My Special Place

There are a few candidates for my special place, even if we confine ourselves to the literal and geographical.  The Braighe in winter when the long tailed ducks bob about in the Minch and take flight at sunset – a few spots in the Castle Grounds which I expect will have other champions.

Then there is England, Rusland Beeches in South Lakeland for one. And a little footbridge, buried in woodland that crosses the tiny River Ash in Hertfordshire and always feels to me as if you have stepped out of South East England to somewhere wilder.

But to the surprise of nobody who comes to the writers group regularly, I am going to plump for Highgate, in North London. The reason is no mystery.  Absence notoriously makes the heart grow fonder and I lived for two decades in unlovely Archway, right at the foot of Highgate Hill. I worked there in three separate jobs. I got married there (in a magical hidden walled garden in a magical hidden smallholding).  I have found roosting tawny owls and nesting sparrowhawks in the depths of Highgate Cemetery, a few miles from Kings Cross.  I drank in Highgate Pubs which were, without exception, much better than the pubs of Archway (and not much more expensive).

All of these would be reason to pick it but there is a better one for a writers group piece. As I learned more about the history of Highgate I became aware that it was not just popular with poets – the place is a poetical phenomenon. However, Highgate is too big an area to qualify as my special place so I am going to narrow it down to the terrace of Lauderdale House, two thirds of the way up Highgate Hill.

The first poet (that I know of) to be associated with Highgate was Sir Francis Bacon, who died there in 1626, having caught a chill after experimenting with freezing chicken in the snow down Archway way (look, look it up if you don’t believe me). To be fair, Bacon was better known for other things, amongst them more or less inventing the scientific method, but he was a poet too, and he must have passed Lauderdale House on his last, ill fated journey up the hill. There are rumours of a ghostly chicken haunting Highgate. I don’t know about that. What I do know, and swear is true, is that when I worked in Highgate Cemetery and was conducting a bird survey a chicken walked down Swains Lane on the other side of Waterlow Park to the house, and clucked about around the cemetery entrance before heading down towards Parliament Hill.

Andrew Marvell is, however, mostly remembered as a poet. He had a cottage, since demolished, on Highgate Hill. The garden of the cottage is still accessible as part of Waterlow Park, now a grove  of  white barked trees.

‘Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow:
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.’

The cottage was next to Lauderdale House, which is still there, and which is much older and more interesting than a casual glance might suggest. It is rumoured to have belonged, briefly, to Nell Gwyn, King Charles II’s mistress.  “Pretty, witty Nell” was a great friend of Aphra Benn, playwright spy and novelist, and the first woman known to have made a living from writing in English. I read somewhere that their riotous parties annoyed their neighbour, Andrew. Disturbing his fair quiet and delicious solitude, no doubt. I can’t swear that this is true but I do hope so.

At the back there is a tiny café, more a kiosk really, with tables and seats on a terrace. This is part of Waterlow Park which is a small but very fine park  and the benches on the terrace have views over the lower park, its ornamental lakes, and Highgate Cemetery, which looks like forest from this vantage. Sir Sydney Waterlow was a Lord Mayor of London who gifted the park to the public to be a “garden for the gardenless,” and I lived for many years in a flat without a garden, ten minutes walk away. More times than I can remember I nipped up the hill to have a cappuccino in the sunshine and watch the world stroll by. It was a great solace in bad times and a relaxed place to meet up with a friend in better ones. I organised a 99nth birthday celebration on the adjacent terrace, for, Eve a lady who did not even have a garden at her sheltered housing.

So I say thank you to Sir Sydney for gifting this garden to gardenless to me, to Eve, and who knows how many others?  And thanks to Andrew too for celebrating it in words, long before his own cottage and garden became part of my own special place.

The Garden

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown’d from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow-verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all the flowers and trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose!

Fair Quiet, have I found thee here,
And Innocence thy sister dear?
Mistaken long, I sought you then
In busy companies of men:
Your sacred plants, if here below,
Only among the plants will grow:
Society is all but rude
To this delicious solitude.

No white nor red was ever seen
So amorous as this lovely green.
Fond lovers, cruel as their flame,
Cut in these trees their mistress’ name:
Little, alas! they know or heed
How far these beauties hers exceed!
Fair trees! wheres’e’er your barks I wound,
No name shall but your own be found.

When we have run our passions’ heat,
Love hither makes his best retreat:
The gods, that mortal beauty chase,
Still in a tree did end their race;
Apollo hunted Daphne so
Only that she might laurel grow;
And Pan did after Syrinx speed
Not as a nymph, but for a reed.

What wondrous life in this I lead!
Ripe apples drop about my head;
The luscious clusters of the vine
Upon my mouth do crush their wine;
The nectarine and curious peach
Into my hands themselves do reach;
Stumbling on melons, as I pass,
Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Meanwhile the mind from pleasure less
Withdraws into its happiness;
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find;
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas;
Annihilating all that ‘s made
To a green thought in a green shade.

Here at the fountain’s sliding foot,
Or at some fruit-tree’s mossy root,
Casting the body’s vest aside,
My soul into the boughs does glide;
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings,
And, till prepared for longer flight,
Waves in its plumes the various light.

Such was that happy Garden-state
While man there walk’d without a mate:
After a place so pure and sweet,
What other help could yet be meet!
But ’twas beyond a mortal’s share
To wander solitary there:
Two paradises ’twere in one,
To live in Paradise alone.

How well the skilful gard’ner drew
Of flowers and herbs this dial new!
Where, from above, the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run:
And, as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d, but with herbs and flowers!

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

 

I have saved the contents of this post as a PDF as that may be more convenient for some to read.

Click to access the-garden-rendered-for-pdf.pdf

 

Spencer Woodcock