unwonted earliness of green things of all kinds. One cannot help
dreading that some great check will happen later on in the year; and
yet it may be an omen for good that the birds’ full concert has only
just begun, in these dark mornings, amongst the trees of the garden.
The saying goes in Scotland, “If the birds pipe afore Christmas they’ll
greet after;” and so far as I know, not a note was sung till December
30. The birds served our Hollies a good turn at Christmas. In November
the Hollies were scarlet with berries, and one thought with a shudder
of how they would have to suffer, when the time came for Christmas
decorations; then occurred two short severe frosts, and, to my joy, the
Holly trees were swept clear of every tempting spot of scarlet before
Christmas, and thus were saved the customary reckless breaking and
tearing of branches. Dear birds! Does any one ever think, I wonder,
sitting in the summer shade near “some moist, bird-haunted English
lawn,” how dull it would be without them--how much they enhance for
us the grace and charm of the garden and the country? It is their gay
light-heartedness that is so delightful, and that we should miss so
much if they were not there. Who ever saw a grave bird?--at least
I mean a grave little one--the bigger the sadder it is, with them.
Their very labours of nest-building, and of feeding their young ones,
are done like a merry bit of child’s play! The birds’ never-failing
interest in life is like a sort of tonic to those who love them.
Michelet felt this when he called them “des êtres innocents, dont le
mouvement, les voix, et les jeux, sont comme le sourire de la Création.”
I do not remember having seen before in mid-winter a Hawthorn hedge
bursting out into leaf! At the end of last month, however, there were
strong young shoots and fully formed leaves on some of the Quicks in
a hedge planted last spring in our lane. I have known nothing like
this, except the Glastonbury Thorn. There is one of these strange
Thorns, a large tree, growing just within the park gates of Marston
Bigot, in Somersetshire. It used to bloom with great regularity in mild
winters about this time. Tufts of flowers came all over the branches,
smelling as sweet as Hawthorn in May. I have often cut a long spray
all wreathed with pearly bloom, on New Year’s Eve, in former years.
The flowers come with scarce a sign of leaf about them, and they are
rather smaller than those of the common May. The emerald green of
turf, thickly sprinkled with Daisies, seems also an unusual sight for
January. The first green glow on the grass and the first Daisy we are
surely used to hail as signs of approaching spring. On the lawn, too,
a yellow Buttercup, careless of the heavy roller, has dared to hold up
its head!
[Illustration: The BOCCAGE and Part of the FANTAISIE 1. GLORIETTA. 2
Large Elm and line of same 3 Border of Blue Gentian. 4. Pigeon House
Grass Paths & & &....]
_Jan_. 8.--The weather has been for many weeks so dark and gloomy,
that the rare sunshine which shone upon the land to-day was as welcome
and nearly as unlooked for as May flowers in January. The house stood
blocked out in sun and shadow. Magnolia Grandiflora, which covers the
south-east gable, looked grand in this flood of radiance. Standing
before it, the refrain of a wild canzonetta I once heard, chanted forth
lazily in the little sun-steeped piazza of an old Italian town, came
back to the mind’s ear--“Oh, splendid bella!” The eye, soon tired,
however, of so much dazzling brilliance in the polished foliage,
each leaf reflecting back the sun, follows the ascending lines of
beauty up above the pointed roofs, where the soft golden rust of the
topmost leaves’ inner lining meets the deep blue, cloudless sky. Next
the Magnolia, just under the painting-room window, is a Flexuosa
Honeysuckle which has not lost a leaf this winter. New shoots and
twists of brightest green, set with young leaves two and two, are
springing all over it. One tender shoot, indeed, has had the heart to
curl twice round a branch, sending out a length of spray beyond.
Hard by the Flexuosa flourished once a fine Gum Cistus. To my sorrow,
it perished in the frost of two winters back. The aroma of its gummy
foliage, under the noontide sun, would penetrate deliciously through
the open windows. We lost that winter all but one of our Gum Cistus,
and their destruction was so universal that there was a difficulty in
replacing them. I like the Gum Cistus best when growing upon the lawn.
