of gain having deprived us of Reginald Arthur in favour of the post
office; and patriotism having rendered the local young man as precious
as he is scarce, we were five weeks--five invaluable, irreplaceable
weeks--gardenerless, odd-manless at the Villino. Nothing this year will
ever restore the lost time. No amount of pulling and straining will
draw the gap together.
Japhet, Adam’s successor, is worn, as the Americans say, very nearly
“to a frazzle.” He is a deeply conscientious man, and peas and beans
and cabbages are to him the very principles upon which all garden
morality is built up. He was much grieved the other day when someone
“passed a remark” on the subject of weeds in the back-garden.
Weeds! We should think there were! It was so blatantly self-evident
a fact that we wondered that anyone should have thought it worth
while to pass a remark upon it. But Japhet was hurt to his very soul:
considering his vocation, it would perhaps be more in keeping to
say--his marrow.
Professional pride is a very delicate and easily bruised growth.
When the Padrona was in her teens the whole of her mother’s orderly
establishment was convulsed one June--a hot June it was too--because
the professional pride of the family butler had been wounded by the
footman’s presuming to hand a dish which it was not his business to
touch. His sense of dignity was doubtless sharpened to a very fine edge
by the fact that, the June weather being so hot, an unusual amount of
cooling beer had been found necessary. This may seem a curious mixture
of metaphors, nevertheless the facts are exact.
Reilly--that was his name--was very deeply and, in the opinion of the
rest of the household, justifiably incensed when Edmund lifted the
entrée dish with the obvious intention of offering it to his mistress;
and though it was regarded as an exaggeration of sensitiveness for
him to knock the footman down immediately after lunch in the seclusion
of the pantry, to kneel upon his chest and endeavour to strangle him
with his white tie; and though the cook deemed it incumbent upon her
to draw the attention of the authorities to the drama by seizing a
broom and brushing it backwards and forwards across the row of bells;
all the sympathies of the establishment remained with Reilly, and “the
mistress” was regarded as extremely hard-hearted for dismissing him
from her service. The footman was a shock-headed, snub-nosed youth, and
we will never forget his appearance when, released from his assailant,
he burst into the dining-room, collarless, his white tie protruding
at an acute angle behind his left ear, with a mixture of triumph,
importance, and suffering upon his scarlet countenance.
So we were compassionate with Japhet when he waxed plaintive over his
underling’s house duties, and even forbore having the windows cleaned
for several weeks, and endured tortures at the sight of her spattered
panes, out of regard for his difficulties.
The underling is aptly named Fox. He has red hair and long moustaches
and a furtive eye and a general air of alertness and slyness which
show that if he had ever belonged to the animal kingdom in a previous
state of existence, Vulpus he certainly was. But we did not expect him
to develop garden susceptibilities too. This, however, it seems he has
done.
“I’ve very bad news for you,” said Japhet sombrely to his master last
week, when he came into the long, book-lined room to receive his
Saturday pay. He has naturally a lugubrious countenance.
His master’s thoughts flew to Zeppelins, spotted fever, and other
national dangers.
“Indeed, Japhet. What is it?”
“Fox, he says, he can’t put up with the couch-grass and the docks in
the lower garden. They seem to have got on his mind, like. He don’t see
how he can go on dealing with them. They _’ave_ got a strong hold,”
concluded Japhet with a sigh, as if he too were overwhelmed by the
enemy.
Well, it was tragic enough, for the precious Fox had been caught after
long hunting, and had made his own bargain--a foxy one--with every eye
to the main chance. We want to keep him, but have a guilty sensation
too, he being young and strong, and obviously the right stuff for
enlisting; though, indeed, if docks and couch-grass daunt him, how
would he stand shrapnel and gas?
The daughter of the house, who is extremely tactful, and who is
generally trusted with delicate situations, interviewed him on the
spot. She found him in a condition only to be described as one of
nerve-shock. His long, red moustaches quivered. All he could reply, in
a broken voice, was:
“It don’t do me no credit. It won’t never do me no credit.”
