Doris Lessing

A Small Girl Throws Stones At a Swan in Regent's Park

New Statesman, 24th November 1967.

Oh my swan, my charmer,
Moving unruffled on that stretch of water
Where stop the ripples from my ten strong fingers...

The girl is reminded of a fairy tale about 'swans that could be princes', and urges the swan to

Come, break with your wings in thunder
And climb to rarer islands with this prince's daughter...
You circle orderly the chilly reaches,
Your image whitely upsidedown beside you.
Oh far too perfect swan, my charmer...

A Year in Regent's Park

From The Story of a Non-Marrying Man and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1972.

The author tells us that she has moved into a house 'twenty minutes strolling time from Marble Arch and on a canal'. This apparently autobiographical story is devoted to descriptions of the park throughout the seasons. Samples:

We walked over new grass under trees crammed with pink, with ivory, with greenish-white flower; we walked beside lakes where crowds of ducklings and goslings swam beside their parents, minute balls like thistle-down tossing violently with every wind-ripple, and threatened all the time by the oars from rowing boats launched into the waters by spring

the park was all grey water, sodden grass, black trees, and the water-fowl had to contend for crumbs and crusts with the gulls that had come inland from a stormy sea

In January:

a strong breeze sent leaves spinning down, and the smell of the stagnant parts of the lakes was truly horrible, making you wonder about the philosophy of the park-keepers – it was against their principles to clear away the smelly rubbish?

In autumn:

new stacks of leaf are made every day as the old ones burn, scenting the air with guilt, for now you have to remember pollution. But the roses are still there, blobs of colour on tall stems. All the stages of the year are visible at once, for each plant has on it brightly tinted hips, then dead roses, then the roses themselves, though each has frost-burn crimping the outer petals

In winter:

Lions, Leaves, Roses...

From The Story of a Non-Marrying Man and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1972.

In front of me now the chestnut avenue that has, half-way down it, the cruel white boy who so casually dunks the dolphin's head, and a few paces away the urn held by four grinning winged lions most of the year concealed by dripping leaves and petals. The chestnuts are blazing, are burning, orangy-yellow under the blue sky, and the earth is littered precisely, clearly, with solid, ribbed, curved leaves, green-gold, each one lying defined in its small shell of brown shadow

An autumn walk around the park, starting from St. Mark's Bridge and taking in the Rose Garden:

And now, despite six stiff-uniformed park attendants sitting side by side on a bench to enjoy the sunlight, it is Italy, with tall aspiring trees around a five-jetted fountain, its white central plume a noble dropping curve. Towards it a path ascends, gently, in measured steps, with generously foliaged urns and sets of red roses and white roses, roses wildfire-coloured, and icy roses bedded in a blue haze

The Other Garden

From The Story of a Non-Marrying Man and Other Stories. Jonathan Cape, 1972.

There is a wilderness near the canal where blackberries may be picked, there are fields of rough grass for lying on, or rolling on, or loving on, or running the dog or playing football or cricket...An island full of docketed plants for gardeners to bend over is reached by a little bridge that must have been copied from a teacup

The narrator is in search of a mysterious garden rumoured to be 'hidden among the trees' in Regent's Park.

Perhaps it is the quintessence of the park, a concentrated statement of it? And so at last it turns out to be. Strolling in the park, looking at the trees and shrubs, you turn your head and see it. There it is...It is like Queen Mary's Rose Garden, but an exquisite copy, segments of earth filled with roses in grass...It is enclosed by an espalier of limes, a lacing of black knobby branches that are horizontal and stiff on either side of the central stems...As you leave the place draws itself in behind you, is gathered into itself, like water settling after a stone has disturbed it...Turn your back, turn a corner – it is all gone

London Observed / Among The Roses

London Observed. Harper Collins, 1992.

A short story in this collection, Among The Roses, concerns a mother and daughter who meet by chance in the Rose Garden 'on a warm Saturday afternoon'. Detailed description of garden and roses, e.g.

...the main gates with their flourishes of gold on ornamental black iron...to the right past the bird-loaded lake with the willows on one side and rose beds on the other...