The snow of fallen petals on the grass seems right, and gives no sense
of untidiness, there. The loss of the Cistus, however, made room for
better growth to the old Maiden’s-blush Rose in the corner, by another
window. She has hard work, anyhow, to hold her own against the flowery
smothering of an Everlasting Pea, which persists in spreading beyond
all bounds, notwithstanding the hints it yearly receives from knife
and spade. Further on, still under the south front, a white Hepatica
(Poor Johnny) is already shyly blooming. The root is sheltered by its
own undecayed leaves; other plants of the same kind being quite bare.
Hepaticas in England almost always look discontented, and this is no
marvel to any who have seen them wild in their own place. I remember
as clear as yesterday the joy of finding the blue Hepatica for the
first time. It was in a narrow lovely valley at Mentone, on a mossy
bank beside the little stony river. We were gathering Violets, which
abound in that place; but on the edge of the bank, and over its steep
side, intermingled with deep Moss and Ferns, there was another blue,
which was not the blue of Violets. It was like the surprise and
wonder of a new world thus unawares to come upon such a flower--the
beloved of childhood--in such rich profusion--a flower we had never
seen before that happy day, save in rare scanty patches, in some damp
garden border! About the same time I saw also both the pink and white
Hepaticas, from the Pine woods on the slopes of the Alpes Maritimes.
In a corner near the Hepaticas is a little patch of Violets with Bella
Donna Lilies. The Lilies are sending up strong, healthy leaves, and
that is about all they will ever do to please me. Fine, good roots were
put in six years ago in this choice south corner, where I believed they
could not but do well. But no; it is in vain I watch and hope!--not
one of those exquisite “harmonies in ink” I so long to enjoy do they
vouchsafe to give me. Possibly they may object to the society of the
Violets!
Primroses have been with us more or less since September last, and now
they are more abundant than ever--all colours--red, brown, yellow,
white, sulphur: the garden is quite full of Primroses. Roses, also,
we have scarcely been without all winter. Within the walled garden
there are real red Rosebuds, rather tightly closed up, but capable of
opening any day. Many Rose-bushes have never lost their old leaves,
and some are already putting forth new. On the top of the wall I
perceived to-day a white spot--it was a Gloire de Dijon--looking very
pale, but fully opened; and below it the Marcartney and an Apricot
Tea Rose are in bud. A space of kitchen garden wall by the north iron
gate is resplendent with Jasminum Nudiflorum, and close by, the bare
branches of a Fig tree are already pointed with green, recalling in
a dim way the Fig trees of the South, which in March glow like great
branched candlesticks lighted up with flames of golden-green, in
honour of the coming festa of spring. The Pyrus Japonica--a very old
plant--has opened two coral cups. But the gem of the whole garden just
now is a small, most delicately yet brilliantly tinted lilac Iris.[1]
The contrast between it and the rich dark green of its reed-like
leaves, amidst which the flower shines, is charming. It is only in
the mildest of winters that it ventures to appear. Last year the
date of its blooming first was February 10. There are several tufts
of foliage, but as yet only this one perfect flower, and we find
rarely more than half-a-dozen in the season. In “the land of flowers,”
however, which I believe to be its own, the paths of many a Cypress
and Ilex-shaded garden must be lined with lilac and green, at this
very time. I often think how little use is made of that most poetical
of colours, lilac--“lalock,” as our grandmothers used to pronounce
it. It was Schiller’s favourite colour; but I hardly know of any one
else particularly caring for it. Perhaps one reason may be, because it
is so hard to mix the most lovely shades of lilac in painting, or in
manufactured stuffs; and then it is so evanescent. Even Nature herself
does not make use of lilac so freely as of other colours--yellow
being, I almost think, her favourite. She has, however, hit the mark
indeed in the colouring of my lilac gem; there is a sharpness in the
flavour--so to speak--which makes it perfect. The dear little winter
Aconite--each bud of pure clean yellow surrounded with its green frill
of leaves--appears here and there among the damp dead leaves. Snowdrops
are showing daily whiter and larger above the ground, and all sorts of
green peaceful spears are piercing in their strength, up through the
black mould everywhere.
