FOR a couple of days the sun was radiant, and the air actually warm. We
agreed with each other that Italy and the South of France weren’t in it.
We started gardening with all the zest of backwoods-women, who know
that the only vegetables they can hope for are those they themselves
grow. Unlike the majority of Londoners, the War had not added much to
our knowledge in this direction. I had not owned a house in the country
many months before I learnt the value of first-hand home production.
Hence, when the allotment fever set in, we were quite able to keep pace
with the rest of the world despite our failing intellects. The only
thing that differentiated us from the remainder of our fellow-citizens
in the Metropolis, was the fact that we appeared to be the only ones
who did not feel themselves competent to bestow unlimited information
and advice, in season and out of season, to all and sundry, on every
imaginable and unimaginable point connected with the raising of food
crops.
One of the many reasons for the charm that envelops our life at the
hillside cottage lies in the fact that it brings us much closer to
the fundamental principle of keeping alive than is ever possible in
town with its over-civilization. Of course, it isn’t desirable that our
mental and spiritual interests should centre in the question of what we
shall eat and what we shall drink, and wherewithal shall we keep warm
and comfortable, but I think a woman suffers a distinct loss when she
eliminates these matters entirely from her horizon.
I know, from personal experience, that there comes a period in our
lives when we women feel that there are much higher enterprises
beckoning us, that we (individually, not collectively) are called to
do some work in the world that is far greater than seeing to meals,
and keeping the household machinery moving unobtrusively and with
regularity; but it is fortunate that there eventually returns to us (if
we are properly balanced) a realization that some of our very best work
can be put into the making of a home, and that far from it being narrow
and sordid and selfish to devote a large part of ourselves to household
administration, it is in reality one of the widest spheres that a woman
can choose, and one that will give her the biggest scope for bringing
happiness and strength and health to others—and, after all, isn’t that
the avowed aim of the most advanced of modern feminists?
Still, I admit that our cramped surroundings and jaded, strained
existence in cities do not always make a round of domestic duties
seem alluring to the woman who has to cram her belongings and her
aspirations into a small modern flat, or who has to do her cooking
in one of the unhealthy, sunless basements that prevail in the older
houses in towns. A woman needs fresh air, sunshine and a garden if the
best is to be brought out of her. Oh, yes, I know some few women have
done great things without one or another of these items—but probably
they would have done still more if they had had the opportunity to come
to their full development under more favourable circumstances.
I’m not surprised that women, whose existence is limited by the narrow
environment of towns, so continually beat the air with a longing to
do something more than seems possible in the flat or dull suburban
villa. Civilization has taken out of their hands so many of the useful
occupations that formerly kept women busy—and worthily busy too; and
it is not to be wondered at that they cry out for something to do, and
invent Causes on which to expend their zeal and energy. The preparation
of food, the laundry work, and indeed most household duties are now
done for us in cities on the “penny-in-the-slot” principle (only we
have to put a shilling in the slot, as a rule, for the pennyworth of
result that we receive); and it is small wonder that so few of us can
work up any interest in the process.
But how are matters to be altered? you ask me. I don’t know! Pray don’t
think I’m proposing to find solutions for grave problems in these
stories! I’m only giving you a record of facts, just simple everyday
little happenings “of no value to anyone save the owner.” And we’ll
leave it at that, if you don’t mind, and return to the garden.
* * * * *
Before the War labour was not so scarce, and there was no need for us
to plant the vegetables ourselves, unless we desired to do so. Now,
however, one’s own personal work was a valuable asset, and we put our
backs into it—at least Ursula and I did; Virginia was engaged most of
the time in describing the sort of tools she would make, if she were
in that line of business, to obviate the grave spinal trouble she was
certain she was developing.
I don’t mean to imply that Virginia isn’t a good gardener; she can
be an excellent one when she likes, for she knows what gardening
really stands for in the way of hard work. Whereas some of my
would-be assistant gardeners seem to think the chief requisites are a
comfortable hammock and a book; or, at most, a “picture” muslin frock
and a pretty basket and a pair of baby scissors. Such girls remind me
of many who write and inquire if I have a vacancy for a sub-editor in
my office, the chief qualification stated in their letters being that
they “do so love to browse among books.”
Virginia isn’t like that; she puts on a business-like garb, and
knows—and annexes—a good tool when she sees it. But it is her bright
ideas that are the hindrance to progress. She wasted ten minutes that
morning explaining to me that she was sure, if I would only have
turnips planted in the mint bed, it would be another war economy, as
the mint flavour might permeate the turnips, and thus save double
expense with lamb.
And then another ten minutes went in enlarging on the grasping nature
of the makers of gardening gloves in not supplying four pairs of extra
thumbs with each pair, since any intelligent gardener could wear out
eight thumbs with one pair in the simplest day’s gardening. She offered
to let me use the idea free of charge in my magazine, if I would
undertake to keep her supplied with gardening gloves for the rest of
her natural life; but she stipulated that they must be proper leather
ones, not the four-and-sixpenny war variety she was then wearing,
composed of unbleached calico, with merely a chamois postage-stamp
stuck on the front of each finger and thumb.
