May 16th.--There are moments in life when, without any visible or
immediate cause, the spirits sink and fail, as it were, under the mere
pressure of existence: moments of unaccountable depression, when one
is weary of one's very thoughts, haunted by images that will not
depart--images many and various, but all painful; friends lost, or
changed, or dead; hopes disappointed even in their accomplishment;
fruitless regrets, powerless wishes, doubt and fear, and self-distrust,
and self-disapprobation. They who have known these feelings (and who is
there so happy as not to have known some of them?) will understand why
Alfieri became powerless, and Froissart dull; and why even needle-work,
the most effectual sedative, that grand soother and composer of woman's
distress, fails to comfort me to-day. I will go out into the air this
cool, pleasant afternoon, and try what that will do. I fancy that
exercise or exertion of any kind, is the true specific for nervousness.
'Fling but a stone, the giant dies.' I will go to the meadows, the
beautiful meadows! and I will have my materials of happiness, Lizzy and
May, and a basket for flowers, and we will make a cowslip-ball. 'Did
you ever see a cowslip-ball, my Lizzy?'--'No.'--'Come away, then; make
haste! run, Lizzy!'
And on we go, fast, fast! down the road, across the lea, past the
workhouse, along by the great pond, till we slide into the deep narrow
lane, whose hedges seem to meet over the water, and win our way to the
little farmhouse at the end. 'Through the farmyard, Lizzy; over the
gate; never mind the cows; they are quiet enough.'--'I don't mind 'em,'
said Miss Lizzy, boldly and truly, and with a proud affronted air,
displeased at being thought to mind anything, and showing by her
attitude and manner some design of proving her courage by an attack on
the largest of the herd, in the shape of a pull by the tail. 'I don't
mind 'em.'--'I know you don't, Lizzy; but let them alone, and don't
chase the turkey-cock. Come to me, my dear!' and, for a wonder, Lizzy
came.
In the meantime, my other pet, Mayflower, had also gotten into a scrape.
She had driven about a huge unwieldy sow, till the animal's grunting
had disturbed the repose of a still more enormous Newfoundland dog, the
guardian of the yard. Out he sallied, growling, from the depth of his
kennel, erecting his tail, and shaking his long chain. May's attention
was instantly diverted from the sow to this new playmate, friend or foe,
she cared not which; and he of the kennel, seeing his charge unhurt, and
out of danger, was at leisure to observe the charms of his fair enemy,
as she frolicked round him, always beyond the reach of his chain, yet
always, with the natural instinctive coquetry of her sex, alluring
him to the pursuit which she knew to be vain. I never saw a prettier
flirtation. At last the noble animal, wearied out, retired to the inmost
recesses of his habitation, and would not even approach her when she
stood right before the entrance. 'You are properly served, May. Come
along, Lizzy. Across this wheatfield, and now over the gate. Stop! let
me lift you down. No jumping, no breaking of necks, Lizzy!' And here we
are in the meadows, and out of the world. Robinson Crusoe, in his lonely
island, had scarcely a more complete, or a more beautiful solitude.
These meadows consist of a double row of small enclosures of rich
grass-land, a mile or two in length, sloping down from high arable
grounds on either side, to a little nameless brook that winds between
them with a course which, in its infinite variety, clearness, and
rapidity, seems to emulate the bold rivers of the north, of whom, far
more than of our lazy southern streams, our rivulet presents a miniature
likeness. Never was water more exquisitely tricksy:--now darting over
the bright pebbles, sparkling and flashing in the light with a bubbling
music, as sweet and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretching
quietly along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-marigolds
which grow on its margin; now sweeping round a fine reach of green
grass, rising steeply into a high mound, a mimic promontory, whilst the
other side sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the water
flows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy, longing for
adventure, is sure she could cross unwetted; now dashing through two
sand-banks, a torrent deep and narrow, which May clears at a bound;
now sleeping, half hidden, beneath the alders, and hawthorns, and wild
roses, with which the banks are so profusely and variously fringed,
whilst flags,* lilies, and other aquatic plants, almost cover the
surface of the stream. In good truth, it is a beautiful brook, and one
that Walton himself might have sitten by and loved, for trout are there;
we see them as they dart up the stream, and hear and start at the sudden
plunge when they spring to the surface for the summer flies. Izaak
Walton would have loved our brook and our quiet meadows; they breathe
the very spirit of his own peacefulness, a soothing quietude that sinks
into the soul. There is no path through them, not one; we might wander
a whole spring day, and not see a trace of human habitation. They belong
to a number of small proprietors, who allow each other access through
their respective grounds, from pure kindness and neighbourly feeling;
a privilege never abused: and the fields on the other side of the water
are reached by a rough plank, or a tree thrown across, or some such
homely bridge. We ourselves possess one of the most beautiful; so
that the strange pleasure of property, that instinct which makes Lizzy
delight in her broken doll, and May in the bare bone which she has
pilfered from the kennel of her recreant admirer of Newfoundland, is
added to the other charms of this enchanting scenery; a strange pleasure
it is, when one so poor as I can feel it! Perhaps it is felt most by the
poor, with the rich it may be less intense--too much diffused and spread
out, becoming thin by expansion, like leaf-gold; the little of the poor
may be not only more precious, but more pleasant to them: certain that
bit of grassy and blossomy earth, with its green knolls and tufted
bushes, its old pollards wreathed with ivy, and its bright and babbling
waters, is very dear to me. But I must always have loved these meadows,
so fresh, and cool, and delicious to the eye and to the tread, full
of cowslips, and of all vernal flowers: Shakspeare's 'Song of Spring'
bursts irrepressibly from our lips as we step on them.
