[Sidenote: THE FALL OF THE LEAF]
Once more has the Equinox come and dropped into the past. Autumn—the
Fall, as our older and more poetic term had it to balance the image of
Spring, and as America still prefers to call it—is about us.
[Illustration: bird in nest]
We disagree radically with Chateaubriand’s estimate of the “russet and
silver days.”
“A moral character” ‹thus does the Father of _Romantisme_ meditate, in
his usual melancholy mood, upon the season of shortening days and
long-drawing nights› “is attached to autumnal scenes.... The leaves
falling like our years, the flowers withdrawing like our hours, the
colours of the clouds fading like our illusions, the light waning like
our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers
becoming frozen like our lives—everything about Autumn bears secret
relations to our destinies....”
Yes, we disagree with every one of these similes. Rather should Autumn
be considered as the happy season of the task accomplished. The wine is
pressed and stored, the fruit is garnered.... In the garden it is the
time of eager preparation against new delights, another year; of
solicitude for the treasures of beauty which are to brighten another
Spring, another Summer. The seed of the dying Annuals has been saved;
the more tender of the Perennials are timely withdrawn into shelter,
while the hardier are cosily tucked in their own bed for the coming long
winter sleep. It is the time of the tidying down and of the confident
“good night—till next year!”
“Colder, like our affections,” indeed! What will not love of rhetoric
perpetrate?—and Christmastide drawing on apace!
* * * * *
The Master of the House has an old-fashioned weakness—what may be called
a “Dickensy” weakness—for things Christmassy. And his family have all
childlike tastes and are quite ready to minister to his picturesque
fancy.
We have a Christmas tree—a Spruce sapling, selected yearly for
sacrifice in the territory called the Wilderness. It must be said that
the wide library, with the capacious hearth and the beamed ceiling,
lends a suitable scenery to this homelike ‹but, we fear, obsolescent›
entertainment. The tree is lit up on the first night for ourselves; on
the second for the household; and a third time for the children. For
the true pleasures of Yule would be incomplete without a
“foregathering-and-rejoicing-together” ‹as only a tough German
compound word could express it› of all grades of age and station. The
children, in this case, are those of the Catechism class and of our
_employés_—which pompous term must be understood to refer to the
gardener, the chauffeur, the under-gardener, and the “occasional
help.” This last has five of them—so it mounts up satisfactorily.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THINGS CHRISTMASSY]
[Illustration: bird bath hanging from tree]
The beloved “furry ones” are not forgotten. Loki, who is always in a
state of violent excitement on Christmas Tree nights, has a toy animal
to make acquaintance with, tease, and finally worry. Some one ‹it must
have been Juvenal› suggested tying up nice clean bones in red ribbons;
but out of regard for Grandma’s carpet, the succulent thought has never
been “materialized.”
The Master of the House, and Juvenal, are also full of solicitude for
the feathery things in Winter. The bird-baths are carefully thawed—it
seems, by the way, to be in the coldest days of the year that they
appear to prefer to bathe; sand baths are generally found sufficient in
the Summer, one wonders why. In cold weather generally, cocoanuts filled
with fat are disposed in various parts of the garden, around which tits
and finches of every shade dispute noisily all day. But on Christmas day
the terraces, the balustrades and steps round the house are further
disfigured with such an abundance of crumbs and other tempting morsels,
that, even with the help of all the black birds from neighbouring
copses, they cannot come even with the whole of the feast.
* * * * *
We give each other enchanting presents. The lovely little carved-wood
Joan of Arc, on a bracket in Grandpa’s library; the Madonna of Cluny
“prayer-stick” in one corner of the chimney-piece; the Medici copy of
Filippino Lippi’s wonderful angel in the National Gallery, in the grey
and yellow bedroom; the cut-glass goblets painted with purple plums and
red cherries and blue grapes in the drawing-room—all these were this
year’s Christmas gifts, cunningly chosen, we think, and a constant
delight to our eyes.
