Part 3

III.

In the days of my apprenticeship I put up a big greenhouse: unable to manage plants in the open-air, I expected to succeed with them under unnatural conditions! These memories are strung together with the hope of encouraging a forlorn and desperate amateur here or there; and surely that confession will cheer him. However deep his ignorance, it could not possibly be more finished than mine some dozen years ago; and yet I may say, Je suis arrive! What that greenhouse cost, "chilled remembrance shudders" to recall; briefly, six times the amount, at least, which I should find ample now. And it was all wrong when done; not a trace of the original arrangement remains at this time, but there are inherent defects. Nothing throve, of course--except the insects. Mildew seized my roses as fast as I put them in; camellias dropped their buds with rigid punctuality; azaleas were devoured by thrips; "bugs," mealy and scaly, gathered to the feast; geraniums and pelargoniums grew like giants, but declined to flower. I consulted the local authority who was responsible for the well-being of a dozen gardens in the neighbourhood--an expert with a character to lose, from whom I bought largely. Said he, after a thorough inspection: "This concrete floor holds the water; you must have it swept carefully night and morning." That worthy man had a large business. His advice was sought by scores of neighbours like myself. And I tell the story as a warning; for he represents no small section of his class. My plants wanted not less but a great deal more water on that villainous concrete floor.

Despairing of horticulture indoors as out, I sometimes thought of orchids. I had seen much of them in their native homes, both East and West--enough to understand that their growth is governed by strict law. Other plants--roses and so forth--are always playing tricks. They must have this and that treatment at certain times, the nature of which could not be precisely described, even if gardening books were written by men used to carry all the points of a subject in their minds, and to express exactly what they mean. Experience alone, of rather a dirty and uninteresting class, will give the skill necessary for success. And then they commit villanies of ingratitude beyond explanation. I knew that orchids must be quite different. Each class demands certain conditions as a preliminary: if none of them can be provided, it is a waste of money to buy plants. But when the needful conditions are present, and the poor things, thus relieved of a ceaseless preoccupation, can attend to business, it follows like a mathematical demonstration that if you treat them in such and such a way, such and such results will assuredly ensue. I was not aware then that many defy the most patient analysis of cause and effect. That knowledge is familiar now; but it does not touch the argument. Those cases also are governed by rigid laws, which we do not yet understand.

Therefore I perceived or suspected, at an early date, that orchid culture is, as one may say, the natural province of an intelligent and enthusiastic amateur who has not the technical skill required for growing common plants. For it is brain-work--the other mechanical. But I shared the popular notion--which seems so very absurd now--that they are costly both to purchase and to keep: shared it so ingenuously that I never thought to ask myself how or why they could be more expensive, after the first outlay, than azaleas or gardenias. And meanwhile I was laboriously and impatiently gathering some comprehension of the ordinary plants. It was accident which broke the spell of ignorance. Visiting Stevens' Auction Rooms one day to buy bulbs, I saw a Cattleya Mossiae, in bloom, which had not found a purchaser at the last orchid sale. A lucky impulse tempted me to ask the price. "Four shillings," said the invaluable Charles. I could not believe it--there must be a mistake: as if Charles ever made a mistake in his life! When he repeated the price, however, I seized that precious Cattleya, slapped down the money, and fled with it along King Street, fearing pursuit. Since no one followed, and Messrs. Stevens did not write within the next few days reclaiming my treasure, I pondered the incident calmly. Perhaps they had been selling bankrupt stock, and perhaps they often do so. Presently I returned.

"Charles!" I said, "you sold me a Cattleya Mossiae the other day."

Charles, in shirt-sleeves of course, was analyzing and summing up half a hundred loose sheets of figures, as calm and sure as a calculating machine. "I know I did, sir," he replied, cheerfully.

"It was rather dear, wasn't it?" I said.

"That's your business, sir," he laughed.

"Could I often get an established plant of Cattleya Mossiae in flower for 4s.?" I asked.

