For M.R. James it is Eton and King's that are gardens - incomparable gardens which are, however, precisely made for thus exclaiming about as one sits in their created shade. With the exclamation itself nobody need quarrel. It is as applicable to the material fabric as to much in the life and spirit of these magnificent royal foundations. But James wasn't much of a man for falling to the labour Kipling knows gardens require: 'grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives'.

LRB 15 September 1983 | PDF Download