*Walking along these meadows one bright sunny afternoon, a year or two
back, and rather later in the season, I had an opportunity of noticing
a curious circumstance in natural history. Standing close to the edge of
the stream, I remarked a singular appearance on a large tuft of flags.
It looked like bunches of flowers, the leaves of which seemed dark, yet
transparent, intermingled with brilliant tubes of bright blue or shining
green. On examining this phenomenon more closely, it turned out to
be several clusters of dragon-flies, just emerged from their deformed
chrysalis state, and still torpid and motionless from the wetness of
their filmy wings. Half an hour later we returned to the spot and they
were gone. We had seen them at the very moment when beauty was complete
and animation dormant. I have since found nearly a similar account of
this curious process in Mr. Bingley's very entertaining work, called
'Animal Biography.'
'When daisies pied and violets blue
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree--'
'Cuckoo! cuckoo!' cried Lizzy, breaking in with her clear childish
voice; and immediately, as if at her call, the real bird, from a
neighbouring tree (for these meadows are dotted with timber like a
park), began to echo my lovely little girl, 'cuckoo! cuckoo!' I have a
prejudice very unpastoral and unpoetical (but I cannot help it, I
have many such) against this 'harbinger of spring.' His note is so
monotonous, so melancholy; and then the boys mimic him; one hears
'cuckoo! cuckoo!' in dirty streets, amongst smoky houses, and the bird
is hated for faults not his own. But prejudices of taste, likings and
dislikings, are not always vanquishable by reason; so, to escape the
serenade from the tree, which promised to be of considerable duration
(when once that eternal song begins, on it goes ticking like a
clock)--to escape that noise I determined to excite another, and
challenged Lizzy to a cowslip-gathering; a trial of skill and speed,
to see which should soonest fill her basket. My stratagem succeeded
completely. What scrambling, what shouting, what glee from Lizzy! twenty
cuckoos might have sung unheard whilst she was pulling her own flowers,
and stealing mine, and laughing, screaming, and talking through all.
At last the baskets were filled, and Lizzy declared victor: and down
we sat, on the brink of the stream, under a spreading hawthorn, just
disclosing its own pearly buds, and surrounded with the rich and
enamelled flowers of the wild hyacinth, blue and white, to make our
cowslip-ball. Every one knows the process: to nip off the tuft of
flowerets just below the top of the stalk, and hang each cluster nicely
balanced across a riband, till you have a long string like a garland;
then to press them closely together, and tie them tightly up. We went on
very prosperously, CONSIDERING; as people say of a young lady's drawing,
or a Frenchman's English, or a woman's tragedy, or of the poor little
dwarf who works without fingers, or the ingenious sailor who writes with
his toes, or generally of any performance which is accomplished by means
seemingly inadequate to its production. To be sure we met with a few
accidents. First, Lizzy spoiled nearly all her cowslips by snapping them
off too short; so there was a fresh gathering; in the next place, May
overset my full basket, and sent the blossoms floating, like so many
fairy favours, down the brook; then, when we were going on pretty
steadily, just as we had made a superb wreath, and were thinking of
tying it together, Lizzy, who held the riband, caught a glimpse of a
gorgeous butterfly, all brown and red and purple, and, skipping off to
pursue the new object, let go her hold; so all our treasures were
abroad again. At last, however, by dint of taking a branch of alder as
a substitute for Lizzy, and hanging the basket in a pollard-ash, out
of sight of May, the cowslip-ball was finished. What a concentration of
fragrance and beauty it was! golden and sweet to satiety! rich to sight,
and touch, and smell! Lizzy was enchanted, and ran off with her prize,
hiding amongst the trees in the very coyness of ecstasy, as if any human
eye, even mine, would be a restraint on her innocent raptures.
In the meanwhile I sat listening, not to my enemy the cuckoo, but to a
whole concert of nightingales, scarcely interrupted by any meaner bird,
answering and vying with each other in those short delicious strains
which are to the ear as roses to the eye: those snatches of lovely sound
which come across us as airs from heaven. Pleasant thoughts, delightful
associations, awoke as I listened; and almost unconsciously I repeated
to myself the beautiful story of the Lutist and the Nightingale, from
Ford's 'Lover's Melancholy.' Here it is. Is there in English poetry
anything finer?