"Give me the order, and I'll supply as many as you are likely to want within a month."

That was a revelation; and I tell the little story because I know it will be a revelation to many others. People hear of great sums paid for orchids, and they fancy that such represent only the extreme limits of an average. In fact, they have no relation whatsoever to the ordinary price. One of our largest general growers, who has but lately begun cultivating those plants, tells me that half-a-crown is the utmost he has paid for Cattleyas and Dendrobes, one shilling for Odontoglots and Oncidiums. At these rates he has now a fine collection, many turning up among the lot for which he asks, and gets, as many pounds as the pence he gave. For such are imported, of course, and sold at auction as they arrive. This is not an article on orchids, but on "My Gardening," or I could tell some extraordinary tales. Briefly, I myself once bought a case two feet long, a foot wide, half-full of Odontoglossums for 8s. 6d. They were small bits, but perfect in condition. Of the fifty-three pots they made, not one, I think, has been lost. I sold the less valuable some years ago, when established and tested, at a fabulous profit. Another time I bought three "strings" of O. Alexandrae, the Pacho variety, which is finest, for 15s. They filled thirty-six pots, some three to a pot, for I could not make room for them all singly. Again--but this is enough. I only wish to demonstrate, for the service of very small amateurs like myself, that costliness at least is no obstacle if they have a fancy for this culture: unless, of course, they demand wonders and "specimens."

That Cattleya Mossiae, was my first orchid, bought in 1884. It dwindled away, and many another followed it to limbo; but I knew enough, as has been said, to feel neither surprised nor angry. First of all, it is necessary to understand the general conditions, and to secure them. Books give little help in this stage of education; they all lack detail in the preliminaries. I had not the good fortune to come across a friend or a gardener who grasped what was wrong until I found out for myself. For instance, no one told me that the concrete flooring of my house was a fatal error. When, a little disheartened, I made a new one, by glazing that ruelle mentioned in the preliminary survey of my garden, they allowed me to repeat it. Ingenious were my contrivances to keep the air moist, but none answered. It is not easy to find a material trim and clean which can be laid over concrete, but unless one can discover such, it is useless to grow orchids. I have no doubt that ninety-nine cases of failure in a hundred among amateurs are due to an unsuitable flooring. Glazed tiles, so common, are infinitely worst of all. May my experience profit others in like case!

Looking over the trade list of a man who manufactures orchid-pots one day, I observed, "Sea-sand for Garden Walks," and the preoccupation of years was dissipated. Sea-sand will hold water, yet will keep a firm, clean surface; it needs no rolling, does not show footprints nor muddy a visitor's boots. By next evening the floors were covered therewith six inches deep, and forthwith my orchids began to flourish--not only to live. Long since, of course, I had provided a supply of water from the main to each house for "damping down." All round them now a leaden pipe was fixed, with pin-holes twelve inches apart, and a length of indiarubber hose at the end to fix upon the "stand-pipe." Attaching this, I turn the cock, and from each tiny hole spurts forth a jet, which in ten minutes will lay the whole floor under water, and convert the house into a shallow pond; but five minutes afterwards not a sign of the deluge is visible. Then I felt the joys of orchid culture. Much remained to learn--much still remains. We have some five thousand species in cultivation, of which an alarming number demand some difference of treatment if one would grow them to perfection. The amateur does not easily collect nor remember all this, and he is apt to be daunted if he inquire too deeply before "letting himself go." Such in especial I would encourage. Perfection is always a noble aim; but orchids do not exact it--far from that! The dear creatures will struggle to fulfil your hopes, to correct your errors, with pathetic patience. Give them but a chance, and they will await the progress of your education. That chance lies, as has been said, in the general conditions--the degree of moisture you can keep in the air, the ventilation, and the light. These secured, you may turn up the books, consult the authorities, and gradually accumulate the knowledge which will enable you to satisfy the preferences of each class. So, in good time, you may enjoy such a thrill of pleasure as I felt the other day when a great pundit was good enough to pay me a call. He entered my tiny Odontoglossum house, looked round, looked round again, and turned to me. "Sir," he said, "we don't call this an amateur's collection!"

