Happy England

44. COTTAGE AT CHIDDINGFOLD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. H. L. Florence.
Painted 1889.

We have here a March day, or rather one of the type associated with that month, but which usually visits us with increasing severity as April and May and the summer progress. Wind in the east, with the sky a cold, steely blue in the zenith, greying even the young elm shoots a stone’s-throw distant. The cottage almanack, Old Moore’s, will foretell that night frosts will prevail, and the cottager will be fearsome of its effect upon his apple crop, always so promising in its blossom, so scanty in its fulfilment. Splendid weather for the full-blooded lassies, who can tarry to gossip without fear of chills, and also for drying clothes on the hedgerow, but nipping for the old beldame who tends them, and who has to wrap up against it with shawl and cap.

competes in colour with the spikes of the broom, which the artist must have been thankful to the hedgecutter for sparing as he passed his shears along its surface when last he trimmed it. For some reason the broom bears an ill repute hereabouts as bringing bad luck, although in early times it was put to a desirable use, as Gerard tells us that “that worthy Prince of famous memory, Henry VIII. of England, was wont to drink the distilled water of Broome floures.” Wordsworth also gives it12 a special word in his lines—

The cottage contains a typical example of the massive central chimney, and also an end one, which it is unusual to find in company with the other in so small a dwelling. Note also the weather tiling round the gable end and the upper story.

45. A COTTAGE AT HAMBLEDON
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. Pennington.
Painted 1888.

For those who read between the lines there are plenty of pretty allegories connected with these drawings. This, for instance, might well be termed “Youth and Age.” The venerable cottage in its declining years, so appropriately set in a framework of autumn tints and flowers, supported on its colder side by the tendrils of ivy, almost of its own age, but on its warmer side maturing a fruitful vine, emblem of the mother and child which gather at the gate, and of the brood of fowls which busily search the wayside.

46. IN WORMLEY WOOD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Le Poer Trench.
Painted 1886.

Half a century ago most of the old dwellings on the Surrey border were thatched with good wheaten straw from the Weald of Sussex, but thatch will soon be a thing of the past, partly for the reason that there are no thatchers (or “thackers” as they are called in local midland dialect) left, principally because the straw, of which they consumed a good deal, and which used to be a cheap commodity and not very realisable, in villages whose access to market was difficult, now finds a ready sale. Locomotion has also enabled slates to be conveyed from hundreds of miles away, and placed on the ground at a less rate than straw.

Thus the old order changeth, and without any regard to the comfort of the tenant, whose roof, as I have already said, instead of consisting of a covering which was warm in winter and cool in summer, is now one which is practically the reverse. Strawen roofs are easy of repair or renewal, and look very trim and cosy when kept in condition.

At the time when this drawing was painted this cottage, lying snugly in the recesses of Wormley Wood (whose pines always attract the attention as the train passes them just before Witley station is reached), was the last specimen of thatch in the neighbourhood, and it only continued so to be through the intervention of a well-known artist who lived not far off. That artist is dead, and probably in the score of years which have since elapsed the thatch has gone the way of the rest, and the harmony of yellowish greys which existed between it and its background have given way to a gaudy contrast of unweathered red tiles or cold unsympathetic blue slates.

The cottage itself may well date back to Tudor times, and the sweetwilliams, pansies, and lavender which border the path leading to it may be the descendants of far-away progenitors, culled by a long-forgotten labourer in his master’s “nosegay garden,” which at that time was a luxury of the well-to-do only.

Many of the flowers found in this plot of ground were in early days conserved in the gardens of the simple folk rather for their medicinal use than their decorative qualities. Such was certainly the case with lavender. “The floures of lavender do cure the beating of the harte,” says one contemporary herbal; and another written in Commonwealth times says, “They are very pleasing and delightful to the brain, which is much refreshed with their sweetness.” It was always found in the garden of women who pretended to good housewifery, not only because the heads of the flowers were used for “nosegays and posies,” but for putting into “linen and apparel.”

