Beeches, on the other hand, have a kind of fairy glory about them that
does not seem to belong to our land. We drove through a beech forest the
other day; the road went up zigzagging to the top of a steep hill, and
one looked down upon the Beech glades, all golden green in a fierce
sunburst between two showers. And they were still dripping with the
rain. It was wonderful, but not English, distinctively English, like
that Oak wood. It was a _Märchen-Wald_. Siegfried might have strode
through it, blowing his horn: youth incarnate, leaping out of Mime’s
cave to conquer the world. On the inspiration of such a haunt was the
_Wald-Musick_ conceived.
[Sidenote: MAY AND SEPTEMBER MOODS]
If we had a dwelling for every different mood, a log-house at the top of
that Beech ravine would suit us very well in a sunny month of May.
Between the great smooth boles of the trees we would want to peep out at
the flat wide land, with the rich far woods below, misty in the
sunshine; and the distant moors as with the bloom of the grape upon
them. We would not want flowers; nothing but that heavenly green of the
young leaves against the blue; and the whispering and the swaying of the
boughs to cradle our souls; and the thrushes and blackbirds to sing the
dawn in and the twilight out! How holy and innocent and loving would
one’s mind become after a week in that log hut—a week alone, or with
one’s best beloved!
[Illustration: landscape with clouds]
After we came out from that Beech wood we took a wrong turning, and
landed ourselves far out on the downs instead of back to our moors. Now,
for another mood—say, a warm, still, serene September mood—why not a
small stone house in a high hollow of those downs, miles removed from
any other human habitation? Just a stone house dumped in the hollow—pale
grey, so as not to offend the eye in that stretch of bleached vastness,
with a group of Thorns at the back and nothing else, not even a path;
only a long way off, the vision of a white ribbon of road, looping and
twisting, running to the sea. No flowers but the little wild, stiff,
aromatic things that push up through the short turf. Overhead, one or
two quite round, white clouds, sailing along the blue, caught by some
high current that hardly touches us below—the kind of cloud that you see
in an old German print. And all about, as far as the gaze can encompass,
nothing but the dip and rise, the scoop and billow of the downs; and the
hollows, blue on that wonderful sun-steeped, warm, yet bleached expanse.
And the shadows of the clouds, running along across it; and perhaps a
lark’s song, somewhere not too close, beaten back to earth from an
unseen height of joy; and far, far away, the tinkle of a sheep-bell!
Would not one’s soul expand with the grand silence and the glorious wide
spaces? One would not want to hear or behold the sea, only to taste the
salt of it in every breath. Now does it not seem that up there, sitting
outside that stone house, you would touch the prehistoric past? Or,
rather, that the great eternity, the never-dying essences of things,
would sink into your little passing bit of humanity? Your soul would
mirror all infinity.—A place to turn Buddhist in!
[Sidenote: A TUSCAN VILLINO]
[Illustration: house on hill]
There was a pink Villino on the unusual side of Rome. You looked in upon
it through high gates into a tangle of garden, where everything seemed
to riot. It had an odd, incongruous tower from which you could surely
have a vast prospect of the plains of the Campagna and the Alban
mountains beyond. There was an archway in one side of it through which
one certainly drove into some inner courtyard of delight. That little
habitation you might covet with a covetousness that gave you a pain in
your heart. We did.
And outside Florence, too, there was another small house. It had been
once a farm. A certain great lady had her spring quarters there, liking
the contrast, we suppose, between that and the old Scotch castle where
Fate had planted her. We drove to tea with her there ‹early May it was›
through the hot, wind-swept, noisy Florentine streets. It was just the
time of year when the Iris was flooding the land with its penetrating
and yet not sickly sweetness. There never was any scent so perfect. And
the small pink roses were flinging themselves over the tops of tall
garden walls, as if the prodigal Italian springtide had been at its full
and left a foam of bloom behind it. Up, up the mountain road, between
uncompromising walls and out into the freer country—and there was the
farmhouse! Its garden has left an odd blurred impression on our minds:
vaguely—a path bordered by lush grass and gay with Apple trees—there was
a storm brewing, and all was black overhead; under the weird sky the
delicate blossoms took a curious vividness like minute paintings.
One had to go across a red-brick kitchen to get to the stairs that led
to the two long, quaint, cool rooms, in the farther of which the hostess
sat.