I have jotted down such hints of my experience as may be valuable to others, who, as Juvenal put it, own but a single lizard's run of earth. That space is enough to yield endless pleasure, amusement, and indeed profit, if a man cultivate it himself. Enthusiast as I am, I would not accept another foot of garden.

FOOTNOTES:

AN ORCHID SALE.

Shortly after noon on a sale day, the habitual customers of Messrs. Protheroe and Morris begin to assemble in Cheapside. On tables of roughest plank round the auction-rooms there, are neatly ranged the various lots; bulbs and sticks of every shape, big and little, withered or green, dull or shining, with a brown leaf here and there, or a mass of roots dry as last year's bracken. No promise do they suggest of the brilliant colours and strange forms buried in embryo within their uncouth bulk. On a cross table stand some dozens of "established" plants in pots and baskets, which the owners would like to part with. Their growths of this year are verdant, but the old bulbs look almost as sapless as those new arrivals. Very few are in flower just now--July and August are a time of pause betwixt the glories of the Spring and the milder effulgence of Autumn. Some great Dendrobes--D. Dalhousianum--are bursting into untimely bloom, betraying to the initiated that their "establishment" is little more than a phrase. Those garlands of bud were conceived, so to speak, in Indian forests, have lain dormant through the long voyage, and began to show a few days since when restored to a congenial atmosphere. All our interest concentrates in the unlovely things along the wall.

The habitual attendants at an auction-room are always somewhat of a family party, but, as a rule, an ugly one. It is quite different with the regular group of orchid-buyers. No black sheep there. A dispute is the rarest of events, and when it happens everybody takes for granted that the cause is a misunderstanding. The professional growers are men of wealth, the amateurs men of standing at least. All know each other, and a cheerful familiarity rules. We have a duke in person frequently, who compares notes and asks a hint from the authorities around; some clergymen; gentry of every rank; the recognized agents of great cultivators, and, of course, the representatives of the large trading firms. So narrow even yet is the circle of orchidaceans that almost all the faces at a sale are recognized, and if one wish to learn the names, somebody present can nearly always supply them. There is reason to hope that this will not be the case much longer. As the mysteries and superstitions environing the orchid are dispersed, our small and select throng of buyers will be swamped, no doubt; and if a certain pleasing feature of the business be lost, all who love the flower and their fellow-men alike will cheerfully submit.

The talk is of orchids mostly, as these gentlemen stroll along the tables, lifting a root and scrutinizing it with practised glance that measures its vital strength in a second. But nurserymen take advantage of the gathering to show any curious or striking flower they chance to have at the moment. Mr. Bull's representative goes round, showing to one and another the contents of a little box--a lovely bloom of Aristolochia elegans, figured in dark red on white ground like a sublime cretonne--and a new variety of Impatiens; he distributes the latter presently, and gentlemen adorn their coats with the pale crimson flower.

Excitement does not often run so high as in the times, which most of those present can recall, when orchids common now were treasured by millionaires. Steam, and the commercial enterprise it fosters, have so multiplied our stocks, that shillings--or pence, often enough--represent the guineas of twenty years back. There are many here, scarcely yet grey, who could describe the scene when Masdevallia Tovarensis first covered the stages of an auction-room. Its dainty white flowers had been known for several years. A resident in the German colony at Tovar, New Granada, sent one plant to a friend at Manchester, by whom it was divided. Each fragment brought a great sum, and the purchasers repeated this operation as fast as their morsels grew. Thus a conventional price was established--one guinea per leaf. Importers were few in those days, and the number of Tovars in South America bewildered them. At length Messrs. Sander got on the track, and commissioned Mr. Arnold to solve the problem. Arnold was a man of great energy and warm temper. Legend reports that he threw up the undertaking once because a gun offered him was second-hand; his prudence was vindicated afterwards by the misfortune of a confrere, poor Berggren, whose second-hand gun, presented by a Belgian employer, burst at a critical moment and crippled him for life. At the very moment of starting, Arnold had trouble with the railway officials. He was taking a quantity of Sphagnum moss in which to wrap the precious things, and they refused to let him carry it by passenger train. The station-master at Waterloo had never felt the atmosphere so warm, they say. In brief, this was a man who stood no nonsense.