47. THE ELDER BUSH, BROOK LANE, WITLEY
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Marcus Huish.
Painted 1887.

Those who are ingenious enough to see the inspiration of another hand in every work that an artist produces would probably raise an outcry against anybody infringing the copyright which they consider that Collins secured more than half a century ago for the children swinging on a gate in his “Happy as a King.” But who that examines with any interest or care the figures in this water-colour could for a moment believe that Mrs. Allingham had ever had Collins even unconsciously in her mind when she put in these happy little mortals as adjuncts to her landscape. Having enjoyed at ages such as theirs a swing on many a gate, one can testify that these children must have been seen, studied, and put in from the life and on the spot. See how the elder girl leans over the gate, with perfect self-assurance, directing the boy as to how far back the gate may go; how the younger one has to climb a rung higher than her sister in order to obtain the necessary purchase with her arms, and even then she can only do so with a strain and with a certain nervousness as to the result of the jar when the gate reaches the post on its return. Again, some one has to do the swinging, and Mrs. Allingham has given the proper touch of gallantry by making the second in age of the party, a boy, the first to undertake this part of the business. The excitement of the moment has communicated itself to the youngest of the family, who raises his stick to cheer as the gate swings to. Although painted within thirty miles of London, the age of cheap rickety perambulators had not reached the countryside when this drawing was made nearly twenty years ago, and so we see the youngest in a sturdy, hand-made go-cart.

The country folk who passed the artist when she was making this drawing wondered doubtless at her selection of a point of sight where practically nothing but roof and wall of the building were visible, when a few steps farther on its front door and windows might have made a picture; but the charm of the drawing exists in this simplicity of subject, the greatest pleasure being procurable from the least important features, such, for instance, as the lichen-covered and leek-topped wall, and the untended, buttercup-flecked bank on which it stands. The locality of the drawing is Brook Lane, near Witley, and the drawing was an almost exact portrait of the cottage as it stood in 1886, but since then it has been modernised like the majority of its fellows, and though the oak-timbered walls, tiled roof, and massive chimney still stand, the old curves of the roof-tree have gone, and American windows have replaced the old lattices. The other side of the house, as it then appeared, has been preserved to us in the next picture.

48. THE BASKET WOMAN
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. Backhouse.
Painted 1887.

The art critic of The Times, in speaking of the Exhibition where this drawing was exhibited, singled it out as “taking rank amongst the very best of Mrs. Allingham’s work, and the very model of what an English water-colour should be, with its woodside cottage, its tangled hedges, its background of sombre fir trees, and figures of the girl with basket, and of the cottagers to whom she is offering her wares, showing as it does intense love for our beautiful south country landscape, with the power of seizing its most picturesque aspects with truth of eye and delicacy of hand.”

To my mind the most remarkable feature of the drawing is the way in which the long stretch of hedge has been managed. In most hands it would either be a monotonous and uninteresting feature or an absolute failure, for the difficulty of lending variety of surface and texture to so large a mass is only known to those who have attempted it; it could only be effected by painting it entirely from nature and on the spot, as was the case here. Many would have been tempted to break it up by varieties of garden blooms, but Mrs. Allingham has only relieved it by a st/ray spray or two of wild honeysuckle, which never flowers in masses, and a few white convolvuli.

That we are not far removed from the small hop district which is to be found west and northward of this part is evidenced by the hops which the old woman was in course of plucking from the pole when her attention was arrested by the wandering pedlar. This and the apples ripening on the straggling apple tree show the season to be early autumn, whereas the elder bush in the companion drawing puts its season as June.

49. COTTAGE AT SHOTTERMILL, NEAR HASLEMERE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. W. D. Houghton.
Painted 1891.

Each of three counties may practically claim this cottage for one of its types, for it lies absolutely at the junction of Surrey, Sussex, and Hampshire.

For a single tenement it is particularly roomy, and a comfortable one to boot, for its screen of tiles is carried so low down.

It was a curious mood of the artist’s to sit down square in front of it and paint its paling paralleling across the picture, a somewhat daring stroke of composition to carry on the line of white tiling with one of white clothes. The sky displays an unusual departure from the artist’s custom, as the whole length of it is banked up with banks of cumuli.

The figures and the empty basket point to a little domestic episode. Boy and girl have been sent on an errand, but have not got beyond the farther side of the gate before they betake themselves to a loll on the grass, which has lengthened out to such an extent that the old grand-dame comes to the cottage door to look for their return, little witting that they are quietly crouched within a few feet of her, hidden behind the paling, over which lavender, sweet-pea, roses, peonies, and hollyhocks nod at them. They are even less conscious of wrong-doing and of impending scoldings than the cat, which sneaks homewards after a lengthened absence on a poaching expedition.

