The over-conscientious agents had said not a word in the inventory of the most valuable asset in connection with the property. They had scrupulously advertised the "unique and valuable old-fashioned residence," and the fact that it was partially "covered by creepers"--a partiality to which I was not very partial--and that the "billiard saloon" had the same advantages--they had not failed to allude to the gardens as "old-world and quaint," but not one word had they said about this view from the well-matured rubbish-heaps!
It was at this point that I began to think about improvements, and the first essay in this direction was obvious. I had the rubbish removed, the ground made straight, a stone sundial placed in the centre, and a Dutch pattern of flower-beds cut around it.
On the coping of the walls--they were only six feet high on our side, but forty on the culside--I placed lead and stone vases and a balustrade of wrought iron-work. I made an immense window in the wall of the potting-shed--a single sheet of plate-glass with four small casements of heraldic stained glass; and then the old potting-shed I panelled in coloured marbles, designed a sort of domed roof for it and laid down a floor in mosaics. I had in my mind a room in the Little Trianon in all this; and I meant to treat the view outside as a picture set in one wall. Of course I did not altogether succeed; but I have gone sufficiently far to deceive more than one visitor. Entering the room through a mahogany door set with a round panel of beautifully-clouded onyx--once a table-top in the gay George's pavilion' at Brighton--a visitor sees the brass frame of the large window enclosing the picture of the Barbican, the Gateway, and the Keep, and it takes some moments to understand it.
All this sounds dreadfully expensive; but through finding a really intelligent builder and men who were ready to do all that was asked of them, and, above all, through having abundance of material collected wherever it was going at shillings instead of pounds, I effected the transformation at less than a sixth of the lowest assessment of the cost made by professional friends. To relieve myself from any vain charge of extravagance, I may perhaps be permitted to mention that when the property was offered for sale in London a week before I bought it, not a single bid was made for it, owing to an apparent flaw in one of the title-deeds frightening every one off. Thus, without knowing it. I arrived on the scene at the exact psychological moment--for a purchaser; and when I got the place I found myself with a considerable sum in hand to spend upon it, and that sum has not yet been all spent. The bogey fault in the title was made good by the exchange of a few letters, and it is now absolutely unassailable.