A young fellow-passenger showed much sympathy while the row went on, and Arnold learned with pleasure that he also was bound for Caraccas. This young man, whose name it is not worth while to cite, presented himself as agent for a manufacturer of Birmingham goods. There was no need for secrecy with a person of that sort. He questioned Arnold about orchids with a blank but engaging ignorance of the subject, and before the voyage was over he had learned all his friend's hopes and projects. But the deception could not be maintained at Caraccas. There Arnold discovered that the hardware agent was a collector and grower of orchids sufficiently well known. He said nothing, suffered his rival to start, overtook him at a village where the man was taking supper, marched in, barred the door, sat down opposite, put a revolver on the table, and invited him to draw. It should be a fair fight, said Arnold, but one of the pair must die. So convinced was the traitor of his earnestness--with good reason, too, as Arnold's acquaintances declare--that he slipped under the table, and discussed terms of abject surrender from that retreat. So, in due time, Messrs. Sander received more than forty thousand plants of Masdevallia Tovarensis--sent them direct to the auction-room--and drove down the price in one month from a guinea a leaf to the fraction of a shilling.

Other great sales might be recalled, as that of Phaloenopsis Sanderiana and Vanda Sanderiana, when a sum as yet unparalleled was taken in the room; Cypripedium Spicerianum, Cyp. Curtisii, Loelia anceps alba. Rarely now are we thrilled by sensations like these. But 1891 brought two of the old-fashioned sort, the reappearance of Cattleya labiata autumnalis and the public sale of Dendrobium phaloenopsis Schroderianum. The former event deserves a special article, "The Lost Orchid;" but the latter also was most interesting. Messrs. Sander are the heroes of both. Dendrobium ph. Schroederianum was not quite a novelty. The authorities of Kew obtained two plants from an island in Australasia a good many years ago. They presented a piece to Mr. Lee of Leatherhead, and another to Baron Schroeder; when Mr. Lee's grand collection was dispersed, the Baron bought his plant also, for L35, and thus possessed the only specimens in private hands. His name was given to the species.

Under these conditions, the man lucky and enterprising enough to secure a few cases of the Dendrobium might look for a grand return. It seemed likely that New Guinea would prove to be its chief habitat, and thither Mr. Micholitz was despatched. He found it without difficulty, and collected a great number of plants. But then troubles began. The vessel which took them aboard caught fire in port, and poor Micholitz escaped with bare life. He telegraphed the disastrous news, "Ship burnt! What do?" "Go back," replied his employer. "Too late. Rainy season," was the answer. "Go back!" Mr. Sander repeated. Back he went.

This was in Dutch territory. "Well," writes Mr. Micholitz, "there is no doubt these are the meanest people on earth. On my telling them that it was very mean to demand anything from a shipwrecked man, they gave me thirty per cent. deduction on my passage"--201 dollars instead of 280 dollars. However, he reached New Guinea once more and tried fresh ground, having exhausted the former field. Again he found the Dendrobiums, of better quality and in greater number than before. But they were growing among bones and skeletons, in the graveyard of the natives. Those people lay their dead in a slight coffin, which they place upon the rocks just above high tide, a situation which the Dendrobes love. Mr. Micholitz required all his tact and all his most attractive presents before he could persuade the Papuans to let him even approach. But brass wire proved irresistible. They not only suffered him to disturb the bones of their ancestors, but even helped him to stow the plunder. One condition they made: that a favourite idol should be packed therewith; this admitted, they performed a war dance round the cases, and assisted in transporting them. All went well this time, and in due course the tables were loaded with thousands of a plant which, before the consignment was announced, had been the special glory of a collection which is among the richest of the universe.