50. VALEWOOD FARM
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1903.

Valewood is over the ridge which protects Haslemere on the south, and is a very pretty vale of sloping meadows fringed with wood, all under the shadow of Blackdown, to which it belongs. This is distinguished from most houses hereabouts in boasting a stream, the headwater of a string of ponds, whence starts the river Wey northwards on its tortuous journey round the western slopes of Hindhead. When Mrs. Allingham painted the house, which was inhabited by well-to-do yeomen from Devonshire, the dairying and the milking were still conducted by desirable hands, namely, those of milkmaids.

51. AN OLD HOUSE AT WEST TARRING
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1900.

Worthing has been termed “a dull and dreary place, the only relief to which is its suburb of West Tarring.” This happening to have been one of the “peculiars” of the Archbishops of Canterbury, has buildings and objects of considerable antiquarian interest. The cottages which Mrs. Allingham selected for her drawing may be classed amongst them, for they are a type, as good as any in this volume, of the well-built, substantial dwelling-house of our progenitors of many centuries ago—one in which all the features that we have pointed out are to be found. The house has in course of time clearly become too big for its situation, and has consequently been parcelled out into cottages; this has necessitated some alteration of the front of the lower story, but otherwise it is an exceptionally well-preserved specimen. Long may it remain so.

52. AN OLD BUCKINGHAMSHIRE HOUSE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. H. W. Birks.
Painted 1899.

This is a somewhat rare instance of the artist selecting for portraiture a house of larger dimensions than a cottage. It is a singular trait, perhaps a womanly trait, that we never find her choice falling upon the country gentleman’s seat, although their formal gardening and parterres of flowers must oftentimes have tempted her. Her selection, in fact, never rises beyond the wayside tenement, which in that before us no doubt once housed a well-to-do yeoman, but was, when Mrs. Allingham limned it, only tenanted in part by a small farmer and in part by a butcher. But it is planned and fashioned on the old English lines to which we have referred, and which in the days when it was built governed those of the dwelling of every well-to-do person.

53. THE DUKE’S COTTAGE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Maurice Hill.
Painted 1896.

The trend of the trees indicates that this scene is laid where the winds are not only strong, but blow most frequently from one particular quarter. It is, in fact, on the coast of Dorset, at Burton, a little seaside resort of the inhabitants of Bridport, when they want a change from their own water-side town. The English Channel comes up to one side of the buttercup-clad field, and was behind the artist as she sat to paint the carrier’s cottage, a man of some local celebrity, who took the artist to task for not painting his home from a particular point of view, saying, “I’ve had it painted many a time, and theyse always took it from there.” He was a man accustomed to boss the village in a kindly but firm way, never allowing any controversy concerning his charges, which were, however, always reasonable. Hence he had come to be nicknamed “The Duke,” and as such did not understand Mrs. Allingham’s declining at once to recommence her sketch at the spot he indicated.

The Dorsetshire cottages, for the most part, differ altogether from their fellows in Surrey and Sussex, for their walls are made of what would seem to be the flimsiest and clumsiest materials,—dried mud, intermixed with straw to give it consistency, entering mainly into their composition. Many are not far removed from the Irish cabins, of which we see an example in Plate 78.

54. THE CONDEMNED COTTAGE
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.

In speaking of Duke’s Cottage, I dwelt upon the poor materials of which it and its Dorsetshire fellows were made, and this, coupled with Mrs. Allingham presenting a picture of one that is too decayed to live in, may raise a suggestion as to their instability. But such is not the case. The lack of substance in the material is made up by increased thickness, and the cottage before us has stood the wear and tear of several hundred years, and now only lacks a tenant through its insanitary condition. A robin greeted the artist from the topmost of the grass-grown steps, glad no doubt to see some one about the place once more.

55. ON IDE HILL
From the Drawing in the possession of Mr. E. W. Fordham.
Painted 1900.

Ide Hill is to be found in Kent, on the south side of the Westerham Valley, and the old cottage is the last survival of a type, every one of which has given place to the newly built and commonplace.13 The view from hereabouts is very fine—so fine, indeed, that Miss Octavia Hill has, for some time, been endeavouring, and at last with success, to preserve a point for the use of the public whence the best can be seen.

