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Garden Edition, Nichols, Page Two
Judging by the handful of Nichols’ books that I’ve read, Merry Hall is probably Nichols at his best. In it, he describes his ambitious efforts renovating the rundown Georgian house and garden. Early on in the book, Nichols forewarns readers “when I begin to write about flowers I lose all sense of restraint, and it is far, far too late to do anything about it.”Here readers get to meet, among others, Gaskin, the indefatigable manservant Nichols so depends on, and Oldfield, the elderly gardener who refuses to budge from the bountiful kitchen garden into the unkempt wilds of the five-acre main garden. Merry Hall also introduces us to “One” and “Four,” Nichols’ cats, whose antics in the garden are a continual source of awe for him. The story takes us on such adventures as the search for the perfect urns for the garden, the fall of the elms, and the burning of the hideous holly hedge. Garden Open Today and Garden Open Tomorrow describe what was to be Nichols’ last garden, at Sudbrook, Nichols' late-eighteenth-century attached cottage in Richmond, Surrey. The title refers to the now-famous invitation to readers to come to judge his garden for themselves as a rebuke to critics who insinuated that he was not a “real” gardener. It is in these two books (and The Art of Flower Arrangement, which comprise the Sudbrook Triology) that he strives to convey his horticultural knowledge. Still, he cannot resist delightful tangents that lead us to anecdotes with characters like Madame X, who surreptitiously collects seed that she swears she found on the ground, and Constance Spry, a floral arranger extraordinaire, who is credited with rediscovering old roses.
At Sudbrook, Nichols describes the “gigantic copper beech, which converses night and day, in the most charming accents.“ His feelings run deep for his plants: “The great majority of the flowers in my garden are in their current places because they have personally informed me, in the clearest possible tones, that this is where they wish to be.”
In Garden Open Today, Nichols raised eyebrows by comparing famous writers to soil types. Each person “vibrates” with a certain soil, which explains many of their successes and failures in the garden. For instance, Emily Brontë is a “peat person” and Graham Greene is “a very heavy clay indeed.” Nichols himself is a “peat” person.
He also believed that certain flowers and certain people don’t mix. Despite his most painstaking efforts to grow alstroemerias, they refused. When established plants in pots died down and never came up again he concluded that “his shadow had fallen across them” and they had said to themselves, “death is better than the thought of seeing that face again.“ Cats A.B.C. strays from the subject of gardening into another one of Nichols loves, the world of cats. This work was originally published as part of Cats A to Z but later divided into Cats A.B.C. and Cats X,Y,Z, the later of which Timber Press has scheduled for a fall 2003 release.
Cats A.B.C. takes us only briefly into the garden in the company of “Four,” “Five,” and “Oscar,” Nichols’ cats at the time. Still, Nichols powers of observation of animal behavior should be of interest to Fs and non-Fs (feline-lovers and non-feline lovers, as Nichols would put it). According to Nichols’ expert Roy Dicks, however, Cats X, Y, Z spends a lot more time in the garden.
Resources:
www.timberpress.com
www.beverleynichols.comBibliography by Roy Dicks
Down the Garden Path (Jonathan Cape 1932; Doubleday 1932) *
* A Thatched Roof (Jonathan Cape 1933; Doubleday 1933) *
* A Village in a Valley (Jonathan Cape 1934; Doubleday 1934)**These three titles form the Allways trilogy about Nichols' Tudor cottage in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. The Gift of a Garden, a condensation of the three, along with a new introduction by Nichols, was published by W. H. Allen in 1971 and Dodd in 1972.
* How Does Your Garden Grow? (Allen and Unwin 1935; Doubleday 1935) A collection of four radio essays by Nichols plus essays by Compton Mackenzie, Marion Cran, and Vita Sackville-West.
* Green Grows the City (Jonathan Cape 1939; Harcourt 1939)
* Merry Hall (Jonathan Cape 1951; Dutton 1953)†
* Laughter on the Stairs (Jonathan Cape 1953; Dutton 1954)†
* Sunlight on the Lawn (Jonathan Cape 1956; Dutton 1956)††These three titles form the Merry Hall trilogy about Nichols' Georgian manor house in Ashtead, Surrey. The Gift of a Home, a condensation of the three, along with a new introduction by Nichols, was published by W. H. Allen in 1972 and Dodd in 1973.
* Garden Open Today (Jonathan Cape 1963; Dutton 1963)‡
* Forty Favourite Flowers (Studio Vista 1964; St. Martin's 1965)‡
* Garden Open Tomorrow (Heinemann 1968; Dodd 1969)‡‡These three titles form the Sudbrook trilogy about Nichols' late-eighteenth-century attached cottage in Richmond, Surrey.
* The Art of Flower Arrangement (Collins 1967; Viking 1967) Discusses the public use and social influences of flowers throughout history, covering a number of species.
Beverley Nichols' Cat Book (Thomas Nelson 1955)
* Beverley Nichols' Cats' A. B. C. (Jonathan Cape 1960; Dutton 1960)*
* Beverley Nichols' Cats' X. Y. Z. (Jonathan Cape 1961; Dutton 1961)*
*These two titles were published together as Beverley Nichols' Cats' A to Z in 1977 by W. H. Allen.
Boldface titles are available from Timber Press.
