LETTERS AL FRESCO

`. . . IN HIS BLUE GARDENS MEN AND GIRLS CAME AND WENT LIKE MOTHS AMONG THE WHISPERINGS AND THE CHAMPAGNE AND THE STARS. . . .'

Author: Date: SUNDAY, June 8, 1997

Page: N17

Section: Books

A.

Being a man without any care in the world, always seeking some justification for a life of perpetual idleness, I found these mornings on summer holidays on the estate especially charming. When the gardens were all green and wet with dew, shining joyously in the sun, and when the oleanders and the mignonettes spread their perfume all round the house, and when the young people have just returned from church and are drinking tea in the garden, and when they are all joyful and charmingly dressed, and when you know that all these healthy, beautiful, well-fed people will be doing nothing all day, at such times I long for life to be always like this.

B.

There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aqua planes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before.

C.

They noticed a gap in the hedge, and, walking through it, found themselves in a huge garden where fruit trees, rose trees, flowers, and vegetables were mingled in a way that surprised and delighted them. . . . They saw old Mme Bonenfant at the far end of the garden, and walked slowly toward her. By the time they arrived at the sweet-pea trench her basket was full. She laid her garden shears across the long green stems and took the Americans on a tour of the garden, pointing out the espaliered fruit trees and telling them the French names of flowers. She did not understand their school-room French. They felt shy with her.

D.

The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration, and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch.

It stood upon a low hill, above the river -- the river being the Thames, at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather had played all sorts of picturesque tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented itself to the lawn, with its patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers.

Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide carpet of turf that covered the level hilltop seemed but the extension of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet cushions; and the place was furnished, like a room, with cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with the books and papers that lay upon the grass.

E.

He offered his arm to the countess; she leaned upon it, or rather just touched it with her little hand, and they together descended the steps, lined with rhododendrons and camellias. . . . Mme. de Morcerf entered an archway of trees with her companion. It was a grove of lindens, conducting to a conservatory. . . .

They reached the building, ornamented with magnificent fruits, which ripen even in June in the artificial temperature which takes the place of the sun, so frequently absent in our climate. The countess left his arm and gathered a bunch of Muscatel grapes.

``See, count,'' she said, with a smile so sad in its expression that one could almost see the tears on her eyelids, ``see, our French grapes are not to be compared, I know, with yours of Sicily and Cyprus, but you will make allowances for our northern sun.''

The count bowed, but stepped back.

``Do you refuse?'' said Mercedes, in a tremulous voice.

``Pray excuse me, madame,'' he replied, ``but I never eat Muscatel grapes.''

F.

The house was left; the house was deserted. . . . A thistle thrust itself between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-room; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls; rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and pattered their life out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages. . . . What power could now prevent the fertility, the insensibility of nature?

G.

The House is easy enough to describe but how to write a summer's day in an old garden? Smell the grass, we say. Smell the trees! A flag is draped from the attic windows over the front of the house, leaving the hall in darkness. It is dusk and the family has gathered. Sarah has told them about her journey with Mr. Pincher. Leander has brought the Topaze into port. Moses has raced his sailboat at the Pocamasset club and is spreading his mainsail on the grass to dry. Coverly has watched the table-silver-company ball game from the barn cupola. Leander is drinking bourbon and the parrot hangs in a cage by the kitchen door. A cloud passes over the low sun, darkening the valley, and they feel a deep and momentary uneasiness as if they apprehended how darkness can fall over the continents of the mind.

H.

The vegetation belonged to no place on this planet, and in some sense to all. English primroses and bluebells, daffodils and crocus shone amongst evergreen luxuriant tropical creepers, their soft perfumes mingling with exotic stephanotis and sweet jasmine. She turned round and round, and the butterflies circled, and the captive water splashed in its little bowl. He thought he would always remember her like this, whatever happened to her, to him, to them, in this glittering palace where his two worlds met. And so he did, from time to time, for the rest of his life: the girl in the blue dress with pale sunny head, amongst creepers and Spring flowers, and the cloud of butterflies.

I.

The most amazing aspect of the roof was the southern half, overlooking al-Nahhasin Street. There in years past she had planted a special garden. . . . She had first begun with a small number of pots of carnations and roses. They had increased year by year and were arranged in rows parallel to the sides of the walls. They grew splendidly, and she had the idea of putting a trellis over the top. She got a carpenter to install it. Then she planted both jasmine and hyacinth bean vines. She attached them to the trellis and around the posts. They grew tall and spread out until the area was transformed into an arbor garden with a green sky from which jasmine flowed down. An enchanting, sweet fragrance was diffused throughout.

This roof, with its inhabitants of chickens and pigeons and its arbor garden, was her beautiful, beloved world and her favorite place for relaxation out of the whole universe, about which she knew nothing.

J.

The housekeeper came [and] they followed her into the dining-parlour. It was a large, well-proportioned room, handsomely fitted up. Elizabeth, after slightly surveying it, went to a window to enjoy its prospect. The hill, crowned with wood, from which they had descended, receiving increased abruptness from the distance, was a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good; and she looked on the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered on its banks, and the winding of the valley, as far as she could trace it, with delight. As they passed into other rooms, these objects were taking different positions; but from every window there were beauties to be seen. . . .

``And of this place,'' thought she, ``I might have been mistress!''

1. Anton Chekhov

2. Joseph Conrad

3. Henry James

4. Salman Rushdie

5. John Cheever

6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez

7. Vladimir Nabokov

8. Jane Austen

9. George Sand

10. Naguib Mahfouz

11. William Maxwell

12. Alexandre Dumas

13. George Eliot

14. Virginia Woolf

15. Gustave Flaubert

16. Thomas Hardy

17. F. Scott Fitzgerald

18. A. S. Byatt

19. Willa Cather

20. Nathaniel Hawthorne

B. -- 17 F. Scott Fitzgerald, ``The Great Gatsby.''

C. -- 11 William Maxwell, ``The Chateau.''

D. -- 3 Henry James, ``The Portrait of a Lady.''

E. -- 12 Alexandre Dumas, ``The Count of Monte Cristo.''

F. -- 14 Virginia Woolf, ``To the Lighthouse.''

G. -- 5 John Cheever, ``The Wapshot Chronicle.''

H. -- 18 A.S. Byatt, ``Morpho Eugenia'' (in ``Angels and Insects'').

I. -- 10 Naguib Mahfouz, ``Palace Walk.''

J. -- 8 Jane Austen, ``Pride and Prejudice.''

Quiz on Page N17