56. A CHESHIRE COTTAGE, ALDERLEY EDGE
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. A. S. Littlejohns.
Painted 1898.

The almost invariable rule of the south, that cottages are formed out of the local material that is nearest to hand, is clearly not practised farther north, to judge by this example of a typical Cheshire cottage.

Stone is apparently so ready to hand that not only is the roadway paved with it, but even the approach to the cottage, whilst the large blocks seen elsewhere in the picture show that it is not limited in size. Yet the only portion of the building that is constructed of stone, so far as we can see, is the lean-to shed.

The cottage itself differs in many respects from those we have been used to in Surrey and Sussex. The roof is utilised, in fact the level of the first floor is on a line almost with its eaves, and a large bay window in the centre, and one at the end, show that it is well lighted. Heavy barge-boards are affixed to the gables, which is by no means always the case down south, and the wooden framework has at one time been blackened in consonance with a custom prevalent in Cheshire and Lancashire, but which is probably only of comparatively recent date; for gas-tar, which is used, was not invented a hundred years ago, and there seems no sense in a preservative for oak beams which usually are almost too hard to drive a nail into. The fashion is probably due to the substitution of unseasoned timber for oak.

57. THE SIX BELLS
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. G. Wills.
Painted 1892.

This beautiful old specimen of a timbered house was discovered by Mrs. Allingham by accident when staying with some artistic friends at Bearsted, in Kent, who were unaware of its existence. Although the weather was very cold and the season late, she lost no time in painting it, as its inmates said that it would be pulled down directly its owner, an old lady of ninety-two, who was very ill, died. Having spent a long day absorbed in putting down on paper its intricate details, she went into the house for a little warmth and a cup of tea, only to find a single fire, by which sat a labourer with his pot of warmed ale on the hob. Asking whether she could not go to some other fire, she was assured that nowhere else in the house could one be lit, as water lay below all the floors, and a fire caused this to evaporate and fill the rooms with steam.

As we have said, Mrs. Allingham alters her compositions as little as possible when painting from Nature, but in this case she has omitted a church tower that stood just to the right of the inn, and added the tall trees behind it. The omission was due to a feeling that the house itself was the point, and a quite sufficient point of interest, that would only be lessened by a competing one. The addition of the trees was made in order to give value to the grey of the house-side, which would have been considerably diminished by a broad expanse of sky.

58. A KENTISH FARMYARD
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. Arthur R. Moro.
Painted 1900.

Farmyards are out of fashion nowadays, and a Royal Water-Colour Society’s Exhibition, which in the days of Prout and William Hunt probably contained a dozen of them, will now find place for a single example only from the hand of Mr. Wilmot Pilsbury, who alone faithfully records for us the range of straw-thatched buildings sheltering an array of picturesque waggons and obsolete farming implements. But this “stead” is just opposite to the farm in which Mrs. Allingham stays, and it has often attracted her on damp days by its looking like “a blaze of raw sienna.” We can understand the tiled expanse of steep-pitched, moss-covered roof affording her some of that material on which her heart delights, and which she has felt it a duty to hand down to posterity before it gives place to some corrugated iron structure which must, ere long, supplant this old timber-built barn.

What was originally a study has been transformed by her, through the human incidents, into a picture: the milkmaid carrying the laden pail from the byre; the cock on the dunghill, seemingly amazed that his wives are too busily engaged on its contents to admire him; the lily-white ducks waddling to the pool to indulge in a drink, the gusto of which seems to increase in proportion to the questionableness of its quality.

