The Rosery Folk. George Manville Fenn
but tropical potato—that child of the sun which blights and rots and dies away in a humid atmosphere, the consequence of our heavy downpours of rain. ‘But we must have potatoes,’ say both Pat, and John Bull. True: then do as I, Ajax, the weather defier, have done: grow early sorts, which flourish, ripen, and can be housed before the setting in of the heavy autumnal rains.”
“Hear, hear,” said the doctor, sitting back in his wicker chair and holding his fuming cigar in the middle of a peach-tree, where some insects had effected a lodgment.
“That’s right, doctor, give them a good dose,” said Sir James following suit. “But to proceed. It is not apropos of tubers that I indulge this spring in a pleasant warm feeling of self-satisfaction, but on account of wall-fruit—the delicious plum, a bag of golden saccharine pulp, or a violet bloomed, purple-skinned mass of deliciously flavoured amber; the downy-skinned peach, with a ruddy tint like that of a bonny English maiden’s cheek; the fiery stoned luscious nectarine—that vinous ambrosial fruit that ought to be eaten with the eyes closed that the soul may dream and be transported into transports of mundane bliss; item, the apricot, that bivalve of fruits which will daintily split into two halves, to enable you to drop the stone before partaking of its juicy joys. Come good season or bad season your Londoner sees the pick of these princes of the fruit world reposing in perfect trim in the market or window; but in such an autumn as the past it was melancholy to walk round one’s friends’ gardens—say with Tompkins or Smith or Robinson, each of whom spends a little fortune upon his grounds, over which Macduff or Macbeth or Macfarlane, or some other ‘gairdner fra’ the North,’ tyrannically presides. The plums upon the most favoured walls were cracked, and dropped spoiled from the trees; the peaches looked white and sickly, and were spotted with decomposition; the nectarines that consented to stay on the twigs were hard and green, and where one that approached the appearance of ripeness was tasted, it was watery, flavourless, and poor.”
“Watery, flavourless, and poor, is good,” said the doctor. “I don’t often buy wall-fruit, but if I do spend sixpence in the Central Avenue, Covent Garden, that is about the state of the purchase.”
“Exactly,” said Sir James eagerly, “and it is impossible to help triumphing in one’s pity while one reasonably says, ‘Why attempt to grow out-of-doors the tender fruits of a warmer clime in such a precarious country as ours? Or, if you must grow them, why not metaphorically provide your peaches, nectarines, apricots, and choice plums with goloshes, macintoshes, and, above all, with an umbrella?’ I do, and I egotistically take my friends to see the result. Their trees are drenched, desolate, and the saturated ground beneath is strewn with rotting fruit. My trees, on the contrary, have their toes nice and warm; their bodies are surrounded by a comfortable great coat; and, above all, their delicate leaves and still more delicate blossoms are sheltered by a spreading umbrella of glass. In other words I grow them in an orchard house, and the result is that they are laden with luscious fruit.”
“Ah!” said the doctor, “but this is the luxury of the rich, my boy: glass-houses are a great expense.”
“By no means, Jack. If gorgeous glass palaces and Paxtonian splendour are desired, of course I have nothing to say; but the man of modest mind who likes to exercise his own ingenuity to slope some rafters from the top of a garden wall to a few posts and boards in front, and cover in the slope with the cheapest glass, may provide himself at a very trifling expense with a glazed shed, within whose artificial climate he may grow as many choice plants as he chooses, he may begin with five pounds, or go up to five hundred, as he pleases: the fruit would be the same: all that is required is shelter, ventilation, and abundance of light. The heat is provided by Nature, none other is needed—no furnaces, boilers, hot-water pipes, flues, or expensive apparatus of any kind; finally, comprehensively, nothing is necessary but a glass-roofed shed with brick or boarded sides, and, I repeat, the roughest structure will give as good fruit, perhaps as much satisfaction, as the grandest house.”
“Just as poor Hodge enjoys his slice of bacon as much as you do your paté.”
“Exactly, Jack,” continued Sir James, who was well mounted upon his hobby, “there is no secret about the matter. The delicate fruits of the peach family, and even choicer plums, are most abundant bearers; all they want is a suitable climate to produce their stores. That climate, save, say, once in seven or eight years, England does not afford. The troubles of these aristocrats of the garden begin very early in the year, when, according to their habit, every twig puts forth a wondrous display of crimson, pink, and delicately-tinted white bloom, just at a time when our nipping frosts of early spring are rife. The consequence is that in a few short hours the hopes of a season are blighted. In sheltered positions often, by chance, a few blossoms, as a gardener would say, set their fruit, which run the gauntlet of our fickle clime, and perhaps ripen, but more likely drop from the trees in various stages of their approach to maturity, the whole process being so disheartening that, in a season like the past, many gardeners declared that it was a hopeless effort to attempt to grow peaches and nectarines out-of-doors.”
The doctor looked at his watch.
“All! it isn’t breakfast time yet, Jack, and you are in for my lecture. As I was about to say, nous avons changé tout cela. We build our orchard house handsome or plain, according to our means, and in that shelter we have an artificial climate, such as made some gentlemen from the South of France exclaim, when visiting the gardens of the late Mr. Rivers, of Sawbridgeworth, the introducer of the system, ‘Ah! Monsieur Rivers, voici notre climat!’ In fact the above gentleman, in his interesting work, says: ‘An orchard house in the south of England will give as nearly as possible the summer climate of Toulouse.’ And this, mind, from sun heat and earth heat alone—heat which, so far from needing increase, has to be modified by abundant ventilation.”
“Ah! that’s what I want you to mind, old fellow,” said the doctor; “you are not a plant, and I don’t want you to get yourself in a state of heat under the glass here, and then expose yourself to abundant ventilation.”
“Only like cooling after a Turkish bath,” said Sir James.
“I don’t like Turkish baths,” said the doctor, “the overheating affects the nerves.”
“You are always croaking about the nerves,” said Sir James; “but as I was saying—”
“Oh! go on, preach the orchard house down,” said the doctor, “I’ll listen.”
“I’m preaching it up, man,” said Sir James. “Given the matter of the orchard house, then, what next? Presuming that you have taken advantage of the possession of a south or south west wall already covered with trees, and against which you have placed glass roof and simple front and ends, all else necessary is to plant the space unoccupied by nailed-up trees moderately full of little bushes and standards.”
“I always thought peaches and nectarines ought to be nailed-up against walls till I saw yours,” said the doctor.
“Yes; if you like to torture them into that position; but they will grow and bear better like ordinary apple-trees or pears, only asking for abundant pruning, plenty of water, and freedom from insect plagues. If you prefer so doing, you may grow them in large pots, the same as you would camellias, and ornament your dining-table with a beautiful little eighteen-inch or two-feet high Early Louise peach, an Elruge nectarine, or Moor Park apricot, bearing its dozen or so of perfectly-shaped fruit. And to the man of frugal mind this has its advantages; for every one exclaims, ‘Oh, it would be a pity to pick them!’ and the dessert is saved.”
“My dear James, I shall never say that, I promise you.”
“You’re a humbug, Jack. Here we are, and all this place, asking you to run down and share some of its fruits, but you will never come. But to proceed. I think I shall write a pamphlet on this subject.”
“I would,” said the doctor, drily.
“I don’t care for your chaff, my boy. I want to see poor people refine their ways—working-men growing vines, old ladies with orchard houses.”
“And I hope you may get it,” said the