beyond acres of level farmland, bean-fields and cabbage-fields and all the pleasantness of tilled soil and trenched earth and the wealth of kindly fruits. When I saw the fields by Ham on a hot day in August there were country women gathering runner beans into coarse aprons, stooping over the clustered plants, the humblest and hardiest of workers of the farm. Under that hot sun, in the wide spaces of those unfenced fields, with no English hedge to shut off neighbouring crops and tillage, the air of those bent, lowly figures was of French peasantry, French nearness to the difficult livelihood of the soil. They might have gleaned for Millet; they should cease their work at the Angelus.

Teddington Lock, a mile down stream from Kingston suburbs, joins Surrey to Middlesex and the tide to the tideless river with a vast piece of engineering. Further down, Eel Pie island breaks the stream, a bunch of chairs, tables and trees, where, for all I know, others may still eat and praise eel pie. But the fascination of this stretch of river is on the Surrey bank, where Ham House stands among noble trees. Ham House is not a "show house"; and indeed, considering its nearness to Richmond and London, it would be impossible that it should be. There are limits to the claims which may be made upon owners of historic houses who may also wish to live in them. But Ham House holds other magnets than its pictures and relics of Stuarts and Lauderdales. The guide-books catalogue the pictures, and perhaps I need not copy the catalogues. The real fascination is Ham House with its history, the meeting-place of the great Cabal. But you may see that Ham House from a distance; the house as the Duke of Lauderdale saw it from the river bank, or driving to the door to join his fellow Ministers; the garden front, with its statue of Father Thames, the statue at which Buckingham and Arlington used to stare, perhaps, wondering how much longer their sinister power would be left to them. All that they knew and saw day by day remains—the dull red brick, the wrought iron gate, the quaint statuary of the walls; and round the garden walls and shading the wide lawn behind the house, the trees as later, gentler souls saw them; Thomson, walking from his Richmond cottage, and Hood, strolling under the long avenue of elms.

Petersham has riverside houses which would dignify Georgian aldermen; square red houses set about with wistaria and high garden walls, worthy to be neighbours of Richmond Park; worthy, too, of a handsomer neighbour than Petersham church, an insignificant little building which yet was thought sufficient for the dust of the Duchess of Lauderdale. Outside in the churchyard lies the sailor who sought for the North-west passage and named Vancouver's Island.

Of Richmond Park, and the view from Richmond Terrace, and the departed glories of Richmond's palace which was the palace of Sheen, what should be said? How should the beauty of the view from the Terrace be measured? Scott has set it in the pages of The Heart of Midlothian, and Scott, perhaps, thought it the loveliest and richest of English landscapes. It was "a huge sea of verdure, with crossing and intersecting promontories of massive and tufted groves." It was "tenanted by numberless flocks and herds, which seemed to wander unrestrained and unbounded through the rich pastures. The Thames, here turreted with villas and there garlanded with forests, moved on slowly and placidly, like the mighty monarch of the scene, to whom all its other beauties were but accessories, and bore on its bosom an hundred barks and skiffs, whose white sails and gaily fluttering pennons gave life to the whole." That was the scene which was shown to Jeanie Deans, arrived at Richmond to sue for pardon for her sister, by the Duke of Argyle. "We have nothing like it in Scotland," said the Duke of Argyle. Is that the secret? Is it because it is all that is typical of south country greenness and the peace of broad water and deep woodlands that it made its appeal to the Scot used to grey crags and barren moorland? Or is its chief appeal not to the Scot but to the Londoner, and does the Londoner praise Sir Walter's taste because Sir Walter has praised his? That is part of the story of the beauty of the Richmond view, perhaps. It is so easily found from London. It has all that the Londoner loves to look at. It is the country as he wishes to see it. A glorious stretch of luxuriant woodland, a noble breadth of shining water, sunlight on wide meadows; but above all, setting a difference between this orderly beauty and the wild splendours of some western or northern moorland valley, the presence of befriending, comrade man. The boats, the sails, the swans, the water flashing on the oars; the neighbouring roofs, the patterned flower gardens, the comforts of hotels at hand, the readiness with which it is all won and enjoyed—those are some of the secrets of the ideal. It is the country seen from an outdoor theatre.

Richmond Park itself would be worth visiting for any countryman because of its deer. Deer standing about in the bracken; deer asleep in thick fern under great oaks; deer feeding slowly up wind on a distant slope of green; deer leaping shadows of tree-stems one after another as if the shadows were water, which is one of the deer's prettiest games in the sun: deer trotting off as you try to come nearer to them, with that curious quivering, shaking amble which is born of lissom daintiness and muscles like steel; deer with hot sunlight on their coats—it is the Richmond Park deer which are the creatures to come and see. How many are there? Who should count them? Sixteen hundred fallow deer and fifty red deer, the figures are given; Farnham Park, I think, comes next in Surrey, with three hundred fallow deer.