Japhet, consulted, gave it as his opinion that it was not a question
of his subordinate’s bettering himself; but said “Fox had always been
a sensitive worker.” Nevertheless, we should not be surprised to hear
that war prices have something to do with it.
* * * * *
It is only now, after nearly five years, that we are beginning to
reap some benefit of our constant planting. The Signora wonders if
her irritable mind had allowed her to leave undisturbed those divers
perennials and bushes which she had rooted up after a year’s trial from
beds and borders, how might she not now be gathering the reward of
longanimity.
The Léonie Lamesche roses, for instance. She hunted them out of the
middle of the Dutch garden; out of the beds before the entrance arches
into the rose-garden; into that corner of the kitchen-garden where the
derelicts gather. And just now the child of the house has brought into
her bunch after bunch of little orange-crimson pompoms, delicious and
quaint to look at, and delicious and quaint to smell, with their faint
tartness, as of apples, mixed with an aromatic herbiness as of myrtles.
“There’s quantities more,” says the Signorina. Poor little things!
they have been allowed to settle and spread their roots, and one would
not know them for the nipped, disreputable, guttersnipe objects that
hitherto called down the master of the Villino’s scorn.
We do not regret them in the Dutch garden after all. It is too near the
house not to have its garland for every season; and the forget-me-nots,
hyacinths, and tulips are too precious and beautiful in the spring.
But under the rose-arches now there are gaps; and this year, between
the loss of our poor Adam and war scruples, these gaps have not been
filled.
If the Signora had left Léonie Lamesche where she was, all those nice
varnished green leaves and all those darling rosettes of bloom with
their odd colour and fragrance would be in their right place, instead
of in the waste ground from which Japhet, with the zeal of the new
broom, is already preparing to sweep them next autumn--not, be it said,
with any special disapprobation for Léonie, but because he declares he
wants to get rid of all that there stuff which hadn’t no right to be in
a vegetable garden at all.
The moral is--as has been said long ago in the “Sentimental
Garden”--that chief among the many virtues a garden inculcates is
patience. If the Signora had had patience, she would not have turned
all the Standard Soleil d’Or and Conrad Meyers out of the Lily Walk,
because the shadow of the buddleias interfered with their bloom. For
behold! this winter’s snow has cast the great honey-trees sideways,
and the united efforts of Japhet and Fox, who pulled and propped and
strained in vain, have left them sideways, and sideways, in the opinion
of these experts, they will for ever after remain. And the Lily Walk is
in full sunshine. Had we but left the standards, who, of course, will
be sulky in their new positions for a couple of years more!
_June 15._--The complaint begun in the first week of our transitional
garden has already been reproved by the mid-month’s splendours. In
spite of the drought and the desiccating south-east winds (which by
some inscrutable decree of Providence have been sent to us this year
when so much depends upon field, orchard, and garden), the roses are
magnificent and of unusual promise.
Our peony beds--the mistress of the garden did know that peonies are
slow ladies and will take their time--are beginning to reward her
forbearance. Such a basketful as came into her bedroom to-day with
the Polyantha roses!--those large, pink, scented beauties which are
so satisfying to settle in big bowls. We have put them in the chapel
against boughs of the service-tree. The effect is all one could wish.
The service-tree bloomed this year as never it bloomed before. It
looked like the bridal bouquet of a fairy giantess! We trust this
daring hyperbole will enable our readers to represent to themselves
something at once immense and ethereal, misty grey, and delicate
silver-white. It is of huge size and beautiful shape, and grows a
little higher on the slope than the greater of the two beech-trees. For
colour effect we know nothing more soul-filling than the way it stands
between the ardent tawny glories of the Azalea Walk and the young jewel
green of its cousin--the beech above mentioned. Put the shoulder of the
moor at the back in its May mantle of coppery mauve heather not yet in
bud--that is a picture to gaze upon under a blue sky, thanking God for
the loveliness of the earth!
