------------------------------------------------------------------------
_OTHER BEAUTIFUL BOOKS
ON FLOWERS AND GARDENS_
Each containing full-page illustrations in
colour similar to those in this volume
FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF JAPAN
ALPINE FLOWERS AND GARDENS
BRITISH FLORAL DECORATION
DUTCH BULBS AND GARDENS
FLOWERS AND GARDENS OF MADEIRA
THE GARDEN THAT I LOVE
GARDENS OF ENGLAND
KEW GARDENS
A. & C. BLACK, SOHO SQUARE, LONDON
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CHARM OF GARDENS
------------------------------------------------------------------------
AGENTS
AMERICA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64 & 66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
AUSTRALASIA THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
205 FLINDERS LANE, MELBOURNE
CANADA THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LTD.
ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE, 70 BOND STREET, TORONTO
INDIA MACMILLAN & COMPANY LTD.
MACMILLAN BUILDING, BOMBAY
309 BOW BAZAAR STREET, CALCUTTA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THE LAKE GARDEN AYSCOUGH FEE HALL, SPALDING.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE
CHARM OF GARDENS
BY
DION CLAYTON CALTHROP
WITH THIRTY-TWO FULL-PAGE
ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR
[Illustration]
PUBLISHED BY . 4 SOHO SQUARE
ADAM & CHARLES LONDON . . W.
BLACK . . . . MCMXI . . . .
------------------------------------------------------------------------
_The illustrations in this volume have been selected
from volumes in Black’s Series of Beautiful Books_
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TO
F. M. MARSDEN
WITHOUT WHOSE HELP THIS BOOK COULD
NEVER HAVE BEEN WRITTEN
FROM
HER AFFECTIONATE
SON-IN-LAW
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PART I
A VIEW OF ENGLAND
PAGE
I. THE SPIRIT OF GARDENS 3
II. THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND: THE PATCHWORK QUILT 10
III. A COUNTRY LANE: A MEMORY FROM ABROAD 18
IV. FIELDS 23
V. EPISODE OF THE CONTENTED TAILOR 27
VI. THE BLUEBELL WOOD AND THE CALM STONE DOG 35
VII. THE TAILOR’S SISTER’S TOMBSTONE 42
VIII. THE COTTAGE GARDEN 54
IX. A FEAST OF WILD STRAWBERRIES 64
X. THE PRAISES OF A COUNTRY LIFE 71
PART II
GARDENS AND HISTORY
I. THE ROMAN GARDEN IN ENGLAND 75
II. ST. FIACRE, PATRON SAINT OF GARDENERS AND
CAB-DRIVERS 88
III. EVELYN’S “SYLVA” 96
PART III
KALENDARIUM HORTENSE 108
PART IV
GARDEN MOODS
I. TOWN GARDENS 151
II. THE EFFECT OF TREES 163
III. A LOVER OF GARDENS 182
IV. OF THE CROWN OF THORNS 185
V. OF APPLES 187
VI. OF THE FIRST GARDENER 189
VII. OF THE FIRST ROSES 191
VIII. OF THE ABBEY GARDEN 193
IX. THE OLYMPIAN ASPECT 195
X. EVENING RED AND MORNING GREY 204
XI. GARDEN PROMISES 213
XII. GARDEN PATHS 220
XIII. THE GARDENS OF THE DEAD 233
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. THE LAKE GARDEN, AYSCOUGH FEE HALL, SPALDING _Frontispiece_
_Facing page_
2. A PRIMROSE BANK NEAR DORKING vi
3. SIR WALTER’S SUNDIAL, ABBOTSFORD 9
4. THE WEALD OF KENT, SHOWING THE COUNTRY LIKE A
PATCHWORK QUILT 16
5. POPPIES IN SURREY 25
6. PORCHES GROWN OVER WITH HONEYSUCKLE AND ROSES
AT BROADWAY IN THE COTSWOLDS 32
7. BLUEBELLS IN SURREY 41
8. A COTTAGE GARDEN 48
9. A SURREY COTTAGE 57
10. PATCHES OF HEATHER 64
11. A PERGOLA IN AN ENGLISH GARDEN 73
12. ENTRANCE TO THE GARDENS, AYSCOUGH FEE HALL,
SPALDING 80
13. A CAB-DRIVER IN PICCADILLY 89
14. A WOOD AT WOTTON, THE HOME OF JOHN EVELYN 96
15. TULIPS IN THE “GARDEN OF PEACE” 105
16. APPLE TREES 112
17. DAFFODILS IN A MIDDLESEX GARDEN 121
18. A POET’S ORCHARD IN KENT 128
19. A KENTISH GARDEN IN AUTUMN 137
20. A HAMPSTEAD GARDEN IN WINTER 144
21. AZALEAS IN BLOOM, ROTTEN ROW 153
22. IN HYDE PARK 160
23. THE SEAT BENEATH THE OAK IN THE POET
LAUREATE’S GARDEN 169
24. IN THE BOTANIC GARDEN, OXFORD 176
25. THE PRIDE OF SPRING, SURREY 185
26. A ROSE GARDEN IN BERKSHIRE 192
27. A SHEPHERD OF CONISTON 201
28. A DOVECOTE IN A SUSSEX GARDEN 208
29. A NORTHAMPTONSHIRE GARDEN 217
30. A PATH IN A ROSE GARDEN 224
31. A CHURCHYARD IN THE COTSWOLDS 235
32. AUTUMN COLOUR AT BONCHURCH OLD CHURCH NEAR
VENTNOR 238
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PART I
A VIEW OF ENGLAND
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I
THE SPIRIT OF GARDENS
Once, I remember well, when I was hungering for a breath of country air,
a woman, brown with the caresses of the wind and sun, brought the Spring
to my door and sold it to me for a penny. The husky rough scent of those
Primroses gave me news of England that I longed to hear. When I had
placed my flowers in a bowl and put them on the table where I worked,
they told me stories of the lanes and woods, how thrushes sang, and the
wild Cherry Blossom flared delicately across the purpling trees.