* * * * *
Loki’s Grandma, after the fashion of a lady in a recent celebrated
lawsuit, likes to choose her own presents. But she is not so indelicate
as to demand money and buy it herself—No, she drops an absent hint, as
Christmastide draws near. If this is not satisfactory, she abandons
diplomacy for an engaging frankness.... But she is always overwhelmed
with surprise and delight when “the very thing she wanted” duly appears
about the Tree. The Master of the Villino, on his side, has had all the
pleasure of purchasing; and, being of a guileless nature, is often quite
persuaded that the choice was his own.
In fact we all become like children again at Christmas; and this, after
all, cannot be displeasing to the Christ Child. It is a time of hectic
preparation, of pleasurable brain-racking over the suitability of gifts;
of endless tying up of parcels for foreign and home dispatch. We
decorate the Villino with round compact Holly-wreaths, which Adam makes
with rare raste and adroitness. Never was such a year as the last for
Hollies; and some of the trees were still scarlet with them in the late
Spring.
[Sidenote: HUES OF WINTER]
As for Juvenal, he shows a recrudescence of genius in the devising of
table decoration with unthought-of evergreens; with rich-toned leaves in
the sear and the brown and purpling hues of Winter, brightened with an
astonishing variety of haws, hips, and berries.
In the little Chapel a crib is built up in a stone manger brought from
Rome. Therein lies the Italian _Bambino_, purchased two generations ago
by a dear one who has now gone from us. It is the quaintest little wax
figure imaginable, with its painted red curls and one wax foot uplifted
in the act of kicking.—The story goes that the original much venerated
image in a certain Roman church, the object of yearly pilgrimages, was
purloined, or for some reason moved to another Church, to the woe and
indignation of the faithful of the district. But on the first Christmas
night after this translation, a loud knocking was heard at the door of
the original Church, and the small figure was discovered, kicking with
all its might for re-admittance. Captured and carried in with devotion
and joy, it was re-established with much pomp in its old quarters, but
ever after remained with a little kicking leg in the air!
Our Crib, surrounded with Roman Hyacinths and White Narcissus and
Primulas, is fragrant and poetic; but we do not attempt to show anything
more than the one image. Want of space prevents it. Our ambition,
however, finds larger scope in the village Chapel. There Juvenal has
built a very noble stable, thatched with heather; and all the figures of
those first scenes of the Greatest Story in the World will take their
place this year.
Last year the tragedy happened that the St. Joseph and Our Lady; the Ox
and the Ass; the Kings and Shepherds, which had been ordered in secret
to surprise every one, remained on the high seas detained by December
gales, until too late.—But our coming Noel will be the richer for the
enforced postponement of the Holy Picture.
* * * * *
At the last Yuletide the Mistress of Villino was unable, after a long
year’s illness, to join the family party at Midnight Mass in the village
below the hill. ‹Midnight Mass, be it noted in parenthesis, has an
extraordinary charm for the household and indeed for the neighbourhood.
And, when all is said and done, it certainly is as picturesque and
touching a ceremony as ever men of goodwill are happy to join in. It
seems to bring one in direct touch with the simplicity of the shepherds
of those far-off hills.› But as the excluded _padrona_ was lying quietly
in bed waiting for the sounds of departure, she was touched and charmed
to hear the strains of a carol rising softly from the terrace beneath
her windows:
_See amid the winter’s snow,
Born for us on earth below,
See, the tender Lamb appears,
Promised from eternal years!_
_Hail, thou ever blessed morn!
Hail, Redemption’s happy dawn!
Sing, through all Jerusalem,
Christ is born in Bethlehem!_
_Lo, within a manger lies
He Who built the starry skies;
He, Who throned in heights sublime
Sits amid the Cherubim!_
All the household had gathered there to give her this pleasure and make
her feel that she was not altogether shut out from the Christmas
privileges! Wrapped in their thick cloaks, with Juvenal swinging a
lantern, they stood in a long row and chanted to her. It was one of
those small sweetnesses in life that leave a lasting memory.
