ne day, walking out from Kingston, I suddenly
found myself in the fruitful spaces of market gardens and farms. It is
the suddenest change. Kingston, with the oldest memories of all Surrey
towns, is as new and noisy as a thoroughly efficient service of tramways
can make it; and then, within a stone's throw of bricks and barracks,
you come upon acres beyond acres of level farmland, bean-fields and
cabbage-fields and all the pleasantness of tilled soil and trenched
earth and the wealth of kindly fruits. When I saw the fields by Ham on a
hot day in August there were country women gathering runner beans into
coarse aprons, stooping over the clustered plants, the humblest and
hardiest of workers of the farm. Under that hot sun, in the wide spaces
of those unfenced fields, with no English hedge to shut off neighbouring
crops and tillage, the air of those bent, lowly figures was of French
peasantry, French nearness to the difficult livelihood of the soil. They
might have gleaned for Millet; they should cease their work at the
Angelus.

[Illustration: _Richmond Bridge._]

Teddington Lock, a mile down stream from Kingston suburbs, joins Surrey
to Middlesex and the tide to the tideless river with a vast piece of
engineering. Further down, Eel Pie island breaks the stream, a bunch of
chairs, tables and trees, where, for all I know, others may still eat
and praise eel pie. But the fascination of this stretch of river is on
the Surrey bank, where Ham House stands among noble trees. Ham House is
not a "show house"; and indeed, considering its nearness to Richmond and
London, it would be impossible that it should be. There are limits to
the claims which may be made upon owners of historic houses who may also
wish to live in them. But Ham House holds other magnets than its
pictures and relics of Stuarts and Lauderdales. The guide-books
catalogue the pictures, and perhaps I need not copy the catalogues. The
real fascination is Ham House with its history, the meeting-place of the
great Cabal. But you may see that Ham House from a distance; the house
as the Duke of Lauderdale saw it from the river bank, or driving to the
door to join his fellow Ministers; the garden front, with its statue of
Father Thames, the statue at which Buckingham and Arlington used to
stare, perhaps, wondering how much longer their sinister power would be
left to them. All that they knew and saw day by day remains--the dull
red brick, the wrought iron gate, the qua