To explain Mr. Housman's vision of 'The Sensitive Plant' would be as
superfluous as it would be ineffectual. In a note on the illustrations
he has told how the formal beauty, the exquisite ministrations, the
sounds and fragrance and sweet winds of the garden enclosed, seem to
him as 'a form of beauty that springs out of modes and fashions,' too
graceful to endure. In his pictures he has realized the perfect
ensemble of the garden, its sunny lawns and rose-trellises, its
fountains, statues, and flower-sweet ways; realized, too, the spirit of
the Sensitive Plant, the lady of the garden, and Pan, the great god who
never dies, who waits only without the garden, till in a little while
he enters, 'effacing and replacing with his own image and
superscription, the parenthetic grace ... of the garden deity.'
Of a talent that treats always of enchanted places, where 'reality' is
a long day's journey down a dusty road, it is difficult to speak
without suggesting that it is all just a charming dalliance with pretty
fancies, lacking strength. Of the strength of Mr. Housman's
imagination, however, his work speaks. His illustrations to his own
writings, fairy tales, and poems, cannot with any force be discussed by
themselves. The words belong to the pictures, the pictures to the
words. The drawings to 'The Field of Clover' are seen to full advantage
in the wood-engravings of Miss Housman. Only so, or in reproduction by
photogravure, is the full intention of Mr. Housman's pen-drawings
apparent.
[Illustration: THE FIELD OF CLOVER By Laurence Housman, Engraved by
Clemence Housman