'Passing from Italy to Greece, the tales
Which poets of an elder time have feign'd
To glorify their Tempe, bred in me
Desire of visiting Paradise.
To Thessaly I came, and living private,
Without acquaintance of more sweet companions
Than the old inmates to my love, my thoughts,
I day by day frequented silent groves
And solitary walks. One morning early
This accident encounter'd me: I heard
The sweetest and most ravishing contention
That art and nature ever were at strife in.
A sound of music touch'd mine ears, or rather
Indeed entranced my soul; as I stole nearer,
Invited by the melody, I saw
This youth, this fair-faced youth, upon his lute
With strains of strange variety and harmony
Proclaiming, as it seem'd, so bold a challenge
To the clear choristers of the woods, the birds,
That as they flock'd about him, all stood silent,
Wondering at what they heard. I wonder'd too.
A nightingale,
Nature's best skill'd musician, undertakes
The challenge; and for every several strain
The well-shaped youth could touch, she sang him down.
He could not run divisions with more art
Upon his quaking instrument than she,
The nightingale, did with her various notes
Reply to.
Some time thus spent, the young man grew at last
Into a pretty anger, that a bird,
Whom art had never taught cliffs, moods, or notes
Should vie with him for mastery, whose study
Had busied many hours to perfect practice.
To end the controversy, in a rapture
Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly,
So many voluntaries, and so quick,
That there was curiosity and cunning,
Concord in discord, lines of differing method
Meeting in one full centre of delight.
The bird (ordain'd to be
Music's first martyr) strove to imitate
These several sounds; which when her warbling throat
Fail'd in, for grief down dropt she on his lute,
And brake her heart. It was the quaintest sadness
To see the conqueror upon her hearse
To weep a funeral elegy of tears.
He look'd upon the trophies of his art,
Then sigh'd, then wiped his eyes; then sigh'd, and cry'd
"Alas! poor creature, I will soon revenge
This cruelty upon the author of it.
Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood,
Shall never more betray a harmless peace
To an untimely end:" and in that sorrow,
As he was pashing it against a tree,
I suddenly stept in.'
When I had finished the recitation of this exquisite passage, the sky,
which had been all the afternoon dull and heavy, began to look more
and more threatening; darker clouds, like wreaths of black smoke, flew
across the dead leaden tint; a cooler, damper air blew over the meadows,
and a few large heavy drops splashed in the water. 'We shall have a
storm. Lizzy! May! where are ye? Quick, quick, my Lizzy! run, run!
faster, faster!'
And off we ran; Lizzy not at all displeased at the thoughts of a
wetting, to which indeed she is almost as familiar as a duck; May, on
the other hand, peering up at the weather, and shaking her pretty ears
with manifest dismay. Of all animals, next to a cat, a greyhound dreads
rain. She might have escaped it; her light feet would have borne her
home long before the shower; but May is too faithful for that, too true
a comrade, understands too well the laws of good-fellowship; so she
waited for us. She did, to be sure, gallop on before, and then stop and
look back, and beckon, as it were, with some scorn in her black eyes at
the slowness of our progress. We in the meanwhile got on as fast as we
could, encouraging and reproaching each other. 'Faster, my Lizzy! Oh,
what a bad runner!'--'Faster, faster! Oh, what a bad runner!' echoed my
saucebox. 'You are so fat, Lizzy, you make no way!'--'Ah! who else is
fat?' retorted the darling. Certainly her mother is right; I do spoil
that child.
By this time we were thoroughly soaked, all three. It was a pelting
shower, that drove through our thin summer clothing and poor May's short
glossy coat in a moment. And then, when we were wet to the skin, the sun
came out, actually the sun, as if to laugh at our plight; and then, more
provoking still, when the sun was shining, and the shower over, came a
maid and a boy to look after us, loaded with cloaks and umbrellas enough
to fence us against a whole day's rain. Never mind! on we go, faster
and faster; Lizzy obliged to be most ignobly carried, having had the
misfortune to lose a shoe in the mud, which we left the boy to look
after.
Here we are at home--dripping; but glowing and laughing, and bearing our
calamity most manfully. May, a dog of excellent sense, went instantly
to bed in the stable, and is at this moment over head and ears in straw;
Lizzy is gone to bed too, coaxed into that wise measure by a promise of
tea and toast, and of not going home till to-morrow, and the story of
Little Red Riding Hood; and I am enjoying the luxury of dry clothing by
a good fire. Really getting wet through now and then is no bad thing,
finery apart; for one should not like spoiling a new pelisse, or a
handsome plume; but when there is nothing in question but a white gown
and a straw bonnet, as was the case to-day, it is rather pleasant than
not. The little chill refreshes, and our enjoyment of the subsequent
warmth and dryness is positive and absolute. Besides, the stimulus and
exertion do good to the mind as well as body. How melancholy I was all
the morning! how cheerful I am now! Nothing like a shower-bath--a real
shower-bath, such as Lizzy and May and I have undergone, to cure low
spirits. Try it, my dear readers, if ever ye be nervous--I will answer
for its success.