THE PROMISE OF MAY.
"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis?"
HORACE.
About the middle of May the lovely, sweet-scenting lilac comes into
bloom. It brightens up the old, time-worn barns, and relieves the
monotony of grey stone walls and mossy roofs in the Cotswold village.
The prevailing colour of the Cotswold landscape may be said to be that
of gold. The richest gold is that of the flaming marsh-marigolds in the
water meadows during May; goldilocks and buttercups of all kinds are
golden too, but of a slightly different and paler hue. Yellow charlock,
beautiful to look upon, but hated by the farmers, takes possession of
the wheat "grounds" in May, and holds the fields against all comers
throughout the summer. In some parts it clothes the whole landscape like
a sheet of saffron. Primroses and cowslips are of course paler still.
The ubiquitous dandelion is likewise golden; then we have birdsfoot
trefoil, ragwort, agrimony, silver-weed, celandine, tormentil, yellow
iris, St. John's wort, and a host of other flowers of the same hue. In
autumn comes the golden corn; and later on in mid winter we have pale
jessamine and lichen thriving on the cottage walls. So throughout the
year the Cotswolds are never without this colour of saffron or gold.
Only the pockets of the natives lack it, I regret to say.
Every cottager takes a pride in his garden, for the flower shows which
are held every year result in keen competition. A prize is always given
for the prettiest garden among all the cottagers. This is an excellent
plan; it brightens and beautifies the village street for eight months in
the year. In May the rich brown and gold of the gillyflower is seen on
every side, and their fragrance is wafted far and wide by every breeze
that blows.
Then there is a very pretty plant that covers some of the cottage walls
at this time of year. It is the wistaria; in the distance you might take
it for lilac, for the colours are almost identical.
Then come the roses--the beautiful June roses--the _nimium breves
flores_ of Horace. But the roses of the Cotswolds are not so short lived
for all that Horace has sung: you may see them in the cottage gardens
from the end of May until Christmas.
How cool an old house is in summer! The thick walls and the stone floors
give them an almost icy feeling in the early morning. Even as I write my
thermometer stands at 58° within, whilst the one out of doors registers
65° in the shade. This is the ideal temperature, neither too hot nor too
cold. But it is not summer yet, only the fickle month of May.
Tom Peregrine is getting very anxious. He meets me every evening with
the same story of trout rising all the way up the stream and nobody
trying to catch them. I can see by his manner that he disapproves of my
"muddling" over books and papers instead of trying to catch trout. He
cannot understand it all. Meanwhile one sometimes asks oneself the
question which Peregrine would also like to propound, only he dare not,
Why and wherefore do we tread the perilous paths of literature instead
of those pleasant paths by the river and through the wood? The only
answer is this: The _daemon_ prompts us to do these things, even as it
prompted the men of old time.
"There is a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough hew them how we will."
If there is such a thing as a "call" to any profession, there is a call
to that of letters. So with an enthusiasm born of inexperience and
delusive hope we embark as in a leaky and untrustworthy sailing ship,
built, for ought we know, "in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark,"
and at the mercy of every chance breeze are wafted by the winds of
heaven through chaos and darkness into the boundless ocean of words and
of books. When the waves run high they resemble nothing so much as lions
with arched crests and flowing manes going to and fro seeking whom they
may devour, or savage dogs rushing hither and thither foaming at the
mouth; and when old Father Neptune lets loose his hungry sea-dogs of
criticism, then look out for squalls!
But again the _daemon_, that still small voice echoing from the far-off
shores of the ocean of time, whispers in our ear, "In the morning sow
thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest
not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both
shall be alike good."
So we sow in weakness and in fear and trembling, "line upon line, line
upon line; here a little and there a little," sometimes in mirth and
laughter, sometimes in tears. Let us not ask to be raised in power. Let
us resign all glory and honour and power to the Ancient of Days, prime
source of the strength of wavering, weak mankind. Rather let us be
thankful that by turning aside from "the clamour of the passing day" to
tread the narrow paths of literature, however humble, however obscure
our lot may have been, we gained an insight into the nobler destinies of
the human soul, and learnt a lesson which might otherwise have been
postponed until we were hovering on the threshold of Eternity.
