E. F. Benson and Lamb House, page two

"The garden, I have noticed, has too many prowling cats about.  There shall be a bird-table, a flat wooden board on a support so high that cats cannot leap on to it and pounce on my guests, and on the edge of the board I will carve the text:  "Thou shalt prepare a table for me against them that trouble me...'"       "This garden and the bird-haunted lawn are surrounded by walls of old red brick.  To the south the gable-windows of the houses in Watchbell Street can just blink into it:  to the east are the roofs of houses in Church Square; to the west the ground falls sharply down to the level of the marsh, and over the wall

appears the high ridge, eight miles away, of Fairlight:  a row of Lombardy poplars, planted by Henry James, partially protects it from south-westerly gales.  On the north stands Lamb House, and at right angles to it the garden-room already mentioned.  A short flight of steps leads up to its door, and over the railings and the wire frame above an antique wistaria has twined itself, gripping these supports with tight coils in the manner of a boa-constrictor.  Surrounded by these walls and buildings the garden has the same quality of urban privacy as certain college gardens at Oxford encircled by houses yet not overlooked.  The trellis...screens the kitchen-garden:  the rest is an irregular slightly-sloping lawn bordered by flower-beds set behind low green fenders of box edging.  In one corner is a flat rectangle of rock-garden, only lately laid down."  (from Final Edition, by E.F. Benson, 1940, pp.141-143 in the 1988 Hogarth reprint)

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Left:  Fred on Garden Room steps. Right:  Fred and Taffy.