The great palace has left little more than an archway on Richmond Green. More history belongs to it, or rather to the succession of palaces which have stood at Sheen, which was the old name, than I can deal with. Edward III died at Sheen Palace, unloved and alone. Richard II's queen, Anne of Bohemia, died there seventeen years later, and Richard in his grief threw the palace down. It was rebuilt by Henry V, burnt down in 1497, rebuilt and renamed Richmond by Henry VII; then the Richmond who named it died in his new palace. But the overmastering sense of unhappiness which somehow has set itself about the story of Richmond Palace belongs to the closing days of Elizabeth. Elizabeth's death, and the month that went before it, patch English history like a week of night. She had been so strong, so untiring, so wise in her council chamber and so magnificent in her victorious fleet, and the fortune that followed her like a wind; the life of her body had been so unfailing, she had jested, wittily and coarsely, with so many courtiers; she had commanded the chivalry of young and splendid nobles, she had lived to see one of her favourites die and to send another to the block; and now she herself was dying. She knew it, and she would not hear of death. She was never so ready for the gaiety she could not enjoy. Her strength left her, she was a skeleton; still she sat with her dress unchanged, staring before her, flashing sudden rages at her ministers, rallying at the mention of an heir's name. Beauchamp, heir to the Suffolks, they put forward; she cried out he was the son of a rogue. The King of Scots? they asked; she answered nothing. Dead, propped among her pillows, an old woman in ruff and stays, the memory of her last days shadows Richmond Palace like a drawn blind.

To the north beyond Richmond Hill and the huge hotel, twice burnt down, which looks over the woods and the river, one may come by tramways and railways to Kew and Kew Gardens. Kew, too, once had a palace, or an attempt at a palace. Frederick Prince of Wales, George III's father—the prince who did so much for Surrey cricket, and died, perhaps, from the blow of a cricket ball—lived at Kew House, and so did George III after him. George III pulled down Kew House in 1803, and built another; to be not less royal, George IV pulled that down. A smaller building, vaguely named Kew Palace still, stands in the Gardens; Queen Charlotte died there; you may see the room, and look, if you wish, on the tables and sofas she knew. But the pictures in Kew Palace were not all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many manuscripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for public gardens. The portraits of royal gentlemen in blue and red puzzle them; why should they be shown these at Kew? These are for palaces and galleries; Kew is for a flower show.

What is the chief, the compelling fascination of Kew Gardens? What is it that sets Kew apart, not more beautiful than other gardens, but different from them, with a different attraction peculiarly its own? Is it the sense of change from roaring streets to quiet lawns, noble trees, spaces and scents of grass and flowers? There may be a sense of change, but that is not all the secret, for Kew keeps the same charm for one who has come fresh from the broad aisles and avenues of some great country garden. Is it the rarity and the wealth of the Kew museums and houses—the orchid houses with their strange, lovely, uncanny inflorescences, flowers that have fancies and wilfulnesses, flowers that would people the dark with faces; or the lily-houses and the superb Victoria regia that would cradle a water-baby; or the great palm houses, where you may walk in a gallery among enormous leaves and tropical creepers as if you were back again with your grandfathers in the tree tops? That is an attraction, but it is not all of it. Nor is it the achievement of the gardens in the separate spheres of gardening. The sheets of crocuses in the low March sunlight, and of daffodils shaking in an April wind, add a glory to the spring at Kew, but it is a glory that can belong to other lawns and other vistas of flowers. The Kew rose-garden has a wealth of roses, but it has, too, a wealth of old tree stems and broken branches which a garden meant for nothing but roses would hide. The herbaceous border grows luxuriant phloxes and delphiniums, but the background of glass houses sets a wrong light about it. The rock garden shows more rock and fewer masses of Alpine flowers than other English gardens more lately made, with better knowledge of what wall and rock flowers need.

Then what is the abiding charm? To me, at all events, Kew has much the same appeal as the Londoner finds in Richmond Hill. It is a London garden, the garden of a town, perfectly made for its purpose. It can never, even with its glorious trees and its wide spaces of grass, have the peace or know the spirit of a country garden. Too many feet tread its lawns; too many voices chatter in its walks. It may spread its wild flowers and grow its curious blossoms for those who know where and how to look for them; but its main effects must be of ordered gravel, of shaven grass, of patterned beds, of flowers that will suit artificial lakes and buildings and stone balustrades. The keynote of Kew is by the wide pond, with the smooth green turf and the white stone, and the masses of pansies and heliotrope and brilliant red geraniums. Those are the flowers which suit best the steps down to the water, and the fountains, and the swimming ducks and the birds on the banks. There is the right touch of artificiality about them; the right note of London. The birds are Londoners themselves. The stately brown geese stalk over the lawns careless of poulterers or punt-guns. The cormorant, who most certainly knows he is being watched, dives to show off before admiring children. Even the blackbirds have forgotten their country habits, and will sing when country blackbirds are silent for the year. Once, late in July, I heard four singing in evening sunshine after rain. They would take any countryman back to the days of chestnut blossom and the scent of Surrey may; but that indolent melody, in July sunshine, belongs to London.