In spite of complaints of east winds and night frosts, May is the nicest
month in the year take it all in all. In London this is the case even
more than in the country. The trees in the parks have then the real
vivid green foliage of the country. There is a freshness about
everything in London which only lasts through May. By June the smoke and
dirt are beginning to spoil the tender, fresh greenery of the young
leaves. In the early morning of May 12th, 1897, more than an inch of
snow fell in the Cotswolds, but it was all gone by eight o'clock. In
spite of the weather, May is "the brightest, merriest month of all the
glad New Year." Everything is at its best. Man cannot be morose and
ill-tempered in May. The "happy hills and pleasing shade" must needs "a
momentary bliss bestow" on the saddest of us all. Look at yonder
thoroughbred colt grazing peacefully in the paddock: if you had turned
him out a month ago he would have galloped and fretted himself to death;
but now that the grass is sweet and health-giving, he is content to
nibble the young shoots all day long. What a lovely, satin-like coat he
has, now that his winter garments are put off! There is a picture of
health and symmetry! He has just reached the interesting age of four
years, is dark chestnut in colour, and sixteen hands two and a half
inches in height; grazing out there, he does not look anything like that
size. Well-bred horses always look so much smaller than they really are,
especially if they are of good shape and well proportioned. Alas! how
few of them, even thoroughbreds, have the real make and shape necessary
to carry weight across country, or to win races! You do not see many
horses in a lifetime in whose shape the critical eye cannot detect a
fault. We know the good points as well as the bad of this colt, for we
have had him two years. Deep, sloping shoulders are his speciality; and
they cover a multitude of sins. Legs of iron, with large, broad knees;
plenty of flat bone below the knee, and pasterns neither too long nor
too upright. Well ribbed up, he is at the same time rather
"ragged-hipped," indicative of strength and weight-carrying power. How
broad are his gaskins! how "well let down" he is! What great hocks he
has! But, alas I as you view him from behind, you cannot help noticing
that his hindlegs incline a little outwards, even as a cow's do--they
are not absolutely straight, as they should be. Then as to his golden,
un-docked tail: he carries it well--a fact which adds twenty pounds to
his value; but, strange to say, it is not "well set on," as a
thoroughbred's ought to be. He does not show the quality he ought in his
hindquarters. Still his head, neck and crest are good, though his eye is
not a large one. How much is he worth--twenty, fifty, a hundred, or two
hundred pounds? Who can tell? Will he be a charger, a fourteen-stone
hunter, or a London carriage horse? All depends how he takes to jumping.
His height is against him,--sixteen hands two and a half inches is at
least two inches too big for a hunter. Nevertheless, there are always
the brilliant exceptions. Let us hope he will be the trump card in
the pack.
Talking of horses, how admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson's, when
a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word
_pastern_ in his dictionary as the _knee_ of a horse. "Ignorance,
madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well
afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But
how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any
subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally
unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!
What beautiful shades of colour are noticeable in the trees in the early
part of May! The ash, being so much later than the other trees, remains
a pale light green, and shows up against the dark green chestnuts and
the still darker firs. But what shall I say of the great spreading
walnut whose branches hang right across the stream in our garden in the
Cotswold Valley?
About the middle of May the walnut leaves resemble nothing so much as a
mass of Virginia creeper when it is at its best in September. Beautiful,
transparent leaves of gold, intermingled with red, glisten in the warm
May sunshine,--the russet beauties of autumn combined with the fresh,
bright loveliness of early spring!
Not till the very end of May will this walnut tree be in full leaf. He
is the latest of all the trees. The young, tender leaves scent almost as
sweetly as the verbena in the greenhouse. It is curious that ash trees,
when they are close to a river, hang their branches down towards the
water like the "weeping willows." Is this connected, I wonder, with the
strange attraction water has for certain kinds of wood, by which the
water-finder, armed with a hazel wand, is able to divine the presence
of _aqua pura_ hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth? What
this strange art of rhabdomancy is I know not, but the "weeping" ash in
our garden by the Coln is one of the most beautiful and shapely trees I
ever saw. It will be an evil day when some cruel hurricane hurls it to
the ground. We have lost many a fine tree in recent years, some through
gales, but others, alas I by the hand of man.
A few years ago I discovered a spot about a quarter of a mile from my
home which reminded me of the beautiful Eton playing-fields,
"Where once my careless childhood stray'd,
A stranger yet to pain."
It consisted of a few grass fields shut off by high hedges, and
completely encircled by a number of fine elm trees of great age and
lovely foliage. At one end a broad and shallow reach of the Coln
completed the scene.
Having obtained a long lease of the place, I grubbed up the hedges,
turned three small fields into one, and made a cricket ground in the
midst. My object was to imitate as far as possible the "Upper Club" of
the Eton playing-fields.