A flower often will reclaim a mood when nothing else will bring it back.
To garden, to garner up the seasons in a little space, is part of every
wise man’s philosophy. To sow the seeds, to watch the tender shoots come
out and brave the light and rain, to see the buds lift up their heads,
and then to catch one’s breath as the flowers open and display their
precious colours, living, breathing jewels, is enough to live for. But
there is more than that. A man may choose the feast to spread before his
eyes, may sow old memories and see them grow, and feel the answering
colours in his heart. This Rose he used to pass on his way to school; it
nodded to him over the high red wall, while next to it a Purple Clematis
clung, arching over, so that, by standing on his pile of school-books,
he could reach the flowers. This patch of Golden Marigolds reminds him
of a long border in the garden where he spent his boyhood (they used to
grow behind the bee skeps, had a little place to themselves next to the
Horseradish and the early Lettuces). There’s a hedge of Lavender full of
association, he may remember how he was allowed (or was it set him for a
task?) to cut great sheaves of it and take them to the Apple-room, and
hang them up to dry over old newspapers. To look at Lavender brings back
the curious musty smell of that store-room, where Apples wintered on
long shelves; where the lawn-mower stood, and the brooms, and the scythe
(to cut the orchard grass), and untidy bundles of bass hung with string
and coils of wire. What a wonderful place that store-room was, with the
broken door and the rusty lock that creaked as the big key turned to let
him in: to reach the latch he had to stand on tip-toe, and to turn the
key seemed quite a grown-up task. There was all a garden needs stored in
that room. It had been a dining-room once, a hundred years ago, a room
where the members of a bowling club convivially met and fought old
games; bias, twist, jack, all the terms ring in his ears, even the click
of the bowls, sharp on the summer air, comes back; and the plastered
ornamental ceiling had sagged and dropped away here and there, showing
the laths. There was a big dusty window, across which the twisted arms
of a Wisteria stretched, and a broken window seat in it that opened like
a box to hold the bowls. Just the hedge of Lavender brings back the
picture of the boy whose cherished dreams hung about those four walls;
who, having strung his bunches, neatly tied, on wooden pegs along the
walls, and spread his papers underneath to catch the falling seeds, sat,
book in hand, and travelled into foreign lands with Mungo Park. There,
on his left, and facing him as well, shelves lined the walls, and Pears,
Apples and Medlars were arranged in rows, while by his side, placed on
the window ledge to catch the sun, were fallen Nectarines, Peaches and
big yellow Plums set to ripen.
What curious things a garden store-room holds! The tins, slopped over,
of weed-killer, of patent plant foods, of fine white sand. The twisted
string, criss-crossed upon a peg of wood, covered with whitewash, the
string that serves to guide the marker for the tennis-court. Then an
array of nets to cover Currant bushes, and bid birds beware of
Gooseberries, Cherries and ripe Strawberries. A barrow, full of odds and
ends, baskets, queer little bags of seeds, a heap of Groundsel gathered
for a bird and lying there forgotten. Like a Dutch picture, half in
gloom with bright lights on the shears, and along the edge of the
scythe, and on the curved wire mesh made to guard young seedlings. Empty
seed packets on the floor, bright coloured pictures of the flowers on
the outsides, a little soiled by the earth and the gardener’s thumb.
Plant memories, indeed! A man may plant a host of them and never then
recapture all his joys. There’s his first love garnishing a rustic arch,
a deep yellow Rose, beautiful in the bud—William Allen Richardson: she
wore them in her sash. He can laugh now and see the long yellow hair
floating in a cloud behind her as she ran, and the twinkling black legs,
and the merry pretty face looking down on him from between the leaves of
the Apple-tree she climbed. He grows that Apple in his orchard now, and
toasts her memory when the first ripe fruit of it shines on the dish
before him at dessert.