* * * * *
There is a picture in a garden paper of Japanese single Asters growing
wild in grass: the seeds had been mixed by mistake, but the result,
according to the illustration, was singularly attractive. When we saw it
we said that the experiment should be made at Villino Loki!—Many indeed
are the experiments, many the improvements to be made within our small
acres.
But what a difference lies between conception and execution. Of late
‹for an instance› we had revolved round the agreeable thought of a Pool
and a wet place generally, for Iris Kæmpheri, Spiræa and other
moisture-loving darlings. We had indeed intended something altogether
choice in the shape of a large sunken basin with a piping faun on the
edge of it. Oh, something quite delightful.... But an inconvenient
attack of “conscience”—in other words the heavy memory of garden bills,
already incurred over the Autumn lists, rose up and barred the way. We
felt something like Scrooge when the ghost with the bony finger
‹horrible vision of our youth› pointed to the tomb. Only, on our tablet
what was written was the ghastly total of our bulbous liabilities! Like
Scrooge, we covered our faces with our hands. No wonder the faun took
fright and leaped into next year.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: THE TURN OF THE YEAR]
Well, now, another year has come; and it is passing, taking us upon yet
another round of garden pleasures, of old hopes and ambitions
renewed—with many new delights and new disappointments, as of old; with
also fresh openings on the bright horizon. New interests too. Of these,
some of the smaller are not the least engrossing. To Villino Loki this
year, for example, has come a new Pekinese. It is a Princess, very
small, very sleek; chestnut-hued, with a face like a pansy. She has got
a little jutting under-jaw, an extremely flat nose; and, in moments of
excitement, her eyes display an amazing amount of white rim. But they
are becoming very beautiful eyes for all that. They were the brightest
of “boot-buttons” when she came first.
[Illustration: dog]
Loki was, naturally, very angry. He did his best to kill her; which was
ungrateful, as she was really procured, at great cost and difficulty, to
be his Imperial Bride! She, on her side, liked him awfully, and told him
so. On her first motor drive down here from London, as she waggled and
smirked at him from an opposite lap, he sat on his Ma-Ma’s knee and
pulled a series of grimaces in return, the like of which you can only
find painted on Chinese screens or cast in Chinese bronze.
[Sidenote: THE NEW PEKY]
The ways of the new Peky are an endless source of amusement and joy. We
tried to call her Mimosa; but, as usual with the youngest of the family,
she remains “Baby.”
She has a coat the colour of a ripe chestnut, which will, we think,
almost rival Loki’s in luxuriance. Her eyes have the same proportion to
her face as those of a Dicky Doyle fairy. She has the oddest tastes,
loving among many other unexpected things the flavour of tobacco. If she
can get hold of a pipe or a cigarette she will sit and suck it, sniffing
with enchantment, till one would swear she was smoking.
All the dogs, of course, have their coffee after lunch and dinner in
orthodox fashion, so there is nothing astounding in her having taken to
it with gusto from the very first—but, for her, the stronger the better!
Like most Pekies, she begs and “prays” without ever having had to be
taught the art. She has furthermore a talent quite her own—that of
elaborately waltzing in front of you when she wants anything very
particularly.
One of the dearest peculiarities of the breed is, as we have said, the
rapture of their welcome on the return of any member of the family. The
Master of the House is sensitive to this attention, and is quite hurt if
he misses Loki’s clamorous greeting. The other day “the Baby” was sent
into the Hall to meet him on his home-coming. No sooner did he appear
than she solemnly began her dance and preceded him as he advanced,
conscientiously executing her finest _pas de fascination_. This consists
of leaping into the air, turning round upon herself, and coming down on
to her front paws. Little Eastern as she is, she knew no better way of
expressing her feelings towards “the Master.”
From what far ancestress, bred in the secret sinister splendours of a
Manchu Palace, did she inherit this accomplishment?
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[Illustration: WINTER]
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