the entrance-drive begins to scent the air. We do not make enough of
such a treasure as Sweet Briar is. Some day we must plant some near
the windows, for pleasant perfume after rain. It is a favourite idea,
too obscure to be a doctrine or even a theory, that the sweet smells
of flowers, and aromatic leaves, and all kinds of green things have
a certain virtue for different conditions of health. Here are a few
examples, and I am afraid I do not know many more: To smell wild
Thyme will renew the spirits and vital energy in long walks under
an August sun. The pure, almost pungent scent of Tea Rose Maréchal
Niel is sometimes invigorating in any lowness of mind or body. Sweet
Briar promotes cheerfulness. Yellow Bedstraw (_Galium verum_),
Cowslip, Wallflower, Damask and pink China Roses, Plum blossom, and
notably Sweet Gale or Bog Myrtle, and wild white Honeysuckle refresh
the spirits; while the smell of ground Ivy, Charlock, Woodruff,
Rosemary, and fresh-cut grass seems to be a refreshment to the body.
Hawthorn is very doubtful, and Lime blossom is dreamy. These scents
are “transparent,” and are also, except the two first, more or less
uncertain, to be caught on the wing, as it were. The more positive and
“opaque” scents, such as those of the Gardenia, Lilies, Narcissus,
Jonquil, etc., seem less potent for the spirits than for the body. The
subject is full of indistinctness, since that which is life to one
may be death to many. I have known an instance of even white Sweet
Peas and white Pink being unendurable, and yet both are what I call
“transparent.” There may also be a system of mixed flowers. Small
scarlet Nasturtium and lemon-scented Pelargonium are good together,
and seem to have a pleasant effect on the mind, and as the venerable
Parkinson says, they “make a delicate Tussimussie, or Nosegay, both for
sight and scent.” The large Italian white Jasmine, mixed with Marie
Louise Violets, is comforting. Altogether I think the idea may be
something more than a mere fantastic whim.[3]
[Footnote 3: Nearly twelve months after writing thus about healthful
Flower-scents, I found in Austen’s “Treatise of Fruit-trees,” 1657, a
curious confirmation of my idea, which appears, indeed, to be an old
one. He writes, “Health is preserved by pleasant and wholesome Odors,
and perfumes found in the garden of Fruit-trees,... from the blossomes
of _all the Fruit-trees_,... which are not simply Healthfull, but
are accompted cordiall; chearing and refreshing the heart and vitall
spirits.”--_Note, April, 1884._]
_April 17._--This morning, before 8 o’clock, the whole garden felt like
spring. The turf was brightly green and shining with dew, and birds,
and grass, and flowers were unconsciously at ease and happy for the
moment under the warm sunlight. The unwonted warmth made a robin so
bold and confident, that he flew up against me in the most playful way,
and then perched on a young Beech, flapping his little wings with a
merry twinkle in his eye. All about and in and out the Stone Pine, to
them one huge world of insect life, flitted a pair of golden crested
wrens, as busy as possible, the flutter of their tiny wings making
just as much sound as might two butterflies. The sun glanced now and
then, for a moment, on the cock-bird’s golden streak, the hen held a
filmy white insect of some kind in her bill, and would on no account
show the way to her nest, so long as she was watched. It was unkind, I
fear, to tease so minute a creature, and I soon went another way; and
then both wrens made a little rush into the brambly ivy-smothered trunk
of the tree. We refrain from too curiously searching for the nest,
though I think the young family would be worth seeing! In the morning
light a host of single Daffodils shone like pale gold; double white
Wind-flowers have begun to bloom (there grows a yellow wild one[4] not
far from us, but I have only seen it after it had been transplanted
into a garden), and many kinds of Narcissus. The Pasque-flower has been
put out of its reckoning by the unusually early Easter; it is only just
in bud. The grass walk in the Fantaisie was too heavy with dew to be
pleasant, so I only looked across the gate at the Narcissus and flaming
star Anemones. In the clear sunlight, lilac patches of Aubrietia, side
by side with clean white Arabis, seem doubly charming.
[Footnote 4: Anemone Ranunculoides is alluded to. The gardener of the
garden where I saw it assured me it grew wild in a little wood close
by, but I did not myself see it wild.]