[Footnote 1: _Iris Ensata._]
We have got through some rather important work within the past three
weeks. A new Beech hedge has been planted on the open side of a green
walk or close, already hedged in on one side. I once read somewhere
of how it is reckoned good for the health to walk between Beech
hedges, the air being purified and freshened by passing through the
leaves. An old border, full of bulbs and Damask Roses, has been dug
and rearranged. The Roses, which are old plants, will be refreshed and
improved by the moving, and we shall add some day one or two York and
Lancaster Roses. In this border the Grape Hyacinths have increased so
rapidly that it is literally full of them, and we are planting them
about in different places, some under the Deodara (Morgan-le-faye) on
the lawn, with Snowdrops and Daffodils. The Deodara is in the wrong
place, and was spreading so much as to injure the effect of the Yew
hedges. So, instead of cutting it down, it is trimmed up to eight feet
or so from the grass; and for this act I have had to brave a perfect
storm of adverse criticism! In a few months I hope the stem will be
clothed with Virginia Creeper, which, when touched by Autumn’s fiery
finger, will become a pillar of flame, while wreaths of white Clematis
(Virgin’s Bower) are to light up the green in summer. Then we have been
planting out four fine tree Pæonies on the turf by the entrance drive.
In their season they will be as beautiful as great cabbage roses.
There have been two days of frost and bitter cold, and yet the
impatient flowers are not discouraged. At the further end of the broad
walk, down among the broken Fern and withered leaves, a sense of colour
is felt in the border as one passes by. Omphalodes Verna (would that
dear English names were possible!)[2] is wide awake, and little eyes
of cœrulean blue are looking upwards. The Rock Roses are full of bud,
and small variegated-leaved Periwinkles, on a low wall, already begin
to tip their hanging sprays with stars of misty grey. But the strangest
effort of all is a Foxglove spire of buds, rising well up from its
leaf-crowned root on an ancient stump of Wistaria.
[Footnote 2: Since writing this, I learn that the English name is
French Forget-me-not, and that it is a flower once beloved of Queen
Marie Antoinette.]
The mention of all these flowers would make it seem, I fear, as if our
garden were even now a sort of flowery Paradise. The truth is a sad
contrast to every such idea; for though the beautiful things are all
in truth here, it would be difficult to describe the heavy gloom and
damp of the whole place. And so one turns more often than usual to the
greenhouse for consolation. Small as ours is--only about fifteen paces
long--it is large enough for as much pleasure as I desire, under glass.
To me the open garden is daily bread, the greenhouse “the honey that
crowns the repast.” There happens at this time to be a chord of colour
there, worth noting--ivory whiteness of Roman Hyacinths, green of all
exquisite gradations, pale yellow of Meg Merrilies Chrysanthemums;
others of a warmer yellow, and pure white; fairest pink of Primulas,
and a deep purple note, struck once or twice, of Pleroma. What a flower
that is! how charming in its way of blooming sideways on its stalk, to
let the sun shine through its violet translucence!
[Illustration]
_FEBRUARY._
With the Trees of the Garden.
[Illustration]
V.
FEBRUARY.
Land of Mandragora and the Serpent Flower.
“There never was a juster debt
Than what the dry do pay for wet;
Never a debt was paid more nigh
As what the wet do pay for dry!”
_February_ 13.--If the West Country farmer’s rhyme prove true this
year, the “dry” will have a heavy debt to pay! Some of the gravel
walks in the garden are quite green, along the sides where the almost
ceaseless rain flows down. All our dressed stone--sun-dial, vases,
steps--is discoloured and green, and will all have to be scrubbed with
hot water and soap, like the rocks in the great rockery once described
in the _Gardener’s Chronicle_ (vol. xviii., p. 747). A large part of
the grounds has been under water nearly all through the winter; the
“wet,” however, in which they sometimes stand ankle deep for weeks,
seems not to do any harm to the evergreens here; whilst we get from
the floods charming landscape effects. I could almost wish the glassy
meres, with their clear reflections of tree or sky, to be permanent.