CHAPTER VIII
GARDENS AND ORCHARDS

The practice of painting gardens is almost as modern as that of painting by ladies. The Flemings of the fifteenth century, it is true, introduced in a delightful fashion conventional borders of flowers into some of their pictures, probably because they felt that ornament must be presented from end to end of them, and that in no way could they do this better than by adding the gaiety of flowers to their foregrounds. But all through the later dreary days no one touched the garden, for the conglomeration of flowers in the pieces of the Dutchmen of the seventeenth century cannot be treated as such. Flowers certainly flourished in the gardens of the well-to-do in England in the century between 1750 and 1850, but none of the limners of the drawings of noblemen or of gentlemen’s seats which were produced in such quantities during that period ever condescended to introduce them. Even so late as fifty years ago, if we may judge from the titles, the Royal Academy Exhibition of that date did not contain a single specimen of a flower-garden. The only probable one is a picture entitled “Cottage Roses,” and any remotely connected with the garden appear under such headings as “Early Tulips,” “Geraniums,” “Japonicas and Orchids,” “Will you have this pretty rose, Mamma?” or “The Last Currants of Summer”! Taste only half a century ago was different from ours, and asked for other provender. Thus, the original owner of the catalogue from which these statistics were taken was an energetic amateur critic, who has commended, or otherwise, almost every picture, commendations being signified by crosses and disapproval by noughts. The only work with five crosses is one illustrating the line, “Now stood Eliza on the wood-crown’d height.” On the other hand, Millais’ “Peace Concluded” stands at the head of the bad marks with five, his “Blind Girl” with two, which number is shared with Leighton’s “Triumph of Music.” Holman Hunt’s “Scapegoat,” in addition to four bad marks, is described as “detestable and profane.” These pre-Raphaelites, Millais, Holman Hunt, and their followers, then so little esteemed, may in truth be said to have been the originators of the “garden-drawing cult,” chief amongst their followers being Frederick Walker. To the example of the last-named more especially are due the productions of the numerous artists—good, bad, and indifferent—who have seized upon a delightful subject and almost nauseated the public with their productions. The omission of gardens from the painter’s rôle in later times may in a measure have been due to the gardens themselves, or, to speak more correctly, to those under whose charge they were maintained. The ideal of a garden to the true artist must always have differed from these as to its ordering, even in these very recent days when the edict has gone forth that Nature is to be allowed a hand in the planning.

The gardener, no matter whether the surroundings favour a formal garden or not, insists upon his harmonies or contrasts of brilliant colourings. If he takes these from a manual on gardening he will adopt what is termed a procession of colouring somewhat as follows: strong blues, pale yellow, pink, crimson, strong scarlet, orange, and bright yellow. He is told that his colours are to be placed with careful deliberation and forethought, as a painter employs them in his picture, and not dropped down as he has them on his palette! Alfred Parsons and George Elgood have on occasions grappled with creations such as these, when placed in settings of yew-trimmed hedges, or as surroundings of a central statue, or sundial; but who will say that the results have been as successful as those where formality has been merely a suggestion, and Nature has had her say and her way. Surroundings must, of course, play a prominent part in any garden scheme. However much we may dislike a stiff formality, it is sometimes a necessity. For instance, herbaceous plants, with annuals of mixed colours, would have looked out of place on the lawn in front of Brocket Hall (Plate 65), which calls for a mass of plants of uniform colours. The lie of the ground, too, must, as in such a case, be taken into account: there it is a sloping descent facing towards the sun, and so is not easy to keep in a moist condition. Geraniums and calceolarias, which stand such conditions, are therefore almost a necessity.

When this book was proposed to Mrs. Allingham her chief objection was her certainty that no process could reproduce her drawings satisfactorily. Her method of work was, she believed, entirely opposed to mechanical reproduction, for she employed not only every formula used by her fellow water-colourists, but many that others would not venture upon. Amongst those she tabulated was her system of obtaining effects by rubbing, scrubbing, and scratching. But the process was not to be denied, and she was fain to admit that even in these it has been a wonderfully faithful reproducer. Now nowhere are these methods of Mrs. Allingham’s more utilised, and with greater effect, than in her drawings of flower-gardens. The system of painting flowers in masses has undergone great changes of late. The plan adopted a generation or so ago was first to draw and paint the flowers and then the foliage. This method left the flowers isolated objects and the foliage without substantiality. Mrs. Allingham’s method is the reverse of this. Take, for instance, the white clove pinks in the foreground of Mrs. Combe’s drawing of the kitchen-garden at Farringford (Plate 71). These are so admirably done that their perfume almost scents the room. They have been simply carved out of a background of walk and grey-green spikes, and left as white paper, all their drawing and modelling being achieved by a dexterous use of the knife and a wetted and rubbed surface. The poppies, roses, columbines, and stocks have all been created in the same way. The advantage is seen at once. There are no badly pencilled outlines, and the blooms blend amongst themselves and grow naturally out of their foliage.

