MARGINAL COMMENT
By liAR01.13 N1COLSON R. JOHN BETJEMAN, being representative of the alert generation which rendered Oxford vivid between the wars, has taught us that good taste is the most supine of all accomplishments. He would agree with Mr. Bernard Shaw that to describe a man as possessing good taste amounts to saying that he lacks moral courage. Mr. Betjeman is too young to remember the days when we youths of taste constituted an active and revolu- tionary minority, leading a double revolt, both against the congested ugliness of our mothers' drawing-rooms and the fussy, flabby knick- knacks of the Beardsley period. We were no less incensed by the fans, the Oriental plates and the Japanese colour prints of the Yellow Book mode than we were by the pampas grass, the plush tables and the photograph frames of the Edwardian interior. In our Ming and Tang eclecticism we rejoiced to see how rapidly the Japanese screens disappeared from the saloons of Belgravia to find a dusty refuge in seaside boarding-houses. We were delighted when those storks embroidered in gold thread on a black cloth background were re- placed by the tall Coromandel screens, against which, in the houses of the rich and great, a large bowl of poinsettias would display their exotic worth. Gradually as the decades passed the flounced lamp- shades of our forefathers gave way to stiff cardboard on which, during the Bakst period, Persian miniatures were reproduced. In wave upon wave there followed the Regency revival, the Victorian revival, the vogue for white furniture, the Omega moment, and in the end the utility decades which we now enjoy. All of which has left us with the impression that the Good Taste movement of 1910 was not in fact a Risorgimento, but only a change of fashion, only a desire for something different. All of which has left me with the impression that Mr. Bet jeman may be right. The fine catholic enthusiasm which derives aesthetic pleasure from an inkstand de- signed by Pugin may well be a nobler emotion than was our assertive distaste for things which appeared to us as out of date.
* * Good taste, if it is to be a personal accomplishment, must settle down in later years to some fixed predilection for certain shapes, colours and proportions and to some fixed dislike of their opposites. The person who floats like a polyp upon the tides of fashion cannot claim to have acquired a settled taste. Any taste, if it is to be classed as serious, must be eccentric ; it must combine both hate and love ; it must be active, consistent and personal. Collectors and art experts arc usually devoid of taste ; they will bunch their beloved objects together, insensitive to any pictorial effect, to any scheme of composi- tion. Those people also who devote their lives to creating the correct period atmosphere are usually devoid of taste ; the effect of their purchases and arrangements is generally an untruthful effect. Only in exceptional cases could any householder have filled his rooms with furniture and adornments dating solely from a given period ; he must always have inherited at least a few objects of beauty or value dating from a previous age. To reconstruct a room containing only such pieces as can be dated between 1720 and 1740 is to violate the rules of appropriateness ; it may represent a laudable effort at historical reconstruction, but it is essentially an artificial act, and as such in- sincere and tasteless. The real living-room of a real person contains all manner of intimate relics, a Picasso and a cuckoo-clock, an Egyptian alabaster and a little white pot from Worthing.
The general rule that taste must be the sincere reflection of indi- vidual temperament and predilection applies also to gardens. The design of our English gardens has passed through several successive moods and modes. We had the old knot garden, with its palisades and emblems ; we had the great revolution of Repton, Brown and Kent and the splendid landscape effects which they produced ; we had the laurels and the geraniums of the Victorian epoch ; we had the Miss Jekyll manner ; we had the gnomes and bird-baths of a later suburban age. Yet the principle of all sound garden design • remains constant ; it must combine the element of expectation with the element of surprise, the expected with the unexpected, the vista with the secret plot. The financial difficulties by which we are all today afflicted are bound seriously to affect the future of our garden designs. However intricate and efficient may be the labour-saving devices which are now on the market, no gardener can today afford the lavish bedding-out, the constant supply of annuals which formed the basis of the Victorian garden. It is difficult, even with the best machines, to keep the hedges in order or to preserve the lawns. In- evitably we shall be forced in the end to restrict the flower-beds and even the herbaceous borders and to concentrate upon flowering trees and shrubs. Care must, however, be exercised in choosing these labour-saving growths. If one grows an ugly plant, it is easy to dig it up ; mistakes with trees are less easy to rectify. The wrong shrub or tree may cost more money in the end. Yet there is one great economy which I should venture to suggest, namely, to give our gardens a rest during the month of August. Here, again, the question of personal predilection enters, the question of taste. IP is certainly not sufficient to like, or even to prefer, certain flowers ; one must acquire the moral courage to dislike a whole range of flowers and to manifest that dislike by banishing them from the garden. I am fortunate in hating most of the flowers which adorn the month of August, and I am glad, during that month of weeds, to have no flowers at all.
* * * For me the flowers of August are little more than leguminous growths, which take no delight in being flowers at all. With what rapture will the netted iris startle the sloth of February, raising its deep but fragile velvet into the chill air ; with what pride will the Algerian iris a few days later appear with a smile of self-approval upon its tissue-paper face ; with what enjoyment of their own prowess will the crocus break the mould and all the buds of Easter burst into triumphant display! But the late-comers—the acanthus, the heleniums, the helianthus, the verbascums and the garlics--arrive middle-aged upon the scene ; they stand there dustily amid the pods of the delphiniums, not at all certain that they are glad to have come ; they are fulfilling a biological necessity, and they do it glumly ; they give no pleasure to others and take no pleasure in themselves. The montbretias will raise their ugly spindles, presaging the autumn which is at hand ; the gladioli will lean wearily against their stakes ; the carnations will lay their hot and tired heads upon the garden path. Much as I admire the lovely lines which Matthew Arnold devoted to the "high midsummer pomps," I prefer to agree with Thyrsis and to leave them alone. I know that there are people patient enough to enjoy lifting dahlias and who derive much satis- faction from those heavy blooms ; I know that there are other gardeners who have the skill and courage to experiment in the lily tribe and who are compensated during the dog-days by Auratum or Speciosum ; I know that many rosarians look forward to their later specimens. But I am content to hate the August flowers, to wait lazily till autumn comes, and meanwhile to economise in effort and expense and concentrate upon the catalogues which give us-promise of young, self-confident flowers in 1950.
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England, I fear, is not at her best in August. The trees all turn the colour of parsley and the ricks stand grey in the sun. It is a month, the only month, in which I prefer the gardens of the south, when the fountains splash under the ilexes and upon the terraces there is the odeur penetrante des buis. What I really dislike about the high mictsummer pomps is that they tend to become so pompous. In a wet summer one can quietly enjoy the beauty of the lawns and yews ; this year the yews stand sleepily and the lawns arc like hard tennis courts. Let us therefore ignore this begonia month and clip our hedges quietly, manifesting thereby a noble independence of fashion and the positive Quirks of individual taste.
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