I have been looking over and making notes of our Fir trees--we have
only about a dozen or so, I am afraid! I find that Pinus Austriaca
thrives better than any other here; it is a regret to me that we did
not plant numbers more of them, instead of wasting years in trying to
make Scotch Fir succeed. Spruce never seems to do well in this part
of the country; we have two or three old Spruce Firs which are mere
poles, and some much younger, which must be cut down to relieve our
eyes from that garden misery, a sickly tree. Only in the “Fantaisie”
are our Spruce Firs successful, and there, from overcrowding--for there
are at least ten--they are well-nigh spoilt. This little spot has
proved good for them, I imagine, because it was new ground, taken in
from old unbroken pasture and well trenched. One or two others, full
and healthy, of a few years’ growth, suddenly went off last summer; it
was as if a blighting wind had scorched their branches, or lightning
had seared them. I know no successful Spruce plantations anywhere in
the neighbourhood. The soil is gravelly, with chalk and flint; and
sometimes trees seem to strike their roots down into a subsoil--perhaps
an intermittent layer of greensand--and then they go off. But this can
scarcely be the only cause that so fatally affects our Firs. About
120 miles down west, there is a group of extremely fine Spruce Firs
that I have known for the last thirty years, and when I visited them
last year I found they had all gone off in the same way as ours here.
Excelsa Grandis flourishes equally with Pinus Austriaca. One fine
young plant in the “Fantaisie” was, as one says, “quite a picture”
in the summer for the perfect symmetry of its form, and on the two
topmost laterals were just two beautifully shaped upright green cones,
crested with amber-coloured gum! I rejoiced in this young tree during
all the season, but there is a fear since then that it may suffer
in its growth from the premature effort. The Balm of Gilead Firs, a
few of which we put in along one side of the turf walk, have failed
entirely. I meant each to become a little rounded beauty, like that one
planted by my father, which I remember long years since as a wonder of
aromatic greenery; but these are grey and stunted, and they all wear
such a look of age and decay as I fear we cannot long endure to see.
The crisp leaves, however, are as sweet when crumpled in the hand as
they ought to be. With two or three of these piteous little trees, the
branches show, without losing stiffness, a certain tendency to droop or
turn downwards at the extremities. It is rather curious, this droop,
affected by a few individuals in a Fir plantation! For they do not
begin life with that intention; the young tree may be just like any
other for years, when suddenly one branch will be observed turned down,
then another and another, till finally the whole thing is decided, and
the tree becomes a “weeper,” as some call them. In a large plantation
in Aberdeenshire, some years since, I knew one young Silver Fir out
of all the others that grew itself into a drooping form, so that it
seemed at last to draw down its branches close together as one would
draw a cloak around one in the cold. It was then ten or twelve feet
high, and now it must indeed be a remarkable object if it has grown
and drooped at the same rate. Our Douglas Fir (Sir Bedivere) has known
this temptation to droop, but evidently the feeling of the mass of his
branches is dead against the idea, and it will come to nothing.
[Illustration: _Fair Maids of February._]
This accident or sport is common in other trees all over the world, I
suppose, and one of the most ancient nomadic patterns of Persian rugs
depicts, on either side the Tree of Life, the columnar Cypress and the
drooping Cypress, beside a little tomb.
In various odd nooks and corners of the garden, I know where to find a
few little old Cephalonian Pines, all that remain out of a number we
once had. They are only about 4 or 5 feet high, yet they were grown
from seed over a quarter of a century ago. Like poor old useless
retainers, they have followed the fortunes of the family, and we have
become attached to one another. One amongst the original number became
a fine specimen--and perished. The rest have never had a chance of
growing up, for every spring their new buds are nipped, so they remain
still the same, with a sort of look of old-young trees. I am especially
interested in the welfare of one of the Cephalonians, who lives in an
English Yew. Those two are certainly bosom friends! The Yew itself
was only half a tree, spared, out of charity, on what seemed a bare
chance of surviving. The Cephalonian stood near and shivered, and lost
its buds every spring, while the Yew crept nearer and nearer, till at
last its thick dark foliage reached the little Pine, and so grew on;
and now the Yew fairly holds it within its warm, comfortable embrace.
Some say, “What a mistake to leave them thus!” I say, “They shall not
be parted;” so the two remain together, and grow quite happily in
each other’s arms. Oddly enough, the Pine seems to be assimilating
itself in colour, and partly in form, with the Yew, so that it is not
easy to distinguish them. But if the Cephalonian at last out-tops its
benefactor, what will happen then? At times the space of ground over
which we reign seems to be very much too small; and I incline to envy
the possession of land, with room enough to plant; for there can be
no more engrossing interest of its kind than to watch the growth of
trees, their manners and customs. I would plant at once acres of Ilex
Oak. What shelter they would make! And in a congenial soil they would
not be too slow of growth. There should be broad bands of Beech and
Oak, and long groves of Larch, delicious in spring for the fragrance of
their green and pink-tipped tassels. And there should be plantations of
Fir--Scotch Fir, for the delight of their healthy blue-green in youth,
and for the glory of their great red stems in age; and Spruce Fir, with
all their charm of deep mosses underneath, and the loveliness in spring
of starry Winter-green (_Trientalis Europæ_) and “the rathe Primrose;”
and for the music of the winds among their branches, and the velvet
darkness of their colour under summer skies. (_Mem._--The Winter-green
would have to be sent us from the North.)