[Sidenote: LANDSCAPE ECSTASY]
She had kept the charm of simplicity there. Plain white walls and rather
empty spaces, with bits of Italian black oak, and a painting or two; a
vase of lilac, a dim missal warmth of colour in the Persian carpets that
lay on the bricks—that was the picture. A very pleasant impression those
rooms made, with the old great lady in her high-backed chair, clad in
flowing black satin and with a white lace that framed a face as fresh as
the apple blossom without. The storm broke as we sat there. She was
nervous, and so were some of her visitors; therefore she had the wooden
shutters closed. Perhaps she was not really frightened, for she was as
sturdy a Scotchwoman as ever we beheld, and her bright blue eye was
stern in spite of her affability. Perhaps she only compassionated the
nerves of her guests. Be it as it may, we sat an hour while the thunder
rolled bars of sound over our heads and the wind whistled and the rain
hissed and roared down the valley, and the lightning kept a perpetual
play between the chinks of the shutters. And though Loki’s Grandma
generally gibbers during a thunderstorm, she never enjoyed an hour more,
so delightful was her hostess and so fascinating the sense of isolation
and strangeness, being thus shut away amid the fury of the elements in a
little Italian farmhouse! And when the tempest was grumbling itself off
in the distance, the shutters were all thrown back and the doors on the
square wooden balcony opened. The air rushed in, vivifying, full of the
scent of the earth and charged with ozone and perfumes. We went out on
the dripping balcony, and never, oh! never can any of us forget the
vision! For below the _casa_ the land dropped away, and it was all
vineyards; and they rose and dipped and rose again, a sight no one has
ever beheld out of Italy. And beyond were the mountains; and the whole
wide valley was filled with mist and all of it was stained rose and
crimson from the sunset.
You may not believe it, you who read it, but it is a fact that the
valley was carmine up to the balcony, indescribably shot with the fires
of the West—a steaming cauldron of glory! That is the kind of vision one
carries gratefully to one’s grave.
For a long time we vowed that our old age would see us, like the Scotch
Dowager, steeping our being in the joys of Spring in a farmhouse outside
Florence.—But now we don’t know. Villino Loki has laid hold of us; it is
our real home, the rest are but dreams.
The Master of the House saw this morning a tiny Golden-crested Wren
fluttering from stem to stem of the tall Darwin Tulips to pick at the
Forget-me-nots below; and every time it pecked it twittered with joy, so
light a thing that it scarcely swayed the slender stalks—a fairy vision.
[Illustration: path through garden to house]
* * * * *
The Hemicycle, where the grass must be allowed to grow lush, because of
the bulbs, until the leaves “ripen off,” is none the less attractive on
that account. There are eight little square beds, each containing a
weeping standard—“Dorothy Perkins” or “Stella”—thickly planted below
with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen Tulips. Between the beds there is a
large red pot also filled with Forget-me-nots and Bybloemen. The Tulips
have a kind of wild grace, coming out of the long grass; and Myosotis,
darling little creature, accommodates herself in every surrounding.
There is a pretty, stemmed fountain, or rather bird-bath; in its centre,
where, in a basin shaped like a spreading lotus flower, a sturdy _putto_
astride a dolphin blows soundless blasts. This half-circle of vivid
beauty, with the young green grass, the swaying Tulips, the blue of the
Forget-me-nots against the moor is good to look upon.
Beyond the Hemicycle, the Azalea Glade runs down now in lines of
orange-rose and creamy-salmon, bordered too with Forget-me-nots. Up
against it the cool silver of a great Service-tree comes just where it
makes a perfect background; and beyond that again the rivulets of blue
in the Reserve Garden lie deep below.
[Sidenote: TRANSIENT COLOUR GLORIES]
This is the hour of our garden’s glory. No Delphinium muster, no
spreading garlands of Roses, can equal the exquisite freshness, the
fulness of life of this May world. With the Brooms, white and yellow;
with the pink foam of the Floribunda trees, the incomparable gold and
green of the Beech and Birch, one wants to put one’s arms round the
little place and kiss it.
“So much work, so long and great a travail of nature,” said a friend to
us to-day; “ever since November, preparing for this wonderful revelation
of bloom ... and all for so short a span! All this beauty scarce reaches
its climax but it is already on the wane!”
Perhaps it is to give us an idea of the permanence of what “eye hath not
seen” beyond, that its glories are described in terms of jewels; and yet
so perversely is one made that it is the very fragility that endears
here below—a sense of the fleeting moment that gives ecstasy its finest
edge. No, this limited humanity of ours cannot conceive the infinitude.
It is only with those perceptions which transcend the senses that one
gets a gleam, a hint, a possibility of once understanding. The restless
mind of man for ever demands and creates change, but the soul aspires to
immutability.
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[Illustration: SUMMER]
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