Between two and three hundred roses were picked every morning, and they seemed to my sisters and me to be such completely independent beings, that we called to each other from room to room, that ‘the roses have come in’ as if they had walked in of their own volition. In very hot weather, they ‘came in’ before we were up, as my father knew that they disliked the sun, so he used to get up between five and six to pick them. Every evening, sheets of newspaper were laid upon the long polished tables in the hall, and soup-plates filled with water were placed upon these. Here the roses rested when they first came in. It took hours to arrange them; and, in the house as in the garden, my father would not allow his pets to be used merely for decoration. Each flower must be given its solitary honour, and the vases he preferred were simple specimen glasses in which a single bloom could sit in undisturbed beauty, its perfect form controlled by a vase which exactly fitted it. The loveliest specimens were chosen to be set up one by one in green wood show-cases; and then they remained in the large cool hall where my father visited them from time to time, coming out of the study to stare at them for a few moments, and then going back. At midsummer, when the roses were most plentiful, and again in the autumn, when they bloom irregularly, and are not true to type, we sometimes did succeed in grouping some of the flowers in big vases and bowls; but this was really desecration in my father’s eyes. It was making a queen into a chorus girl. Roses picked by him were also very difficult to arrange freely, as when he cut them, he thought only of the good of the tree, so they often had impossibly short stalks which could only reach the water in the little round vases which we placed, with the saltcellars, at the corners of the dinner table.
They were very characteristic of Wilton Rectory, those long summer mornings doing the flowers in the hall, when little puffs of wind came in through the open garden door, and we heard in the study the voices of my parents, he ‘in a fuss’ about something, and she trying to calm him.
The hall itself had the large square proportions of the later Georgian buildings. It was broad and high, the three flights of the staircase filling one end. The original character of the hall had been considerably modified by a good many pieces of large and somewhat incongruous furniture which now filled it. Chief among these was an enormous thing called ‘Old Stroud’ This was a sideboard made of many pieces of medieval carved wood, which had been collected and joined together by a remarkable old cabinet maker who then lived in Wilton. The carvings were ecclesiastical in character—angels, saints, eagles, and mythical creatures; and this combination of a wine-cellar with a reredos gave to the spacious Georgian hall at Wilton Rectory, a look of Newstead in the days of Lord Byron. My father never thought of it in that way. He liked Old Stroud.
One side of the hall was occupied by two mahogany tables, where we did the roses in the summer, and there was a carved oak chest containing Altar Frontals, on which the curates put their hats on Monday mornings when they came for the ‘Chapter Meeting’. There was a round table covered with an embroidered cloth where there always stood a fern or a primula in a pot, surrounded by a circle of photograph books. There was a rosewood cabinet containing my grandfather’s collection of shells, and there were three fine old Chippendale chairs, left in her will to my father by an old woman in the parish.
A jumble of ‘pieces’, each with its own character, and each placed where it stood in order to be used. Appearance had not first been considered. Perhaps the total effect was inharmonious, and yet I can scarcely think so. The individuality of each of my parents was so strong, and their united view of life was so forceful, that I believe that they succeeded in wresting harmony out of those seemingly discordant elements. The house which they inhabited, the furniture which they placed in it, and the life which they regulated within its walls, made a unity, which was a definite creation. We grew up to breathe this atmosphere, austere, yet richly compounded. Our lungs adapted themselves to it, and I believe that if I could find it again, I should find myself once more at home.
Chapter One
CHIEFLY ABOUT PROCESSIONS
I used to say that if I died without knowing Mr. Walkley, I should have lived in vain. And now—I have. Or rather, Mr. Walkley died without knowing me. He was The Times Dramatic Critic when I was in the school room, and in those days it was my passionate desire to become an actress. The idea was grotesque. My father thought a professional actress was as improper as a Restoration Play, and an actor was almost as bad. My brother Alfred, in spite of his irresistible charm, was never really forgiven for having
