Summerhouse

“ THE ROMAN GARDEN IN ENGLAND It would appear, judging from the specimens one sees, that the building of garden apartments, or summer-houses, is a lost art. But then leisure, as an art, has also been lost; and no man unless he understand leisure can possibly build an apartment to be entirely devoted to it.
Imagine the man of the day who could write of his summer-house as the younger Pliny wrote: “At the end of the terrace, adjoining to the gallery, is a little garden-apartment, which I own is my delight. ”

“ The summer villa gardens are usually filled with these queer mechanical contrivances. I suppose it amuses the rich old burghers to watch them as they sit smoking their long pipes and taking their ease in their little summer-houses on the hot days. ”

“ I went on to the summer-house and lay down among the bracken close by. I had been there fully two hours before I saw Katherine coming. She smiled brightly as I rose from my ferny bed to greet her.
"Why did I come without an umbrella?"she exclaimed gaily. "It's just going to pour!" And she turned to look at the heavy clouds that were gliding up rapidly against the wind.
"You can shelter in the summer-house," I said, laconically.
"I loathe summer-houses, especially when they're like this old thing, crammed with earwigs and spiders." ”

“ In a corner of the garden, right against the high wall, stands an open summer-house. It is quite simply built of green lattice-work, which forms a large arch backed by the wall. The whole summer house is covered with a wild vine, which twines itself from the left side over the arched roof, and droops its slender branches on the right.
It is late autumn. The summer-house has already lost its thick roof of foliage. Only the youngest and most delicate tendrils of the wild vine have any leaves left. Before they fall, departing summer lavishes on them all the colour it has left ”

“ The porch led almost directly into one of those square, panelled halls which make the most charming of sitting-rooms. At the farther end a long, low casement window framed a vista of the garden—green, luxuriant, brilliant with flowers. On the window-ledge there was a china bowl of sweet peas.
[3] Mrs. Summers looked about her with interest. There was not much furniture, but each piece, though simple, was beautiful in form at least, and in some cases obviously rather costly. It was furniture chosen with discretion. “Better off than they used to be,” was her mental comment. ”

“ Thus they strolled onward, silently and slowly, until they reached the little green before the summer-house, which was then the gayest and most lightsome place that can be imagined, with its rare paintings glowing in their undimmed hues, its gilding bright and burnished, its furniture all sumptuous and new, and instead of the dark funereal ivy, covered with woodbine and rich clustered roses. ”

“ One may live in a bungalow and have one's own fireside, one's own sitting room and bed chamber, one's own rose-covered porch, one's own home life, and go into the hotel only for meals and for sociability's [Pg 50] sake. It is an ideal winter life for those who wish all the orderly, luxurious comfort of a well managed inn, together with the privacy of home life in a rose cottage. We drove through lovely little Montecito Valley, catching glimpses of fine houses rising against a picturesque mountain background, some in the Mission style of architecture, some in Italian and some in Spanish style. ”

“ And in winter, with the heavy carpets down, and the thick curtains, the very polished floors, so cool in summer, seem expressly designed to glimmer warmly with candle and fire-light; and the books seem to lean forward protectively and reassert themselves, and the low beamed ceilings to shelter and safeguard the interior comfort. The center of gravity is changed almost imperceptibly. In summer the place is a garden with a house in the middle; in winter a house surrounded by shrubberies. ”

“ Reclining at ease on a mossy bank I smoked a fragrant pipe, well pleased with my wayside hostelry, my comfortable couch, and the music provided with my meal. "The outer world, from which we cower into our houses, seems after all a gentle habitable place," says Stevenson. Only at night in the summer time do I desire to "cower" into a house, and that for the convenience of it; indeed the only room I can suffer on a summer day is a library walled round with a goodly company of books, and with just a picture here and there of a pleasant landscape for my eyes, when in a lazy mood, to rest upon. ”

“ It is pleasant to see, as the season advances, how busy their occupants become; bustling there with their basses in their hands and their tools on their shoulders; wheeling in manure; and clearing out their summer-houses; and what an air of daily-increasing neatness they assume, till they are one wide expanse of blossomed fruit-trees and flowering fragrance. Every garden has its summer-house ”

“ The summer house should be placed in the side yard, or in the rear in a spot where trees lend it a background. If its use is that of a resting spot for your mother, she certainly would not wish it right out on the front lawn. If the house is for children to play in, then again it is not for the front of the house. An appropriate place is near the garden where it makes a cool place to rest after labour, a spot from which to view the beauties of the garden, and a charming place to serve afternoon tea. ”

“ In the Summer we labor a little and house our crops, that in the Winter we may comfortably live to consume them. The following year, and the years to come, the same highly exciting programme is certain to be followed. For the coming Summer we have provided the diversion of the building of our mansion, but for the lonesome days of our snowbound season we have not provided. Why not advertise our Summer engagement at The Nole, and interest our friends in advance? ”

“ My cottage was ready in the summer; but I was playing truant amongst the valleys of Somersetshire; and, meantime, different families, throughout the summer, borrowed the cottage of the Wordsworths as my friends. They consisted chiefly of ladies; and some, by the delicacy of their attentions to the flowers, &c., gave me reason to consider their visit during my absence as a real honour; others—such is the difference of people in this world—left the rudest memorials of their careless habits impressed upon house, furniture, garden, &c. ”

“ They often have their meals served out of doors, and one can enjoy an afternoon nap in a hammock, or can take one's work out into the shady garden with great satisfaction, unwatched; and even a little piece of ground can be made, if shut in and kept for the use and pleasure of the family alone, a most charming unroofed and trellised summer ante-room to the house. In a large, crowded town it would be selfish to conceal the rare bits of garden, where the sight of anything green is a godsend ”

