‘On the other side of Jordan,
In the green fields of Eden,
Where the Tree of Life is blooming,
There is rest for you.’
I joined heartily in the singing, and contributed two half-crowns to the collecting box, for somehow the thing seemed to be a good omen.
I had been rather neglecting that item in the puzzle, and that evening and during the night I kept turning it over till my brain was nearly addled.
Where the sower casts his seed in
Furrows of the fields of Eden.
That was the version in the rhyme, and in Tom Greenslade’s recollection the equivalent was a curiosity shop in North London kept by a Jew with a dyed beard. Surely the two must correspond, though I couldn’t just see how. The other two items had panned out so well that it was reasonable to suppose that the third might do the same. I could see no light, and I finally dropped off to sleep with that blessed ‘fields of Eden’ twittering about my head.
I awoke with the same obsession, but other phrases had added themselves to it. One was the ‘playing-fields of Eton,’ about which some fellow had said something, and for a moment I wondered if I hadn’t got hold of the right trail. Eton was a school for which Peter John’s name was down, and therefore it had to do with boys, and might have to do with David Warcliff. But after breakfast I gave up that line, for it led nowhere. The word was ‘Eden,’ to rhyme with ‘seed in.’ There were other fields haunting me—names like Tothill Fields and Bunhill Fields. These were places in London, and that was what I wanted. The Directory showed no name like that of ‘Fields of Eden,’ but was it not possible that there had once in old days been a place called by that odd title?
I spent the morning in the Club Library, which was a very good one, reading up Old London. I read all about Vauxhall Gardens and Ranelagh and Cremorne, and a dozen other ancient haunts of pleasure, but I found nothing to my purpose. Then I remembered that Bullivant—Lord Artinswell—had had for one of his hobbies the study of bygone London, so I telephoned to him and invited myself to lunch.
He was very pleased to see me, and it somehow comforted me to find myself again in the house in Queen Anne’s Gate where I had spent some of the most critical moments of my life.
‘You’ve taken on the work I wrote to you about,’ he said. ‘I knew you would. How are you getting on?’
‘So-so. It’s a big job and there’s very little time. I want to ask you a question. You’re an authority on Old London. Tell me, did you ever come across in your researches the name of the “Fields of Eden”?’
He shook his head. ‘Not that I remember. What part of London?’
‘I fancy it would be somewhere north of Oxford Street.’
He considered. ‘No. What is your idea? A name of some private gardens or place of amusement?’
‘Yes. Just like Cremorne or Vauxhall.’
‘I don’t think so, but we’ll look it up. I’ve a good collection of old maps and plans, and some antique directories.’
So after luncheon we repaired to his library and set to work. The maps showed nothing, nor did the books at first. We were searching too far back, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when you went fox-hunting in what is now Regent’s park and Tyburn gallows stood near the Marble Arch. Then, by sheer luck, I tried a cast nearer our own time, and found a ribald work belonging to about the date of the American War, which purported to be a countryman’s guide to the amusements of town. There was all sorts of information about ‘Cider Cellars’ and ‘Groves of Harmony,’ which must have been pretty low pubs, and places in the suburbs for cock-fighting and dog-fighting. I turned up the index, and there to my joy I saw the word ‘Eden.’
I read the passage aloud, and I believe my hands were shaking. The place was, as I hoped, north of Oxford Street in what we now call Marylebone. ‘The Fields of Eden,’ said the book, ‘were opened by Mr Askew as a summer resort for the gentlemen and sportsmen of the capital. There of a fine afternoon may be seen Lord A—; and the Duke of B—; roving among the shady, if miniature, groves, not unaccompanied by the fair nymphs of the garden, while from adjacent arbours comes the cheerful tinkle of glasses and the merry clatter of dice, and the harmonious strains of Signora F—‘s Italian choir.’ There was a good deal more of it, but I stopped reading. There was a plan of London in the book, and from it I was able to plot out the boundaries of that doubtful paradise.
Then I got a modern map, and fixed the location on it. The place had been quite small, only a few acres, and today it was covered by the block defined by Wellesley Street, Apwith Lane, Little Fardell Street, and the mews behind Royston Square. I wrote this down in my note-book and took my leave.
‘You look pleased, Dick. Have you found what you want? Curious that I never heard the name, but it seems to have belonged to the dullest part of London at the dullest period of its history.’ Lord Artinswell, I could see, was a little nettled, for your antiquary hates to be caught out in his own subject.
I spent the rest of the afternoon making a very thorough examination of a not very interesting neighbourhood. What I wanted was a curiosity shop, and at first I thought I was going to fail. Apwith Lane was a kind of slum, with no shops but a disreputable foreign chemist’s and a small dirty confectioner’s, round the door of which dirty little children played. The inhabitants seemed to be chiefly foreigners. The mews at the back—of Royston Square were of course useless; it was long since any dweller in that square had kept a carriage, and they seemed to be occupied chiefly with the motor vans of a steam laundry and the lorries of a coal merchant. Wellesley Street, at least the part of it in my area, was entirely occupied with the show-rooms of various American automobile companies. Little Fardell Street was a curious place. It had one odd building which may have been there when the Fields of Eden flourished, and which now seemed to be a furniture repository of a sort, with most of the windows shuttered. The other houses were perhaps forty years old, most of them the offices of small wholesale businesses, such as you find in back streets in the City. There was one big French baker’s shop at the corner, a picture-framer’s, a watch-maker’s, and a small and obviously decaying optician’s. I walked down the place twice, and my heart sank, for I could see nothing in the least resembling an antique-shop.
I patrolled the street once. more, and then I observed that the old dwelling, which looked like a furniture depository, was also some kind of shop. Through a dirty lower window I caught a glimpse of what seemed to be Persian rugs and the bland face of a soap-stone idol. The door had the air of never having been used, but I tried it and it opened, tinkling a bell far in the back premises. I found myself in a small dusty place, littered up like a lumber room with boxes and carpets and rugs and bric-a-brac. Most of the things were clearly antiques, though to my inexpert eye they didn’t look worth much. The Turcoman rugs, especially, were the kind of thing you can buy anywhere in the Levant by the dozen.
A dishevelled Jewess confronted me, wearing sham diamond earrings.
‘I’m interested in antiques,’ I said pleasantly, taking off my hat to her. ‘May I look round?’
‘We do not sell to private customers,’ she said. ‘Only to the trade.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. But may I look round? If I fancied something, I dare say I could get some dealer I know to offer for it.’
She made no answer, but fingered her earrings with her plump grubby hands.
I turned over some of the rugs and carpets, and my first impression was confirmed.