Our great work of last month has been an alteration at the east end of
the garden. A Quickset hedge, forty or fifty years old, is moved back,
so as to take in from “the park” a bit of waste ground; the gravel
path that ran under the hedge is widened, and a block of Laurels cut
through. By this means a turf way, leading north and south, is made to
enter the improved walk, whose chief attraction is the border of old
damask Roses. Plum trees and Pears stand along the border amongst the
Roses, and a large perennial yellow Lupin, in which thrushes have been
known to make their nests. In the middle of the hedge grew a fine young
Elder. I had long promised that Elder it should never be cut down, so
when the Hawthorns were removed the tree remained, arching across the
path to meet a Plum tree on the other side. An Elder in full bloom is
such a beautiful thing that it is painful to feel obliged to destroy
it; but Elders have such an unfortunate knack of appearing where they
are not wanted! The birds sow Elder seeds in the clefts of trees, in
chinks of walls, flower borders--all sorts of inconvenient places--now
that the berries are no longer requisitioned to make Elder wine. In
old-fashioned days it was worth having a cold, to enjoy a night-cap of
Elder wine from the saucepan on the hob! So this one tree is preserved
in honour, as compensation for those others which are no more. I am not
in the least superstitious, but it _is_ rather uncanny to cut down an
old Elder! Eldritch legends and spells have clung to the tree in days
of yore, and have even come down to our own times. I used to listen at
my mother’s knee, and beg again and again for the story of the fairy
changeling. The interest of the story never failed, and the rhyme never
tired, about the enchanted hare, who ran--
“Runie and runie the Eildon tree,
And seven times runie the Eildon tree.”
According to custom, I was rather on the look-out for treasures when
the old hedge was dug up, but nothing appeared excepting a huge
yellow bone and a gigantic root of White Briony. The uncouth thing
bore a strange resemblance to some organized being with arms and
legs--something like an octopus in full swim, only twenty times as big,
and yet also with a sort of human aspect! I was told it was a Mandrake
(though it did not shriek on being pulled up), and so I desired it
should be carefully buried, in order that the household might not be
disturbed by its groans at night. In India the sounds emitted by a
Mandrake in the dark night are said to be sometimes heartrending. And
so the witch, in the _Masque of Queens_--
“I last night lay all alone
O’ the ground to heare the mandrake grone.”
I wonder if White Briony is really the true Mandrake, about which there
must seriously be something mysterious. I find in the dictionary,
“Mandragora (Mandrake), a powerful soporific. Mandrage, a plant said
to be so called because it points out that a cave is near.” I know no
more, besides the wild traditions, and this vision the other day, in
the twilight, of a white misshapen figure lying on the earth. There
are, however, few things more exquisitely graceful than the Black and
White Brionies. Black Briony is rare in our part of Buckinghamshire.
In this garden three White Brionies have leave to dwell. All winter,
the mystic root lies hidden, awaiting the appointed time. On a day in
spring or early summer, suddenly up-springs a group of delicate pale
green stalks, and they, as soon as they have seen the sun in heaven,
delay not to put forth all the strength stored under the earth in the
big ugly root; and before many days the green stalks have grown into
a beautiful leafy plant, mantling over whatever is nearest of tree or
bush, with leaves of most fanciful cut, and a thousand ringlets of
circling, sensitive tendrils. By-and-by there will be a whole firmament
of little star-like flowers, greenish-white in colour--all either male
or female, according to the plant. In October an unhappy collapse sets
in. Life ebbs fast from the flaccid stalks and tendrils, dying away,
sinking down, down into the buried root, till nothing remains but a dry
colourless shroud, clinging close over the supporting shrub, which
scarce can breathe, till a friendly hand in due course clears the whole
thing off.