I had barely accomplished the work, the cricket ground had just been
levelled, when the landlord's agent--or more probably his
"mortgagee"--arrived on the scene, accompanied by a hard-headed,
blustering timber merchant from Cheltenham. To my horror and dismay I
was informed that, money being very scarce, they contemplated making a
clean sweep of these grand old elms. On my expostulating, they merely
suggested that cutting down the trees would be a great improvement, as
the place would be opened up thereby and made healthier.
In the hope of warding off the evil day we offered to pay the price of
some of the finest trees, although they could only legally be bought for
the present proprietor's lifetime.
The contractor, however, rather than leave his work of destruction
incomplete, put a ridiculous price on them. He refused to accept a
larger sum than he could ever have cleared by cutting them down. This is
what Cowper would have stigmatised as
"disclaiming all regard
For mercy and the common rights of man,"
and "conducting trade at the sword's point."
We then resolved to buy the farm. But the stars in their courses fought
against us; we were unsuccessful in our attempt to purchase
the freehold.
And so the contractor's men came with axes and saws and horses and
carts. For days and weeks I was haunted by that hideous nightmare, the
crash of groaning trees as they fell all around, soon to be stripped of
all their glorious beauty. The cruel, blasphemous shouts of the men, as
they made their long-suffering horses drag the huge, dismembered trunks
across the beautifully levelled greensward of the cricket ground, were
positively heart-rending. Ninety great elms did they strike down. A few
were left, but of these the two finest came down in the great gale of
March 1896.
"Sic transit gloria mundi."
Trees are like old familiar friends, we cannot bear to lose them; every
one that falls reminds us of "the days that are no more." Struck down in
all the pride and beauty of their days, they remind us that
"Those who once gave promise
Of fruit for manhood's prime
Have passed from us for ever,
Gone home before their time."
They remind me that four of my greatest friends at school, ten short
years ago, are long since dead. Like the trees felled by the woodman's
axe, they were struck down by the sickle of the silent Reaper, even as
the golden sheaves that are gathered into the beautiful barns. Other
trees will spring up and shade the naked earth in the woods with their
mantle of green: so, also,
"Others will fill our places
Dressed in the old light blue."
And just as in the woods fresh young saplings are daily springing up, so
also the merry voices of happy, generous boys are ringing, as I write,
in the old, old courts and cloisters by the silvery Thames; their merry
laughter is echoed by the bare grey walls, whereon the names of those
who have long been dust are chiselled in rude handwriting on the
mouldering stone.
Hundreds we knew have gone down. The fatal bullet, the ravaging fever,
the roaring torrent, and the sad sea waves; the slow, sure grip of
consumption, the fall at polo, and the iron hoofs of the favourite
hunter;--all claimed their victims.
Perhaps this is why we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of
golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the
heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook.
Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the
soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we
dimly view them through a mist of tears.
And now your thoughts are taken back five short years; you are once more
staying with your old Eton friend and Oxford comrade in his beautiful
home in far-off Wales. All is joy and happiness in that lovely, romantic
home, for in six weeks' time the young squire, the best and most popular
fellow in the world, is to be married to the fair daughter of a
neighbouring house. Is it possible that aught can happen in that short
time to mar the heavenly happiness of those two twin souls? Alas for the
gallant, chivalrous nature I Well might he have cried with his knightly
ancestor of the "Round Table," "Me forethinketh this shall betide, but
God may well foredoe destiny." He had gone down to the lake in the most
beautiful and romantic part of his lovely home, taking with him, as was
his wont, his fishing-rod and his gun. One shot was heard, and one only,
on that ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the
birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in
silence. Then followed the report--whispered through the party assembled
to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom--that "Bill" was
missing. Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search
throughout the long summer evening.
Late that night the father found the fair young form of his boy in a
thick and tangled copse,--there it lay under the silent stars, the face
upturned in its last appeal to heaven; and close by lay the deadly
twelve-bore which had been the cause of all the misery and grief
that followed.
"Solemn before us
Veiled the dark portal--
Goal of all mortal.
Stars silent rest o'er us;
Graves under us silent."
He had evidently pursued game or vermin of some sort into the dense
undergrowth of the wood, and in his haste had slipped and fallen over
his gun, for the shot had just grazed his heart
Who that knew him will ever forget Bill Llewelyn, prince of good
fellows, "truest of men in everything"? In all relations of life, as in
the hunting field, he went as straight as a die.