How eagerly one seizes all possible points of beauty in such a severe
trying season! I never before remember our having to water the garden
in April; it has been, however, quite necessary, for as yet only two
slight April showers have fallen, and the clumps of Narcissus Poeticus
were failing. Tulips are flowering with stalks barely one inch long,
and Crown Imperials half miss their usual “stately beautifulness.” One
day of soft warm rain would set all right, and give us an almost Roman
spring, so suddenly would the garden become clothed in bloom, and the
leaves burst out upon the trees. King-cups begin to glass themselves
in our narrow watercourse, and reeds to thicken greenly along the
brink. The long line of Primroses along the _Allée Verte_ is a sad
failure. As soon as the flowers open they are beheaded by those cruel
chaffinches. This is how the little painted traitors behave all the
while they are supposed to be gaily building their dainty nests! Such
wholesale execution is, I believe, the result of this very dry weather.
They cut off the flowers to get at the small drop of moisture or honey
in the calyx. I forgive the chaffinches without any difficulty, only
wishing that other people could be as easily pardoned; but when the
rooks are poisoned and our new hopes of a rookery nearly frustrated, it
is hard to be very forgiving! Some short-sighted farmer has done this
cruel deed. The poor rooks dropped on our own land on the grass under
their nests. Several of their young must have perished miserably, and
the deserted nests look very sad. Still we think enough young remain
to save the rookery. The Florentine yellow Tulips are in bloom. How
far more lovely to the unhorticultural eye are these wild kinds, with
their graceful bending stalks, than those the Tulip’s cultivation
has so well succeeded in stiffening--with all their grand colour! On
the 7th appeared, as I knew she would sooner or later, the little
“Vedova” Iris of Florence. Under the south wall, where we did not think
to seek, there she was, for the first time after these eight years’
seclusion. And still she wears her weeds of green and black. The roots
have increased and thrown up quantities of leaves. These leaves are not
rounded like those of the Spanish Iris and other long narrow kinds;
they are four-sided, with sharp angles, very strong, and have a sharp
point at the end.
[Illustration]
_MAY._
“Pale crocuses have come before her;
Wild birds her welcome sing;
Ten thousand loving hearts adore her,
The grey world’s darling, Spring.”
W. M. ELTON.
[Illustration]
VIII.
MAY.
Of Cherry Blossoms--the Nightingale’s “Melodious Noise”--Of Broken
Stones, etc., etc., etc.
_May_ 6.--The month of May would be Heaven upon earth if only it came
in August or September, when summer mostly begins! but such cold,
hard weather as we have had spoils sadly our enjoyment of the blossom
trees and all the pleasures of spring. There have been just one or two
sweet days, when the white Cherry orchards shone softly against a sky
of serenest blue; days when we did but revel in the joyous present,
forgetting quite that ever it could be that “rough winds do shake the
darling buds of May.” Alas! all too soon our dream is dispelled; dark
clouds arise, and we see “Heaven’s gold complexion dimmed,” and the
orchard grass strewn with pearly wreck. The Cherry tree’s magic season
is at an end; it seemed to last scarcely longer than a day. With the
first hot shafts of April’s sun it startles into bloom, shaken out in
snow-wreaths all over the tree, a waste of most lavish loveliness. It
is something gained, once in the twelvemonth’s round of commonplace,
if only for a moment to stand beside a Cherry tree in blossom. The
blue sky looks infinitely far off, seen through such a maze of flowery
myriads. And now Apple blossoms are coming on in rosy swift succession.
