GARDEN-PARTIES.
WE build oar houses for ourselves and our friends, and we plant our gardens for ourselves and our friends. It is natural, therefore, that both in our houses and our gardens we should entertain either a few at a time, or many at once, or both by turns, according to our temperaments and tastes. Garden-parties have many obvious advantages over indoor entertainments, and many disadvantages which are more subtle but not less certain. It is very cheap to enter- tain out-of-doors, and there is always sufficient space. We must perforce ask our guests in the afternoon, when no one can eat anything more substantial than tea. The smallest garden is larger than the largest room, and if on a hot summer day we ask our friends to keep us company in the open air, we minister to their instinctive feeling that on such a day it is "a shame to be in the house." Then, again, almost every garden is in some degree a pretty place, while there are very many houses for which even their owners would claim no such praise. In a garden, too, it is difficult for the shyest person to be quite at a loss for something to say, for out-of-doors we may all frankly criticise what we see. We feel we are in a picture gallery as well as at a party, and though we may be ever so ignorant of the subjects displayed, we can hardly find ourselves without something to say about them. How is it, then, that there is as a rule something rather dull about a garden-party ? We should think that nothing very interesting was ever said at one, and though Trollops occasionally allowed his curates to propose at such functions,' we feel that, true to life as his
• characters were in speech, be sometimes painted in a purely conventional background to suit his story. Very little scandal is ever talked, we are sure, at garden-parties. No one is keen about anything, or cross about anything either. All are in presence of some influence which is at once pleasant but non-human,—the spirit of the garden. Now and then two friends who are glad to meet wander away to chat in a 'secluded corner ; but, as a rule, however large an area is open to their meandering., garden-party guests keep together. No
discussions arise, and no flirtations. Ardent gardeners talk Of soils and manures, and when is the best moment to plant and prune, and who is after all the least unsatisfactory nurseryman to deal with. The great majority of the guests are women, and women among women criticise one another a good deal ; but who at a garden-party has ever been roused to the hot defence of a friend, or surprised into saying something more ill-natured than she intended ? Even dress is little talked of,—dress at a garden-party adorns' the scene, not the woman. Colours and textures and fashions are reduced to their artistic values. Some anti-social influence is in the air, yet people go early and. stay late, and undoubtedly look happier, if less animated, than they do indoors. A sense of well-being pervades the company, but somehow that sense is independent of intercourse. Hostesses have realised lately that some element is wanting in an outdoor party, and have endeavoured to remedy the omission by the introduction of entertainments, and seeing that it cannot be wholly corrected, to turn it to social advantage. A band plays to fill in the intervals of silence. Little games which years ago would have been considered fit only to please village school-children are instituted upon the lawn, and a fortune-teller in a tent endeavours to arouse our flagging interest in the personalities and fates of ourselves and our neighbours. And as people still do not "come together " in the social sense as hostesses desire, they take the opportunity of asking all sorts and conditions of persons on the same day, who under a roof, by reason of their social or personal differences of rank or opinion, would certainly be unhappy.
Of course, agreeable garden-parties can be given in all sorts and conditions of gardens,—on the wide lawns of the country house, or in the flower-stocked patch of the suburban villa, or in any one of those new gardens on hills and moorlands the beauty of which depends almost entirely upon situation. There is a wonderful fascination about a piece of ground captured for civilisation, as it were, against the will of every blade of grass upon it. The bright flowers that have been induced to grow do not seem somehow to be at home as they hold up their proud heads and dull the heather. Still, they raise the flag of civilisation, and make common cause with the gay dresses which flutter among them at a garden-party, and wander by twos and threes into the wild as far as the straggling patches of red, blue, and yellow cultivation will show them the way. From such a garden there is generally a wide view, across stretches of sea perhaps, or, still better, stretches of greenness flowing up into bays and inlets among the hills. Such a view to those who do not look at it every moment, who have to go though it be ever such a little distance to find it, is, as it were, an escape. As they look, some- thing of sadness and worry falls off their shoulders. They have got away from the cage of duty by a legitimate door. For those, however, who cannot look out of their windows and not see their view it is not an escape ; it becomes a scene and no more. For true enjoyment of the country a house may be too well placed. But if we go to a garden-party, if we climb up to our friend's new house and chat with our acquaintance in his new garden, we are not likely, whatever be the weather, to see his view at its best. It is strange how very difficult it is to hold any intercourse with Nature in company. All experience suggests that the presence of a crowd, like the sound of music, increases in' the ordinary individual the power of worship. In every religion men pour forth praise in chorus, but the influence of Nature is nullified by company. She seldom speaks except • in confidence. The most her ardent devotee can expect in a crowd is an intimation that she will have something to tell him on that spot if he will return alone and able to give full attention, for Nature is very jealous, as every one knows who has tried to do head- work out-of-doors. Once outside the house and everything happens which can woo a man from his work. With her in- exhaustible magio of lights and shadows, Nature will show him beauties in a familiar scene of which he never dreamed, and which he cannot choose but look at; or in another mood will blow his tools out of his reach and his hat over his eyes, and threaten to burn, freeze, or drown him alive if ho will not look off his book and give himself up to her charms.
But the beet garden 'for s garden-party is an old one,— walled, enclosed, subdivided, trim, and suggestive everywhere of shelter and limitation. Here the flutter of muslin and the sheen of bright silks are altogether in place. This is no escape for wild spirits, but the abode of peace, which should be varied, though not broken, by intervals of a somewhat artificial society. Here we see Nature thoroughly disciplined. The most civilised thing in the world is a well-kept garden. In a small garden we get a nearer approach to the mental atmosphere of a house. The only garden-party to which the present writer ever went which combined the advantages and disadvantages of indoors and out was given in a Chelsea back- yard. The guests sat upon benches among falling showers of smuts, with the sun full upon their unsupported backs, while their hosts acted a short allegorical play written by the son of the house, and designed as a satire upon life and its amuse- ments. But though on this occasion every one was glad to retire from the hot, if thought-provoking, scene to the shade and freshness of the drawing-room, there can be no doubt that the pleasure of a garden-party is not seldom in inverse ratio to the size of the garden. In small gardens only do flowers attain to their full individuality. Scientifically tended by the educated, they lose something of their vegetable nature. They become more like pets, and assume something of personality. They are not there to ornament the garden, to show up the green of the lawn, or the dark background of clipped yews, or the gloomy green and redness of fir-tree tops and stems, or to make a background of opaque colour against the colourless translucence of the stream. The garden exists for them, and they seem to know it. But even among these domestic plants the spirit of the garden finds an entrance and silently interrupts the talk. • There is something about being out-of-doors which sends the wits wool-gathering. Everything, to be of human interest, must be concentrated. The truth is that Nature stands between all groups of people who come together in her presence. We see our friends at a garden-party, we do not exactly meet them. The compelling presence of that strong, silent third person, Nature, militates against social intimacy.
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