In the intervals of conversation she aided us with our digging, yet, in
spite of the National Call to spend as much on seed potatoes as would
keep the family in vegetables for a couple of years, we continually
found ourselves drifting away from the ground we were trenching, for
the violets were already out, also some early primroses, and little
white stars were showing on the wild strawberry trails in sheltered
corners under walls that faced south.
And the garden is full of sheltered nooks, despite its being so high
up. As the ground slopes towards the south, every wall that props up
the garden—and there are so many, like giant steps down the steep
hillside—gives protection from the cold winds to the little growing
things that nestle in every crevice and on the ground below. Everywhere
the pennywort was sending out clear green disks from the mysterious
depths of crannies in the wall. Crocuses were showing orange buds in
the garden beds. One precocious pansy held up a white flower, streaked
and splashed with purple.
“Spring has really come,” we all chorused. And oh, how good it seemed
to be done with the winter; such a winter too! Surely the longest and
most awful winter humanity has ever known!
With spring and summer immediately before us, as it seemed, we decided
to leave the trenching just for that day, and explore the lanes and
woods. The lichens and mosses were at the height of their beauty—a
beauty that would fade once the sun got any power. The wall-stones
were splashed with browns and greys, rust-colour and orange, black and
olive, and one particular lichen that is our especial joy tints the
stone a milky pea-green shade that is unlike any other colour I can
recall.
Last year’s bramble leaves were purple and scarlet and crimson and
yellow. Where the small ivy creeping up the walls had been touched
by the frost, it had turned a vivid yellow mottled with warm brown
and crimson. And it is surprising, once you take note of it, how much
crimson is used by Nature where you would expect to find only green;
and not merely a dull red, it is a brilliant, vivid carmine that is
dropped about in quiet, unsuspected places, lighting up dark patches,
emphasizing sombre details that one might otherwise overlook.
We were turning over a handful of brown leaves under an oak tree in
the wood; there we found the streak of crimson showing inside an acorn
that had just burst to let out a young shoot that was seeking about
for roothold below and light up above. Not only one, but hundreds of
similar brilliant touches were scattered about where the fertile acorns
lay among the moss and last year’s fern.
In one secluded spot, where the cold had not been severe enough to
wither last year’s foliage on the undergrowth, long sprays of ground
ivy, climbing over a fallen branch, had turned to deep wine colour,
stems and all, and lay, as Eileen said, “beautiful enough for one of
them lovely wreaths of leaves they put round best hats.” Certainly it
looked more artificial than natural, if one didn’t happen to know that
ground ivy often takes on this tint in its declining days.
Thanks to Tennyson, we all know that rosy plumelets tuft the larch; but
it doesn’t matter how many times you see them, they are always worth
looking at—and marvelling at—again.
And there seems no limit to the crimson splashes. Is there anything
anywhere that can compare with the Herb Robert, its leaves far more
radiant than its blossoms; or the leaves of the evening primrose when
they start to fade at the bottom of the stem; or the waning foliage of
the sorrel?
To make a list of the crimson touches (as distinct from the
reddish-brown) that one finds on stems and foliage any day in the
country, would be a revelation to most of us.
* * * * *
Though the sun had been so bright when we started, it doesn’t do to
trust too much in an English spring, and we presently noticed a very
decided change; the temperature dropped with great rapidity, as clouds
came up and hid the sun, and the hills that towered about us suddenly
loomed gloomy and forbidding. The wind veered round from south-west to
north-east; and by evening it was piercingly, bitterly cold.
Taking a last look round with the lantern before we locked up for the
night, not a sound could be heard; everything was absolutely still,
with that unearthly silence of a land suddenly gripped by overpowering
cold. I glanced at the thermometer hanging on the outside wall; it
already registered three degrees below freezing; it would probably be
ten before morning.
We bolted the door and shut out the cold, hoping no one was wandering
lost on the hills that night (not that anyone ever is, but it is
pleasant to have kind charitable thoughts like that, on a bleak night,
as you put yet another log on the fire).
* * * * *
Next morning, as it was colder and more perishing than ever, I decided
to cope with several days’ arrears of office work, piling itself up
in all directions. Virginia said it was just as well the weather
necessitated our remaining indoors, as she could now get on with _her_
work. Of course we asked: What work?
She informed us that she was engaged upon an anthology, “Shakespeare
and the Great War.” She felt that “Shakespeare and Everything Else” had
been done pretty thoroughly—by less competent people than herself, it
is true; but, all the same, the poet had been dealt with exhaustively
from every point of view but that of the War. Also, the War had been
dealt with, _in extenso_, from every point of view but Shakespeare’s.
Hence, her present literary effort.
And would I kindly give her any quotations I could think of, that had
any bearing on this world-crisis.