How beautiful they are! and is it not time that water-colour artists
should cease to weary, by attempting so vainly to pourtray them? (This
only by the way.) They have the merit of lasting just long enough for
us to enjoy them well; yet beautiful as they are, I do not know if
they can ever quite compare with the frail short-lived cherry. If the
Espaliers in the kitchen garden alongside the middle walk would but
flower together all at once, that walk in May would be better than any
picture-gallery. But our gallery walls perversely decorate themselves
only a little bit at a time. One bit, at a corner of the cross-walks,
is now in full perfection. A faint delicious perfume steals out through
the iron gate to the flower-garden, inviting as one passes by, to turn
and peep within. There are the trained leafless branches covered thick
with knots of flower. They open very deliberately, and there abide
for a little happy while, self-conscious, round, and pink, and firm;
then there comes a setting of delicate green around the flowers; and
then the Apple tree in bloom is one of earth’s loveliest sights. Apple
blossom must be added to my pharmacopœia of sweet smells. To inhale
a cluster of Blenheim Orange gives back youth for just half a minute
after. It is not merely that with the perfume the heart goes back to
remembered times--it is a real, absolute elixir! Our young Siberian
Crab trees are like great white bouquets; and behind the pigeon-house
there is a wonder of Japanese Apple (_Pyrus malus floribunda_). It is
like a fountain of flowers, tossing its pink flower-laden branches in
every direction. Blue Periwinkles creep over the ground underneath
it. In the autumn I shall hope to plant several more of these lovely
trees somewhere on the lawn, where we may see and enjoy them from the
windows. And now the Primrose--
“Lady of the springe,
The lovely flower that first doth show her face;
Whose worthy prayse the pretty byrds do syng,
Whose presence sweet the wynter’s colde doth chase,”
has ceased to glad us “with worldes of new delightes.” She is on the
wane, “with her bells dim”--as old Ben Jonson said; but I should not
call them bells. She dies upon a bed of vivid green amidst tall grasses
and her own thick-coming leaves, as stars grow pale before the dawn.
And we are faithless to her beauty in the presence of other, fresher
loveliness; and we care not though the Primrose is dead.
The Tulips in the parterr--it is the older and prettier way to spell
it without an “e” at the end--are now the chief ornament of the garden
and the delight of my eyes. Timely rains strengthened the stalks to
rise to their full height, and there are the beds now, a blaze of
scarlet and yellow splendour. There are tall Tulips and short Tulips,
rose and crimson, scarlet and orange Tulips, striped and dashed, and
brown and white, and every shade of Tulip colour. A few grow between
little box and golden Arbor Vitæ bushes, and all the beds are deeply
fringed with Crocus leaves. I am aware that as a matter of the highest
principle, Tulips are seldom mixed; the colours are usually arranged
separately. Long experience has taught me, however, to have nothing
to do with principles--in the garden. Little else than a feeling
of entire sympathy with the diverse characters of your plants and
flowers is needed for “art in the garden.” If sympathy be there, all
the rest comes naturally enough. No brighter, gayer garden scene can
be imagined than on a sunny morning, turning the corner of a clipped
Yew--buttressed out from the house--to come upon the parterr, decked
in all its gay brilliancy of Tulips. The sculptured stone pillar rises
from a little mound of Stonecrop in the centre, often with a pigeon
or a thrush pluming itself on the top. Suddenly the little flock of
fantail pigeons with whistling wings descend among the many-coloured
brilliants, and there, in the emerald, dewy interspaces, they strut
and play in their pride and purity of whiteness. My favourite Parrot
Tulips do not as yet make much way; the lack of sunshine keeps their
buds green. It was in Venice, years ago, that first I fell in love
with Tulips such as these. On the marble altars of one of the great
Jesuit churches were vases filled with Parrot Tulips, all cut-edged
and gold and scarlet-splashed. The cloister garden behind the church
was full of them. It is a strange disorderly beauty, and sometimes
draggles and hangs its untidy head like a Bell-flower, and sometimes
flaunts it up full in the sun’s face. There are Forget-me-nots in many
parts of the garden; their long smoke-like lines of turquoise are
specially pleasing. Two square beds in the entrance court, set between
the black Yews, are also a success--Forget-me-not, flecked with pink
Saponaria--they give the idea of blue mist touched by the sunset. In
the Fantaisie, bushes of orange-coloured Berberis Darwinii are in
great perfection of bloom. There is something peculiarly delightful in
the way they have of spreading the earth with orange, while yet the
laden boughs above own no apparent loss. The orange colour contrasts
well also with a chance lot of purple Honesty, which has grouped itself
round a smooth-stemmed young Mulberry at the end of the turf walk.