“ It's eight o'clock and of course you've had your supper. Your mother's probably finishing up the kitchen work and putting the bread to rise, and you haven't anything to do but sit on the porch and look at the stars and the lighted windows here and there in the darkness, and listen to the breeze in the trees. And here I am, sitting in a place that looks just like a hothouse with all the flowers come to life. There's a ball up-stairs, and a million girls have gone through the corridors, with flowers and feathers and jewels in their hair, and dresses and evening cloaks as beautiful as petals. ”

“ Almost every day that summer, about the time the sun was sinking behind the tiled roof of our neighbour’s tall house and the cool shadows were creeping across our garden, we would gather in the big room opening on the porch. One at a time we came, each fresh from a hot. ”

“ COTTAGE LIFE. The summer is here!—here with its fragrant mornings and its noonday heats, its mellow twilights and its moonlight evenings, its days of glory and its nights of starry beauty. It is summer. Let us go out into the country, away from the stifling air and dull brick walls of the town, into the far, pure, breezy, unsurpassable country. There we shall breathe the fresh air of Heaven. ”

“ The heat is so great that it is wonderful that one can walk about in the sunshine; but the nights, though the mercury does not fall below 80 degrees, are cool and refreshing, and the air and soil are both dry, though a hundred inches of rain fall in the year. These wooden bungalows are hot, for the attap roofs have no lining, but they are also airy. There is no-one but myself at night in the one in which my room is, but this is nothing after the solitude of the great, rambling Stadthaus. ”

“ We breakfasted, lunched, drank tea and dined on that balcony till the snow drove us indoors at the end of September. When it rained we pulled the table back into the shelter of the glass at the north end of the veranda. When it was cold, we put on overcoats and golf capes. As we lived with those mountains day by day, and grew to know all their moods and manners, good and bad, as one knows those of one’s truly intimates, they became to us, not scenery, but friends and kindred, not anything external, but a part of our larger selves. ”

“ When a boy, he would often pass the house with his father and frequently said to him, "If ever I have a dwelling of my own, Gad's Hill Place is the house I mean to buy." In that beautiful retreat he had for many years been accustomed to welcome his friends, and find relaxation from the crowded life of London. On the lawn playing at bowls, in the Swiss summer-house charmingly shaded by green leaves, he always seemed the best part of summer, beautiful as the season is in the delightful region where he lived. ”

“ The summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human, neighbourly sounds. After the heat of the day it is infinitely pleasant to relax in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the town eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. ”

“ We are a comfort to ourselves—six of us, all told. Summer invites our little company into a breezy hotel, over in the shadow across the valley. Winter suggests a log cabin, an expansive fireplace, plenty of hickory, and as much sunshine as finds its way into our secluded hermitage. ”

“ A summer resort, however, is a summer resort the world over, and we found the historic city, which has gracefully fitted itself to the curve of its beautiful bay, crowded with idle people, elaborately dressed, who sat long at the noonday breakfast, and longer yet at the evening dinner, and then longest of all on the benches in the park, where bands clashed and fireworks flared, until the very stars began to blink for sleepiness. ”

“ As a summer resort, it is fairly entitled to the name, being one of the most popular watering places in America. Its summer hotels are among the most commodious and attractive to be found anywhere, while private cottages and villas have sprung up on every available site, both on the shore, and on all the islands near. The facilities for fishing and boating, combined with the pure and invigorating atmosphere, and the beautiful scenery, attract to the place a tide of summer visitors, ever increasing in volume with each succeeding year. ”

“ The summer house is about two hundred yards west of the house, at the end of a narrow, twisting gravel path which suddenly turns to its very door; and it is almost entirely shut in by shrubbery of sorts, and, at that time in full bloom, caressing its walls and roof were the sprays of lilac trees—how well I remember the scent of 'em that wretched evening! ”

“ Grottoes, arbors, and summer-houses were all of importance in those days, when in our latitude and climate [Pg 389] men had not thought to build piazzas surrounding the house and shadowing all the ground floor rooms. We are beginning to think anew of the value of sunlight in the parlors and dining rooms of our summer homes, which for the past thirty or forty years have been so darkened by our wide piazzas. Now we have fewer piazzas and more peristyles, and soon we shall have summer-houses and garden houses also. ”

“ I never met one who was not proud of his quarters; they praise the freshness and sweetness of the air, the liberality of the treatment, and point out, with gratitude, their little gardens which occupy the site of the famous Ranelagh of fashionable memory, where they can follow their own fancies, cultivating, in their plots of ground, the flowers, or herbs, or shrubs that please them best; THE SUMMER-HOUSE, which they say Lord John Russell built for them, occupies a prominent position there ”

“ One night, when the heat of summer made even the night winds sultry, when all nature was in the full height of its development, when the fields were deep in grass and the clover heavy with bloom—on such a night the door of a hop-clad cottage in Jamestown opened softly and closed as gently, and through the sleeping streets and out into the country a wild figure sped. ”

“ When summer's delightful season arrives, rarely in this country too warm to be enjoyed throughout the day in the open air, there is nothing more grateful than a profusion of choice flowers around and within our dwellings. The humblest apartments ornamented with these beautiful productions of nature have, in my view, a more delightful effect than the proudest saloons with gilded ceilings and hangings of Genoa velvet. ”

“ Later still, when an accident and crutches put this delightful method of travelling out of the question, the summer-house (in a blizzard I delighted in the name) was moved up beside my father's study. I have, in fact, always had an out-of-door study, apart from the house I lived in, and have come to look upon it as quite a necessity; so that we have carried on the custom in our Gloucester house. We heartily recommend it to all people who live by their brains and pens. The incessant trotting to and fro on little errands is a wholesome thing. ”