59. STUDY OF A ROSE BUSH
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted about 1887.

A very interesting series of studies of various kinds might have been included in this volume, which would have shown the thoroughness with which our artist works, and it was with much reluctance that we discarded all but two, in the interests of the larger number of our readers, who might have thought them better fitted for a manual of instruction. The Gloire de Dijon rose, however, is such a prime old favourite, begotten before the days of scentless specimens to which are appended the ill-sounding names of fashionable patrons of the rose-grower, that we could not keep our hands off it when we came across it in the artist’s portfolio.

This rose tree, or one of its fellows, will be seen in the background of two of the drawings of Mrs. Allingham’s garden at Sandhills, namely, Plates 61 and 64.

60. WALLFLOWERS
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. G. Debenham.
Painted about 1893.

Of the denizens of the garden there is perhaps none which appeals to a countryman who has drifted into the city so much as the wallflower. His senses both of sight and smell have probably grown up under its influence, and it carries him back to the home of his childhood, for it is of never-to-be-forgotten sweetness both in colour and in scent, and it conjures up old days when the rare warmth of an April sun extracted its perfume until all the air in its neighbourhood was redolent of it.

If my reader be a west countryman, like the author, he may best know it as the gilliflower, but he will do so erroneously, for the name rightly applies to the carnation, and was so used even in Chaucer’s time—

and again in Culpepper—

But as a “rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” every true flower-lover cherishes his wallflower, which returns to him so bountifully the slightest attention, which accepts the humblest position, which thrives on the scantiest fare, which is amongst the first to welcome us in the spring, and, with its scantier second bloom, amongst the last to bid adieu in the autumn, sometimes even striving to gladden us with its blossom year in and year out if winter’s cold be not too stark.

Old names give place to new, and in nurserymen’s catalogues we search in vain for its pleasant-sounding title, and fail to distinguish either its reproduction in black and white, or its designation under that of cheiranthus.

61. MINNA
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Lord Chief Justice of England.
Painted about 1886.

This, and the drawing of a “Summer Garden” (Plate 64), are taken almost from the same spot in Mrs. Allingham’s garden at Sandhills. Both are simple studies of flowers without any more elaborate effort at arrangement or composition than that which gives to each a purposed scheme of colour—a scheme, however, that is, with set purpose, hidden away, so that the flowers may look as if they grew, as they appear to do, by chance. The flowers, too, are old-fashioned inhabitants: pansies, sea-pinks, marigolds, sweetwilliams, snap-dragons, eschscholtzias, and flags, with a background of rose bushes; all of them (with the exception, perhaps, of the flag) flowers such as Spenser might have had in his eye when he penned the lines—

62. A KENTISH GARDEN
From the Drawing in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1903.

This scene may well be compared with that of Tennyson’s garden at Aldworth, reproduced in Plate 74, as it illustrates even more appositely than does that, the lines in “Roses on the Terrace” concerning the contrast between the pink of the flower and the blue of the distance. But here the interval between the colours is not the exaggerated fifty miles of the poem, but one insufficient to dim the shapes of the trees on the opposite side of the valley. Of all the gardens here illustrated none offers a greater wealth of colour than this Kentish garden, situated as it is with an aspect which makes it a veritable sun-trap.

63. CUTTING CABBAGES
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. E. W. Fordham.
Painted about 1884.

The cabbage is probably to most people the most uninteresting tenant of the kitchen-garden, and yet its presence there was probably the motive which set Mrs. Allingham to work to make this drawing, for it is clear that in the first instance it was conceived as a study of the varied and delicate mother-of-pearl hues which each presented to an artistic eye. As a piece of painting it is extremely meritorious through its being absolutely straight-forward drawing and brush work, the high lights being left, and not obtained by the usual method of cutting, scraping, or body colour. The buxom mother of a growing family selecting the best plant for their dinner is just the personal note which distinguishes each and every one of our illustrations.