The walk itself is very bright, with an irregular bordering of white
and pink Phlox Nelsoni--a Cheiranthus, or a deep blue Gentian, here
and there. The little low-growing Phlox comes in exquisite patches of
colour all over the garden. When in flower, the plant itself--which
is straggling and rather ugly--is completely hid by a flat mass of
close-set bloom. In these “gardens on a level” I am always wishing for
rockeries and little low terraces, which should be all draped with
Convolvulus Mauristiana, Phlox Nelsoni, Aubretia, and wild Ivy and
Alyssum, or something yellow. I should not much care for many rare
Alpine plants, I think; though a surprise of the kind here and there
would be charming. Colour I must have, and plenty of it, to rejoice
the eye and make glad the heart.
A tract of wild, savage scenery, six square yards in extent, is in
contemplation at the afforested end of the Fantaisie. Already one or
two large pieces of a sort of conglomerate have been conveyed here,
and are frowning in an open space amongst the wild Bluebells. There is
a background of dark Arbor Vitæ, and beyond, the pleasant fields are
seen, with the cows and Elms and an Oak tree. There exists a certain
necessity for feature in this flattest of all places! The Yew hedges
and pyramids have done much to give character to the flower garden, and
now there must be rocks for variety.
A heap of fragments of an old headless statue lies near the rocky
waste; part of a sitting figure--a hand and a foot--and lumps of
heavy drapery, overlaid in beautiful green velvet of moss. Very
forlorn the broken stones look, and I cannot decide to make them
into rockwork. None now know whom the statue in its day was meant to
represent--probably a garden goddess, Flora or Pomona--but its history
is rather quaint, if not touching. It was beloved by a lady who lived
here once, and hated by her sister, and according as each for the time
reigned in the other’s absence, it was set up in a niche of the garden
wall, or cast down with ignominy. At last the sister who loved the
statue died, and then it was broken to pieces, and flung down a well.
It was fished up again long after, before our time. Tradition tells of
another statue, an image of Old Time, that stood or sat at one end of
the pond in “the park,” but of this there remains no trace.
I am happy in the possession of two long-desired flowers, which seem
now to be settling down in their new abode. One is the pale-blue Star
Anemone Apennina, common in the Ilex woods of Frascati; the other, the
lovely purplish-brown Fritillary (_Meleagris_), found wild in river
meadows near us. Fritillary is no easy word for poetry, yet it is named
by at least one poet. Matthew Arnold, in his “Thyrsis,” says--
“I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields.”
I think no other flower of any kind can compare with it in finish and
exquisite grace of form. The purplish, dove-like colour I believe to be
the same described in old French as “colombette.”
_May_ 15.--To-day, amid the brilliant green of new leaves and the
singing and twittering of a thousand birds in the sun’s warm glow, one
keeps saying to oneself--
“Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king,”
or some such old snatch of songs that seem to wander upon the soft
sweet air. Ah, yes, “the year’s pleasant king”! and yet our spring is a
beautiful spirit, and she has been hovering about us; but now, to-day,
she has set her feet upon the earth, and there is a great triumph of
verdure on the trees and on the grass; and Apple trees meet her in
fulness of bloom, and May-buds are swelling on the Thorns to make up
for lost time; and all the edges of meadow-grass are jewelled with
little gems of purple, and blue, and red, and the broad fields shine in
silver and gold.
The short reign of Narcissus Poeticus has begun; our large old clumps
down one side of the Broad Walk are not so fine as usual; frosts and
cold heavy rains laid the leaves of some of them, and sometimes turned
them yellow; but within the walled garden the clumps are as beautiful
as ever--throngs of long-stalked silvery flowers, stiff and firm,
with the stiffness and strength of perfect health. Narcissus Poeticus
is lovely; and we need not trouble to know if it be the very flower
named by Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid. The east border, though not
much varied as yet, is gay and full of promise. There are double pale
yellow Ranunculus (the Swiss meadow kind), and bunches of Heartsease,
violet and brown Auriculas, sheets of double white Anemones, and the
Riviera double scarlet--which, however, never with us comes scarlet,
but only dull red; Tulips, Stonecrops, Kingspear, Phlox Nelsoni,
double King’s-cups, and Bachelors’ Buttons, a patch of Gentians at
the south angle of the wall, with yellow Corydalis Lutea peering out
of chinks in the old bricks above. Crowds of Lilies are springing up
in the background, with purple Iris and Pæonies in bud. Solomon’s
Seal (Lady’s Signet) in many nooks and corners unfolds its curious
club-shaped leaf-buds, and all its bells will soon be hung. Pansies,
under the south wall, make a bright display; there are three large
oblong beds--lilac, yellow, and deep royal purple; also a round bed of
semi-double Anemones, whose scarlet colour, about mid-day, is actually
dazzling; and one of Ranunculus not yet opened. Behind these beds,
against the wall, are white Irises, almost ready to bloom, and several
clusters of the garden Star of Bethlehem--valuable in its way, but not
nearly so pretty as the wild sort, and most precise in its daily system
of early closing and late opening.