The accidental discharge of a gun shortly after he came of age, and
within a few weeks of his wedding day, has made the England of to-day
the poorer by one of her most promising sons. Infinite charity! Infinite
courage! Infinite truth! Infinite humility! Who could do justice in
prose to those rare and godlike qualities? No: miserable, weak, and
ineffectual though my gift of poesy may be, yet I will not let those
qualities pass away from the minds of all, save the few that knew him
well, without following in the footsteps (though at an immeasurable
distance) of the divine author of "Lycidas," by endeavouring to render
to his cherished memory "the meed of some melodious tear." For as time
goes on, and the future unfolds to our view things we would have given
worlds to have known long before, when the events that influenced our
past actions and shaped our future destinies are seen through the dim
vista of the shadowy, half-forgotten past, we must all learn the hard
lesson which experience alone can teach, exclaiming with the "Preacher"
the old, old words, "I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is
not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.... but time and chance
happeneth to them all"
LINES IN MEMORY OF
WILLIAM DILLWYN LLEWELYN.
It may be chance,--I hold it truth,--
That of the friends I loved on earth
The ones who died in early youth
Were those of best and truest worth.
The swift, alas! the race must lose;
The battle goes against the strong,--
God wills it 'Tis for us to choose,
Whilst life is given, 'twixt right and wrong
'Tis not for us to count the cost
Of losing those we most do love;
He grudgeth not life's battle lost
Who wins a golden crown above.
And oft beneath the shades of night,
When tempests howl around these walls,
A vision steals upon my sight,
A footstep on the threshold falls.
I see once more that graceful form,
Once more that honest hand grasps mine.
Once more I hear above the storm
The voice I know so well is thine.
I see again an Eton boy,
A gentle boy, divinely taught,
And call to mind bow full of joy
In friendly rivalry we sought
The "playing-fields." Then, as I yield
To fancy's dreams, I see once more
The hero of the cricket field,
The oft-tried, trusty friend of yore.
What tender yearnings, fond regret,
These thoughts of early friendship bring!
None but the heartless can forget
'Mid summer days the friends of spring.
Now thoughts of Oxford fill my mind:
My Eton friend is with me still,
But changed--from boy to man; yet kind
And large of heart, and strong of will,
And blythe and gay. I recognise
The athletic form, the comely face,
The mild expression of the eyes,
The high-bred courtesy and grace.
Once more with patient skill we lure
The mighty salmon from the deep;
Once more we tread the boundless moor,
And wander up the mountain steep.
With gun in hand we scour the plain,
Together climb the rocky ways;
Regardless he of wind and rain
Who loved to "live laborious days."
* * * * *
I see again fair Penllergare,
Those woods and lakes you loved so well;
It seems but yesterday that there
I parted from you! Who can tell
The reason thou art gone before?
It is not given to us to know,
But doubtless thou wert needed more
Than we who mourn thee here below.
Life's noblest lesson day by day
Thy fair example nobly taught--
Self-sacrifice--to point the way
By which the hearts of men are brought
Nearer to God. This was thy task,
Humbly, unknowingly fulfilled;
And it were vain for us to ask
Why now thy voice is hushed and stilled.
O gallant spirit, generous heart!
If thou had'st lived in days gone by,
Thou would'st have loved to bear thy part
In glorious deeds of chivalry.
I make no apology for this digression, nor for unearthing from the
bottom of my drawer lines that, written years ago, were never penned
with any idea of publication. For was not the subject of those verses
himself half a Cotswold man?
But now to return once more to the trees, the loss of which caused me
to digress some pages back; there are compensations in all things. Not
every one who becomes a sojourner among the Cotswold Hills is fated to
undergo such a trial as the loss of these ninety elms. And,
notwithstanding this severe lesson, I am still glad that I alighted on
the spot from which I am now writing.
I have learnt to find pleasure in other directions now that my "Eton
playing-fields" have passed away for ever. I have become infected by the
spirit of the downs. I love the pure, bracing air and the boundless
sense of space in the open hills as much as I ever loved the more
concentrated charms of the valley. And even in the valley I have
possessions of which no living man is able to deprive me. From my window
I can see the silvery trout stream, which, after thousands of years of
restless activity, is still slowly gliding down towards the sea; I can
listen on summer nights to the murmuring waterfall at the bottom of the
garden, the hooting of the owls, and the other sounds which break the
awful silence of the night.
Nor can the hand of man disturb the glorious timber round the house; for
it is "ornamental," and therefore safe from the hands of the despoiler.
Storms are gradually levelling the ancient beech and ash trees in the
woods, but it will be many a long day before the hand of nature has
marred the beauty of what has always seemed to me to be one of the
fairest spots on earth.
[Illustration: Bilbury Mill 374.png]