64. IN A SUMMER GARDEN
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. William Newall.
Painted about 1887.

I cannot refrain from drawing attention to this reproduction as one of the wonders of the “three colour process.” If my readers could see the three colours which produce the result when superimposed, first the yellow, then the red, and lastly the blue—aniline hues of the most forbidding character—they would indeed deem it incredible that any resemblance to the original could be possible. It certainly passes the comprehension of the uninitiated how the differing delicacies of the violet hues of the flowers to the left could be obtained from a partnership which produced the blue black of the flowers in the foreground, the light pinks of the Shirley poppies, and the rich reds of the sweetwilliams. Again, what a marvel must the photographic process be which refuses to recognise the snow-white campanula, and leaves it to be defined by the untouched paper, and yet records the faint pink flush which has been breathed upon the edges of the sweetwilliam. It is indeed a tribute to the inventive genius of the present day, genius which will probably enable the “press the button and we do the rest photographer” before many days are past to reel off in colour what he now can only accomplish in monochrome.

65. BY THE TERRACE, BROCKET HALL
From the Water-colour in the possession of Lord Mount-Stephen.
Painted 1900.

Portraiture of time-worn cottages where Nature has its way, and cottars’ gardens where flowers come and go at their own sweet will, is a very different thing from portraiture of a well-kept house, where the bricklayer and the mason are requisitioned when the slightest decay shows itself, and of gardens where formal ribbon borders are laid out by so-called landscape gardeners, whose taste always leans to bright colours not always massed in the happiest way. In portraits of houses license is hardly permissible even for artistic effects, for not only may associations be connected with every slope and turn of a path, but the artist always has before him the possibility that the drawing will be hung in close proximity to the scene, for comparison by persons who may not always be charitably disposed to artistic alterations. It speaks well, therefore, for Mrs. Allingham in the drawing of the garden at Brocket that she has produced a drawing which, without offending the conventions, is still a picture harmonious in colour, and probably very satisfying to the owner. There are few who would have cared to essay the very difficult drawing of cedars, and have accomplished it so well, or have laboured with so much care over the plain-faced house and windows. As to these latter she has been happy in assisting the sunlight in the picture by the drawn-down blinds at the angles which the sun reaches. The scene has clearly been pictured in the full blaze of summer.

Brocket Hall is a mansion some three miles north of Hatfield, Hertfordshire, and a short distance off the Great North Road. It is one of a string of seats hereabouts which belong to Earl Cowper, but has been tenanted by Lord Mount-Stephen for some years. The house, which, as will be seen, has not much architectural pretensions, was built in the eighteenth century, but it is, to cite an old chronicle, “situate on a dry hill in a fair park well wooded and greatly timbered” through which the river Lea winds picturesquely. It is notable as having been the residence of two Prime Ministers, Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston. The drawing of “The Hawthorn Valley” (Plate 37) is taken from a part of the park.

66. THE SOUTH BORDER
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.

This is one of the borders designed on the graduated doctrine as practised by Miss Jekyll in her garden at Munstead near Godalming. Here we have the colours starting at the far end in grey leaves, whites, blues, pinks, and pale yellows, towards a gorgeous centre of reds, oranges, and scarlets, the whites being formed of yuccas, the pinks of hollyhocks, the reds and yellows of gladioli, nasturtiums, African marigolds, herbaceous sunflowers, dahlias, and geraniums. Another part of the scheme is seen in the drawing which follows.

67. THE SOUTH BORDER
From the Water-colour in the possession of W. Edwards, Jun.
Painted 1900.

A further illustration of the same border in Miss Jekyll’s garden, but painted a year or two earlier, and representing it at its farther end, where cool colours are coming into the scheme. The orange-red flowers hanging over the wall are those of the Bignonia grandiflora; the bushes on either side of the archway with white flowers are choisyas, and the adjoining ones are red and yellow dahlias, flanked by tritonias (red-hot pokers); the oranges in front are African marigolds (hardly reproduced sufficiently brightly), with white marguerites; the grey-leaved plant to the left is the Cineraria maritima. Miss Jekyll does not entirely keep to her arrangement of masses of colour; whilst, as an artist, she affects rich masses of colour, she is not above experimenting by breaking in varieties.

68. STUDY OF LEEKS
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.

When Mrs. Allingham in wandering round a garden came upon this bed of flowering leeks, and, “singularly moved to love the lovely that are not beloved,” at once sat down to paint it in preference to a more ambitious display in the front garden that was at her service, her friends probably considered her artistic perception to be peculiar, and some there may be who will deem the honour given to it by introduction into these pages to be more than its worth. But it has more than one claim to recognition here, for it is unusual in subject, delicate in its violet tints, not unbecoming in form, and is here disassociated from the disagreeable odour which usually accompanies the reality.