This last May, which will be ever memorable as one of the most
tragic months of the war, hazard--or that _slithy tove_, the alien
Hun--provided us with a background approximately _macabre_ for the
radiant youthful joy. Our moor has been burnt--five fires started
simultaneously one day of high east wind, and the first great swelling
hill is covered with a garment as of hell. The scattered fir-trees
here and there are of a livid, scorched brown. To look out on the
scene and see them stand in the slaty black, casting mysterious shadows
under the dome of relentless brightness we have had of late, is like
looking upon a circle of Dante’s Inferno, out of one of the cool,
bowery regions of his upper Purgatorio. Our daughter finds a wilder
beauty in our blossom and verdure against the savage gloom beyond; but
not so the Padrona. She laments the tapestry of her peaceful, rolling
heights. Now, past mid-June, bracken is creeping slowly through the
charred roots of the heather, and she does not want a bracken hill. It
is spreading democracy, taking the place of some royal line; the rule
of the irresponsible, the coarse, the mediocre; though she grants there
will be beauty in the autumn when it all turns golden. And perhaps
there’s a lesson to be drawn somewhere, but she will have none of it,
for there is nothing so tiresome as the unpalatable moral.
* * * * *
Fox has condescended to remain another week, so we need not feverishly
search garden chronicles for the quite impossible he, who shall be
strong, sturdy, ineligible for the army, and willing to take a place as
under-gardener at something less than the honorarium of an aniline dye
expert! All those who want places are head-gardeners, “under glass”;
except “a young Dutchman speaking languages perfectly” who fills our
souls with doubt. In every district it is the same story; we wish we
could think it was all patriotic ardour, but we are afraid that the
high wages offered by camps and greengrocers are responsible for a good
deal of the shortage of labour in our part of the world.
One of the Villino quartette--we call ourselves the lucky
clover-leaf--writes from Dorset that they have an aged man of past
seventy-two who comes in to help in the flowery, bowery old garden
of the manor-house where she is staying. In justice to simple rural
Dorset, it may be mentioned parenthetically that there the response
to the country’s need has been extraordinary in its unanimity. So the
superannuated labourers who have grown white and wise over the soil,
instead of sitting by the chimney-corner and enjoying their old-age
pensions, come tottering forth to do their little bit, in the place
of the young stalwartness that has gone out to fight and struggle and
perhaps die for England.
Our Dorset clover petal writes: “Old Mason is very sad at having to
water the borders. ‘Ye mid water and water for days and days,’ he
declares, ‘and it not have the value of a single night’s rain. There,
miss, as I did say to my darter last night, my Father, I says, he do
water a deal better than I do.’”
Yesterday there came a box of white pinks from that Dorset garden;
these have been put all together into an immense cut-glass bowl, with
an effect of innocent, white, overflowing freshness that is perfect of
its kind. And the scent of them is admirably fitted to the sweet clean
wonder of their looks. It is a quintessence of all simple fragrance,
a sort of intensified new-mown hay smell. That is another thing the
heavenly Father has done very well--the delicate matching of attributes
in His flower children. A tea-rose looks her scent, just as does her
deep crimson sister.
“How it must have amused Almighty God,” said our daughter one day last
winter, lifting the cineraria foliage to show the purple bloom of the
lining which exactly matched the note of the starry flower, “how it
must have amused Him to do this.”
And surely a violet bears in her little modest face the promise of her
insinuating and delicate perfume.
And if the big pink peonies had had bright green instead of shadowy
grey foliage they might have been vulgar.
And if you had put lily leaves to an iris instead of their own romantic
sword-blades, how awkward and wrong it would have been; whereas the
lily-stalk, with its conventional layers, is perfection in support of
the queenly head of the Madonna or the Auratum. It is not association,
but recognition of a Great Artist, in all reverence be it said: “He
hath done all things well.”
To come back to the walled enclosure about the old Dorset manor house.
Here, looking down our wind-swept terraces, we sometimes hanker for the
sunny seclusion of that walled garden, though apparently all is not
perfect even there, for the last message from it says:
“The strong sun takes all the strength out of the pinks after the
first day or two. It has been very hot in the early afternoon, and as
the garden faces west all the poor little things are drawn in a long
slant towards the setting sun. Some of the long-stemmed ones have got
positive wriggles in their stalks from so much exercise; it is really
bad for their systems.”
