"If a man had no other ability but to grow roses, he would be perfect." These words by Wilkie Collins, immediately made me think of my grandfather, Alec Ellis. Who was a perfect grandfather. He and Grannie used to buy me special books for Christmas and birthdays, and fed my love of reading and beautiful words. He may be better known to Unitarians as the author of Lawrence Redfern: A Memoir, which was a tribute to his friend and minister at Ullet Road Church in Liverpool.
I only knew him for a few years - he died when I was still quite young - but I loved him dearly. And he was the very first author I ever knew. The first book of his that I read was his chapter of autobiography, The House of Woolton Hill, which tells the story of how he and my grandmother moved from an ordinary house to a small mansion on Woolton Hill in Liverpool, and bought it sight unseen, as it was on requisition to the Army at the time. But they had fallen in love with the gardens... this is his description of his first view of the rose garden:
"We turned aside down an overgrown path which led to a secluded rose garden. It was triangular in shape, one side being bounded by what must have been a magnificent rock garden... a shrubbery occupied the second side and the remaining side was devoted to a pergola covered with rambler roses. The bush roses had been planted in a number of shaped beds. There was a centre round bed surrounded by three curved beds. These in turn were surrounded by four curved beds.... The remainder of the space was filled by small round beds, each containing a climbing or rambling rose..... The roses had grown tall through lack of pruning, but they were flowering in great profusion and there must have been a couple of hundred in flower that evening, filling the garden with sweetness. I was instantly struck by the peace of the place. Beautiful it certainly was, even in its neglect, but it was the peacefulness of the place which did something to me. I felt it was the sanest place I had been in for many a long day."
In due course, the whole garden was restoed to its former glory, and a picture of the rose garden adorns the cover.
When I knew him and Grannie, they had moved to a bungalow in Hereford (my grandmother had had a serious stroke) but the front garden was also a glory of roses. Sadly, I have not taken after him in one respect - I am no gardener. But both my father and I inherited his love of words, and the joy of writing them down. I owe both of them a great debt.