There were two memorable items in this sale: the idol aforesaid and a skull to which one of the Dendrobes had attached itself. Both were exhibited as trophies and curiosities, not to be disposed of; but by mistake, the idol was put up. It fetched only a trifle--quite as much as it was worth, however. But Hon. Walter de Rothschild fancied it for his museum, and on learning what had happened Mr. Sander begged the purchaser to name his own price. That individual refused.

It was a great day indeed. Very many of the leading orchid-growers of the world were present, and almost all had their gardeners or agents there. Such success called rivals into the field, but New Guinea is a perilous land to explore. Only last week we heard that Mr. White, of Winchmore Hill, has perished in the search for Dendrobium ph. Schroederianum.

I mentioned the great sale of Cyp. Curtisi just now. An odd little story attaches to it. Mr. Curtis, now Director of the Botanic Gardens, Penang, sent this plant home from Sumatra when travelling for Messrs. Veitch, in 1882. The consignment was small, no more followed, and Cyp. Curtisi became a prize. Its habitat was unknown. Mr. Sander instructed his collector to look for it. Five years the search lasted--with many intermissions, of course, and many a success in discovering other fine things. But Mr. Ericksson despaired at last. In one of his expeditions to Sumatra he climbed a mountain--it has been observed before that one must not ask details of locality when collecting orchid legends. So well known is this mountain, however, that the Government, Dutch I presume, has built a shelter for travellers upon it. There Mr. Ericksson put up for the night. Several Europeans had inscribed their names upon the wall, with reflections and sentiments, as is the wont of people who climb mountains. Among these, by the morning light, Mr. Ericksson perceived the sketch of a Cypripedium, as he lay upon his rugs. It represented a green flower, white tipped, veined and spotted with purple, purple of lip. "Curtisi, by Jove!" he cried, in his native Swedish, and jumped up. No doubt of it! Beneath the drawing ran: "C.C.'s contribution to the adornment of this house." Whipping out his pencil, Mr. Ericksson wrote: "Contribution accepted. Cypripedium collected!--C.E." But day by day he sought the plant in vain. His cases filled with other treasures. But for the hope that sketch conveyed, long since he would have left the spot. After all, Mr. Curtis might have chosen the flower by mere chance to decorate the wall. The natives did not know it. So orders were given to pack, and next day Mr. Ericksson would have withdrawn. On the very evening, however, one of his men brought in the flower. A curious story, if one think, but I am in a position to guarantee its truth.

Of another class, but not less renowned in its way, was the sale of March 11th last year. It had been heavily advertised. A leading continental importer announced the discovery of a new Odontoglossum. No less than six varieties of type were employed to call public attention to its merits, and this was really no extravagant allowance under the circumstances alleged. It was a "grand new species," destined to be a "gem in the finest collections," a "favourite," the "most attractive of plants." Its flowers were wholly "tinged with a most delicate mauve, the base of the segment and the lip of a most charming violet"--in short, it was "the blue Odontoglossum" and well deserved the title coeleste. And the whole stock of two hundred plants would be offered to British enthusiasm. No wonder the crowd was thick at Messrs. Protheroe's room on that March morning. Few leading amateurs or growers who could not attend in person were unrepresented. At the psychological moment, when eagerness had reached the highest pitch, an orchid was brought in and set before them. Those experienced persons glanced at it and said, "Very nice, but haven't you an Odontoglossum coeleste to show?" The unhappy agent protested that this was the divine thing. No one would believe at first; the joke was too good--to put it in that mild form. When at length it became evident that this grand new species, heavenly gem, &c., was the charming but familiar Odontoglossum ramossissimum, such a tumult of laughter and indignation arose, that Messrs. Protheroe quashed the sale. A few other instances of the kind might be given but none so grand.