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In A London Garden
by
It is not exactly a garden yet, of course. The author of that book for amateurs would drop dead from shock if he saw it. But it is more like a garden than the cankered cat-walk it once was.
By the way, speaking of a garden in London, you may possibly have heard the story of
THE POOL IN THE DESERT
There was once a desert. Now I come to think of it, there still is.
Across the desert, mounted on three camels, came the millionaire, the artist, and the analyst. During the day their diet had consisted principally of biscuits and sand. With this they had drunk as much dry sherry as happened to be left in the millionaire’s gold flask with the diamond monogram on it. Therefore at first sight they were glad when they saw the pool, and dismounted hurriedly from their camels. But self-respect, which is a splendid quality, came to their rescue. It was the millionaire who spoke first.
“I don’t call that a pool at all. I have a lake in the park at my country-place at least four times the size of that. It is a wretched skimpy little business not worth our attention. Now if we had come to the cataract of Niagara, that really would have been of some interest.”
Even as he spoke, the analyst had produced from his saddle-bags test tubes, and litmus paper, and a spirit-lamp, and all manner of mixed chemicals, and was busily engaged on a sample of the water which he had taken.
It was the artist who spoke next.
“Water demands green surroundings. To put a pool in a desert is to put it in a wrong setting altogether. Here we have one stunted and miserable palm tree, and no other vegetation. There is really nothing at all here that I should care to paint.”
The analyst was now ready with his results.
“This is precisely what I feared. There can be no doubt whatever that this pool suffers from organic pollution. I do not say that it exists to such an extent as to be dangerous to life, but there is a very distinct trace. I will show you the figures in my analysis.”
He did so. I have forgotten the figures. But that does not matter, because if I told you them, you also would forget them.
And then for a while these three good men sat and looked at one another.
“I believe I am dying of thirst,” said the millionaire.
“So am I,” said the artist.
“There is no known form of liquid that I would not at this moment gladly drink,” said the analyst.
So after all they turned their attention to the pool.
But in the meantime the three camels–poor dumb beasts who knew no better–had drunk up the whole of that pool, and had gone on their way rejoicing.
CHAPTER II
OMISSIONS: AND THE STORY OF “THE GIRL WHO WENT BACK”
There are smuts in London.
There is also a tradition about the smuts in London, and it may be as well to differentiate the facts and the tradition. According to tradition, everywhere within a six-mile radius from Charing Cross smuts fall heavily and continuously. Nothing will grow. No green things can exist. A sheet of paper exposed to the open air becomes black in three seconds, and a thick layer of carbon covers everything. There are many people who believe this. I was told so only the other night by a beautiful lady to whom I had inadvertently jabbered about my garden. By the way, she was wearing a white dress. Why?
The fact is that there are as many smuts as one can reasonably want–and perhaps a few more–in the city and in Mayfair. There are not so many as there used to be, because there is less smoke. Electricity does not smoke. Up in St John’s Wood and Hampstead the smuts are very much diminished. Probably if I climbed one of my trees I should find my hands black. But I am not a boy nor a gorilla, that I should do this thing. I read or write in the garden, and I find that no smut settles on the white page. I dine under the tall trees, and the white cloth remains unpolluted. I may possibly get an elm-seed in my soup, but that is another matter. (Can anyone tell me, by the way, why the elm produces such an amazing lot of seeds and sows them broadcast, with a preference for places where they can never by any possibility germinate?) This is all quite contrary to tradition, but it happens to be the truth.