Between the tennis-court and the little lawn belonging to the Firs and
Cedar, the walk winds along beside a close of chosen trees--Plane,
Silver Birch, pink Thorns, variegated Maple, etc., all in their
pleasant time of youth, having been planted only a little over eleven
years. Portugal Laurel and Box mingle with them in deeper shades. Next
the walk are Sweet Briar and well-berried Aucubas; one Aucuba is still
covered with scarlet fruit and golden leaves. There is yellow Spanish
Broom, and tall trees of white Broom wave long white plumes, leaning
over the path. White Broom, they say, is “the Juniper tree” that Elijah
sat down under. If so, the shade must have been but scanty! Soon the
path turns past a Yew-tree, and becomes the Primrose Walk, along under
the line of Elms.
On the left are the _Allée Verte_, and the dovecote, and small orchard,
bounded by Beech and Yew, and crossed by flower-bordered smooth-shaven
grassy ways, all leading to the Broad Walk; on the right a little
hidden path passes on to the oft-named Fantaisie. Just before coming
to the Yew tree, on warm days ever since the beginning of the month,
one is met and surrounded by a wonderful cloud of fragrance! One looks
round in vain for some bed of flowers whence should proceed so powerful
a scent. It is like the finest Jasmine and Citron, and I know not what
of sweetest unknown incense. It is the greeting sent out from a dense
mass of Spurge Laurel (_Daphne pontifia_), with unobtrusive green
flowers in full bloom. It grows over a bit of the Iris bank, and its
great luxuriance proves how it loves a southern aspect.
In our garden the birds have divided the kingdom amongst them, and
in this half is the portion that fell to the reed sparrow. He keeps
the Silver Birch alive with his busy note. Landmarks, known only to
themselves, divide the territory of the reed sparrow from the realm
of the nightingale. The fiery-hearted nightingale! He sings all day,
and his song makes the night glorious. The north-east region of the
garden he keeps for himself alone. There, on still evenings, long after
sunset, is heard the faint barking of distant watch-dogs, or the sound
of horses’ hoofs on the road. There is his favourite tree--the grand
old Thorn--where, as he sings, he may press a thousand thorns into his
breast! There, across the hedge, he sees the meadow with a shimmering
yellow of Cowslips all over it--if Cowslips be his desire, as is said.
There, not too far off, is the straight long railroad--and he loves the
thunder of the train, and the red, fire-spitting engine; but late in
the night, when there is dark and death-like silence among the trees,
then the nightingale claims possession of the whole, and all the garden
is his own. I know not if the nightingale’s song be melancholy or
joyous. His voice has all the pathos of the finest things, and in the
broken notes we feel that not all nor half his soul is uttered, and in
each splendid fragment there is the sense of endless possibilities;
this, I think, is the secret of the nightingale’s incomparable charm.
I have omitted to mention amongst our Pansies, a very choice kind.
It is a curious burnt-brown colour, like the once fashionable “Paris
brûlé.” We name it Highcliff, after the place from whence we had
it first. Two large pink Oleanders in the greenhouse will soon be
blossoming all over. We tried them last year in the open air, but they
did not do, and had to return to their glass. A lovely face gazes at me
all the time I write, and will not suffer itself to be neglected! It is
a choice white Cactus of great size, with warm lemon colouring in the
outer leaves. The stamens are so delicately set, they tremble at the
slightest touch, and the starry pointal is itself a flower!
[Illustration]
_JUNE._
A Mosaic of Nectared Sweets.
[Illustration]
IX.
JUNE.
Of Pink May--Swallows in the Porch--Flowers de Luce--Poppies--A Little
Scotch Rose, and “Clutie.”