In a previous letter she writes less pessimistically:
“I can’t tell you the loveliness of the garden. It is like Venus
rising from the sea--Venus and her foam together--roses, pinks,
sweet-williams, everything leaping into bloom and over the walls. I
have given up trying to harmonize colours. There is nothing so wilful
as an old garden. The plants simply walk about, much as our ‘Pekies’
do. I planted nigella last year, which didn’t do very well; however it
skipped across a path of its own accord this year, and there is a patch
of it in a forbidden corner which shames the sky. One looks on and
laughs helplessly, as one does with ‘Pekies.’”
* * * * *
The Penzance briar hedge dividing the new rosary from the reserve
garden promises very well. It is already breaking into many coloured
stars, carmine, pink, amber, and the fashionable khaki. Is this the
musk-rose of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream”?
To contradict our statement of a page or two back, the Creator has made
here one of the exceptions to His rule of rich and delicate balance,
and it is the unsuspected fragrance of the sweetbriar that adds so
extraordinarily to its attraction in a garden. No one would credit it
with the scent, its evanescent fragile bloom gives no indication of it.
And, like the perfectly saintly, its fragrance has nothing to do with
youth or beauty. You pass an unimportant-looking green bush, and all at
once you are assailed with the breath of Heaven. There is a mystery,
almost a mysticism, about the perfection of this sweetness, this
intangible, invisible beauty. One is reminded of Wordsworth’s lines:
“quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration.”
It is the image of a pure soul exhaling itself before God, in a rapture
of ecstatic contemplation.
The June scents of the Villino garden are very wonderful, peculiarly
so this year, under the searching brilliancy of the unclouded heavens.
There is the sweetbriar, and there are the pinks, and there is one
long border all of nepeta--against the Dorothy Perkins hedge still
only green--with its pungent, wholesome savour. And there is the gum
cistus, that smells exactly as did the insides of the crimson Venetian
bottles which stood in the great white and blue and gold drawing-room
in the Signora’s Irish home. It was an old custom to put a drop of
attar of roses at the bottom of these favourite ornaments in those
days when the Signora was a little girl, and it was one of her great
joys to be allowed to lift the stopper and sniff. The strange far-off
Eastern incense that hangs about the rather uncomely straggling
shrub--another instance of the Almighty’s exceptions--brings the
mistress of the Villino back with a leap to her childhood; to the late
Georgian drawing-room, with its immense plate-glass windows hung with
curtains of forget-me-not blue brocade which cost a hundred pounds
a pair--people spent solid money then for solid worth; the white
marble chimney-piece, with its copy of a fraction of the Parthenon
frieze--Phaeton driving his wild, tossing horses; the immense cut-glass
chandelier sparkling and quivering with a thousand elfin rainbow
lights; the white and gold panels, the plastered frieze of curling
acanthus leaves; and the smiling face of the adored mother looking down
upon the little creature in the stiff piqué frock, who was the future
Padrona. No child analyzes its mother’s countenance. It is only in
later years that the beauty of that smile was recognized by her. It was
a beauty that endured to the very last of those eighty-five years of a
life that was so well filled. It was a smile of extraordinary sweetness
and, to that end, full of youth. That’s what the gum cistus brings
back; a fragrance of memory, poignant and beloved. Everyone knows that
through the sense of smell the seat of memory is most potently reached.
The merest whiff of a long-forgotten odour will bring back so vividly
some scene of the past that it is almost painful. It is to be wondered
why ghosts do not more often choose this form of return to the world.
The story told by Frederick Myers in his “Human Personality” of the
phantom scent of thyme by which a poor girl haunted the field where
she had been murdered is, we believe, unique; but we know another
record. This was not the struggle of any reproachful shade to bring
itself back to human recollection, but the ghost of a fragrance itself.
The late Bret Harte told the tale to a friend of ours. On a visit to
an old English castle he was lodged in a tower room. Every afternoon
he used to withdraw for literary labours, and at a certain hour the
whole of the old chamber would be filled with the penetrating vapour of
incense. He sought in vain for some explanation of the mystery. There
was nothing within or without, beneath or above, which could produce
such a phenomenon. Then he bethought himself of investigating the past,
and found that his room was exactly over what had once been the chapel
in the days of our ancient Faith, and that it had been the custom to
celebrate Benediction at the hour when the incense--that wraith of a
bygone lovely worship--now seemed to surround him.
