[Illustration: house with smoke coming out of chimney]
How delightful it is to come back to our moors after London! Loki’s
Grandmother’s heart always sinks when the bricks and mortar begin to
spring up about the road, and the houses close in around her. Sometimes
she thinks that what weighs upon it is the sense of all those miles of
squalor; of all those hives of human misery; of all the sin and
suffering. Perhaps, however, she is influenced by mere distaste of the
crowd; displeasure in living one of a herd in a jostle of houses; the
ignominy of being a number in a row with undesired neighbours on either
side! Who would prefer to look on pavements, area railings and
lamp-posts; to listen to the roar and turmoil of a life one has no
ambition to share—a life vexing the peace of night and day, rather than
feast the eyes on cool green loveliness, on rolling moorland; the ear on
vast delicious silence or the choiring of windswept woods? How, in fact,
can anyone who has the choice live in town, instead of in the fair,
quiet, spacious country? One cannot feel one’s soul one’s own in London:
bits of it are perpetually escaping to join the giddy midge dance. The
individuality evaporates. But then—there are concerts, and Wagner’s
operas; and one’s own select friends and the interest of the great
intellectual movements! The splendid activities of life seem to pass one
by in the country. Well, we suppose, like everything else in existence,
one must take the see-saw as it comes, and accept the bumps for the sake
of the soaring. But we are always glad to come back to Villino Loki.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A SCHEME OF AZURE AND TAWNY]
The discoveries one makes in the garden after ten days’ absence are
thrilling. The three rows of Thomas More Tulips under the dining-room
window are colouring to a glorious orange, and the Forget-me-nots
planted between them are showing little sparks of blue. The tawny
Wallflowers at the back are not all we could wish; but, even pinched as
they are, the effect of their many velvet hues is satisfactory. There is
a single row of double Tulips ‹Prince of Orange› at the edge of the bed,
between the Forget-me-nots. In a week or so, looking up the terrace,
there will be five lines of flame running gloriously out of the blue; a
sight to delight the eye, against the curious bronze purple the moor
wears just now.
The Scillas, which we thought were going to fail us, have been a
tremendous success, and still form pools of glowing blue round the
almond trees. Next year we intend to make a feature of Scillas. They are
such tiny bulbs that they can scarcely interfere with anything; and we
shall slip them in among the perennials in every corner, besides putting
more in the grass terraces. We are also going to run riot with
“Steeple-Jacks,” especially the light turquoise kind. They last an
immense time and are of a delicious tint. The long border of Campanelle
Jonquils that we have planted in what we call the “Bowling Green” are
drawn up as for a review, stiff and straight like little soldiers in
bright gold helmets. Next year we shall invest in three or four thousand
Daffodils for the rough places under the trees, and we mean to star the
banks with Primroses and Wild Violets.
* * * * *
We have made a vast improvement these days by turfing most of the walks,
and we now look out on a delicious sweep of green. The Lily Border and
its opposite neighbour, the tongue of land with the Buddleia trees and
shrubs, look infinitely more attractive thus set into the verdure. Great
clumps of yellow Polyanthuses and self-sown Forget-me-nots make it gay
while we are waiting for the Narcissus Poeticus, the Poppies, the Lilies
and other joys to break upon us. The field of mixed Narcissus under the
trees is going to be one sheet of blossom in a few days, blown about,
though they be, poor darlings, by these fierce and cruel winds. The
papers are full of exclamations over “winter in April”: so far our
high-pitched garden has stood it well. This is the advantage, we
suppose, of its natural backwardness.
We are now fired with the desire to turf the Dutch Garden; the path
under the second terrace, _i.e._ Blue Border, and also the path leading
from the Bowling Green, so that we shall look down on a succession of
green levels, each with its wealth of flowers. We want to make the whole
little place shine like a jewel out of the rough setting of the moor.
[Sidenote: TEMPTATION]
Talk of the zest of gambling! ’Tis impossible that it could more possess
the soul in defiance of purse and prudence than the garden mania. If
Loki’s Grandmother had hold of a cheque book ‹which she hasn’t› she is
afraid the family substance would flow away from month to month into
bulbs and blossoms, tubers and saxifrages, clumps and climbers; not to
speak of such prosaic but necessary accompaniments as loam, manures,
lawn-mixtures and “vaporisers.” She would build at least two new
greenhouses and double her garden staff. And perhaps after all she
wouldn’t be half as happy as she is. For she might be led into “named
novelties,” and garden rivalries, and splendours of artificial rockeries
where in the centre of vast beds of slag some microscopic curiosity no
larger than a spider would spread a fairy claw in the shadow of a
monstrous label. Perhaps she might be bitten with an unwholesome passion
for Orchids, and spend the portion of her only child, and all the fur
grandchildren, on the devilish attractions of those plants which are, we
are convinced, flowers of evil.
Just now her last extravagance has been to order three and six worth of
White Honesty at ninepence a dozen, to plant in among the new
Rhododendrons; and she is suffused with satisfaction at the prospect of
anything so cheap and charming. We recommend the effect, discovered
quite accidentally.
* * * * *
We have really abominable weather. It is very unusual.
“Oh, to be in England,
Now that April’s there!”
is an aspiration justified as a rule by a tender interlude between the
tantrums of March and the asperities of May. Last year April came in
skipping like a kid on the Campagna, even its freakishness full of
attraction. Is anything more charming than to see the kids playing among
the flocks, as one drives along those roads of haunting and mysterious
beauty—under that sky incomparable in its gem-like purity; to see the
shepherd in his sheepskin seated on a fence with his legs
cross-bandaged, the shrill pipe to his lips; to hear his wild strain and
know that it was all just the same a thousand years ago and more? The
kids, as they leap out of the scattered flocks, are cut against the blue
as on some classic frieze; the tawny, melancholy plain falls and rises
and falls again till the hills amethystine, snow-capped, close the field
of vision in the far distance! The broken line of an aqueduct gleams as
if golden.
“To be in Italy,
Now that April’s there!”
Loki’s Grandmother believes she would give up her country and Villino
Loki, and expatriate herself for ever gladly. But Italy is not
expatriation, it is the home of the soul. ‹Loki’s Grandpa says he quite
admits all that—but that for a permanency he prefers his Surrey hills.›
The fires on the Campagna are rose-carmine as the pointed flames pulsate
upwards. Our fires here are only just the usual yellows. Where is it
that Italy holds the secret? Is it in the translucence of the
atmosphere? How the sunlight there lies on a common plaster wall! How
the stone flushes! Just a little white Villino on a hill-side stands in
a radiance of its own, and is not white at all but topaz coloured!
* * * * *
To-day, the fifteenth of April, has been as grey and bleaching a day
here as we never wish to meet again. Even the spears of the Narcissus
are bruised and drooping.
------------------------------------------------------------------------