A few steps beyond the gum cistus the buddleia trees this June have
their brief splendour of bloom and their intoxication of perfume. It
is as if all the honey of clover and gorse, with something of a dash
of clove spice, was burning in a pyre of glory to the sunshine. What
wonder that the bees gather there and chant the whole day long! Happy
bees, drunk with bliss in the midst of their labour!
It is all very well to speak of bees as a frugal, hard-working
community, to hold them up to the perpetual emulation of the young. Few
people seem to remember how extremely dissipated they become when they
come across a good tap of honey. Who has not seen them--so charged with
the luxuriance that they can scarcely stagger out of the calyx--buzz
away, blundering, upon inebriated wing?
Greatly favoured by Nature, the bees combine the extreme of laudable
activity with the extreme of self-indulgence. Anyone who wants to
hear their pæan of rapture at its height, let him provide them with
_Buddleia globosa_.
We have by no means exhausted the list of scents in the June garden.
There are the irises! All Florence is in the sweetness that flows
from them: a sweetness, by the way, not adapted to rooms, where,
to be unpoetical, it assumes something faintly catty. The way the
perfume of irises rolls over Florence in May is something not to be
described to anyone who has not breathed it. We were once the guests
of a kindly literary couple, who dwelt in one of those charming,
quaint, transmogrified farmhouses outside the city that makes us--even
we who own the Villino Loki--hanker. It was called Villa Benedetto.
One drove out from Florence along a road now only vaguely remembered.
It skirted the river, and there were wild slopes on one side and
poplar-trees; then one darted aside into the Italian hills and up a
steep ascent--this vision is also vague; but we remember the little
garden-gate and the narrow brick path and the irises! Irises and China
roses! It is a lovely mixture for colour; and as for scent! anyone who
knows anything about scent (and we wonder why there are not artists in
it, as well as for music and painting) anyone who knows anything about
scent, we repeat, is quite aware that orris, the pounded iris root,
is the only possible fragrance to keep constantly about. It combines
the breath of the mignonette and the subtle delight of the violet.
It preserves, too, its adorable freshness of impression. You never
sicken of it, you never tire of it. Of course it has the fault of its
delicacy, it is evanescent; but, then, it is never stale. Any woman
who wishes an atmosphere of poetry should use nothing but orris, the
pure pounded root without any addition, and that perpetually renewed.
Precious quality, it cannot be overdone.
The odour of the flower itself in the sunshine is a different thing,
far more piercing and far more pronounced. It must be enjoyed in the
sunshine, or after a spring storm. Those other incomparable banquets
to the sense which a bean-field or a clover-meadow will spread for you
cannot be captured and refined in the same manner. More’s the pity!
Lafcadio Hearn declares that human beings have lamentably failed
to cultivate the rich possibilities of the sense of smell. In this
respect, he says, dogs are infinitely superior. Who can tell, he asks,
what ecstasy of combination, what chords, what symphonies of harmony
and contrast, might we not be able to serve ourselves? But we do not
think the idea will bear development, and certainly many suffer enough
from an over-sensitiveness of nostril already to prevent them from
desiring any further cultivation of its powers.
The Villino in June smells very good, however, and that is gratifying.
And to complete the catalogue there are the new pine shoots delicious
and aromatic, stimulating and healthy; a perfect aroma on a hot day.
“Tell me your friends and I will tell you what you are,” says the sage;
it sounds like a dog, but the Padrona feels that with one sniff she can
sum up a character.
When Tréfle Incarnat, or its last variant, takes you by the throat, you
needn’t look to see what kind of young woman is sitting beside you at
the theatre.
And when a portly friend, resplendent in gorgeous sables, heralds
her approach with a powerful blast of Napthaline, you know the kind
of woman _she_ is, and that the word “friend,” just written, is
misapplied; for you never could make a friend of anyone so stuffily and
stupidly careful.