The Clove Carnation with its spice-like scent he bought from a barrow in
a London slum, brought with care—wrapped in paper on the rack of the
railway carriage—and planted it here. This Picotee he hailed with joy in
the flower-market at Saint Malo and carried it across the sea, each
bloom tied up to a friendly length of cane. His neighbours marvel at his
pains, but it recalls many a happy day to him.
There, in a corner under a nut-tree, is a grass bank thick with Primrose
plants—another memory. A picture comes to him from the Primroses very
clear, very distinct, a picture of the world gone black, of a day when a
boy thought heaven and earth purposeless, cruel; when he ran from a
garden to the woods and threw himself on a bank, covered with Primroses,
sobbing and weeping till the world was blotted out with his tears,
because his dog had died. It had been the first thing he had learnt to
love, the first thing he had had to care for, to look after. All his
childish ideas were whispered into the big retriever’s silky coat. They
had secret understandings, a different language, ideas in common, and
the dog’s death was his first hint of death in the world. Years after,
when he planted this garden, he gave a place to Don, and planted the
Primroses himself. The earth was kindly and the flowers flourished. The
earth is kindly, even your cynic knows that and marks the spot where he
hopes to lie, and thinks, not sourly, of the Daisies over his head.
There is something more than memory in a garden. There is that urgent
need man has to be part of growing life. He must have open spaces, he
takes health from the sight of a tree in bud, from the sight of a newly
ploughed field, from a plant or so in a window-box, a flower in his
button-hole. Men, who by a thousand ties are held at desks in cities,
look up and hear a caged thrush sing, and their thoughts fly out to
fields and the common wayside flowers, and, for a moment, the offices
are filled with the perfume—indescribable—of the open road.
[Illustration: A PRIMROSE BANK NEAR DORKING.]
There is that in the hum and business of a garden that makes for peace;
the senses are softly stirred even as the heart finds wings. No greeting
is as sweet as the drowsy murmur of bees, in garden, lane or open heath.
No day so good as that which breaks to song of birds. No sight so happy
as the elegant confusion of flower-border still wet and glistening with
the morning dew.
I heard a man once deliver a learned lecture on the Persian character,
full of history, romance and thoughtful ideas. Towards the end of his
discourse I began to feel that he, indeed, knew the Persian inside out,
but that I could catch but a fleeting and momentary glimpse of his
knowledge. Then, by way of background to an anecdote, he mirrored, with
loving care and wealth of detail, Oriental in its imagery and
elaboration, the gardens in a palace. There was a stream of clear water
running through the garden, and the owner had paved the bed of the
stream with exquisite old tiles; white Irises bloomed along the banks,
white Roses, growing thickly, dropped scented petals in the stream. I
have as good as lived in that garden; I saw it so well, and what little
I know of the Persian I know from that description. Omar is more than a
dead poet to me now; I can smell the Roses blooming over his grave.
There should be a sundial in every garden to mark the true beginning and
the end of day; some noise of water somewhere; bees; good trees to give
shade to us and shelter to the birds; a garden-house with proper amount
of flower-lore on shelves within; a walk for scent alone, flowers grown
perfume-wise; a solitary place, if possible, where should be a nest of
owls; a spread of lawn to rest the eyes, no cut beds in it to spoil the
symmetry, and at least one border for herbaceous plants. If this is
greedy of good things leave out the owls—that’s but a fanciful thought.
Do you know what a small space this requires? Those who might be free
and yet choose to live in towns might have it all for the price of the
rent of the ground their kitchen covers.
[Illustration: SIR WALTER’S SUNDIAL, ABBOTSFORD.]
There are those aching spirits to whom no land is home, whose feet go
wandering over the world; gipsy-spirits searching one must suppose for
peace of mind in constant new sights. For them the well-ordered garden
with its high walls, its neat lawn, its fair carriage-drive, is but a
dull prison-house, and even if in the course of their wanderings they
stray into such a place their talk is all of other lands; of scarlet
twisted flowers in Cashmere; of fields of Arum Lilies near Table
Mountain; of the sad-grey Olives and the gorgeous Orange groves of
Spain; the Poppy fields of China, or the brightly painted Tulips growing
orderly in Holland. We with our ancestral rookery near by, our talk of
last year’s nests, or overweening pride in the soft snows of Mrs.
Simpkin’s Pinks, seem to these folk like prisoners, who having tamed a
mouse proclaim it chief of all the animal world. But ask of the Garden
of England and the flowers it affords and see their eyes take on a
far-away look as the road calls to them, and hear them at their own lore
of roadside flowers, praising and loving Traveller’s Joy, the gilt array
of Buttercups, the dusty pink of Ragged Robin, and the like sweet joys
the vagabond holds dear. This one can whistle like a blackbird; that one
has boiled the roots of Dandelions (Dent de Lion, a charming name) and
has been cured by their juices. He knows that if he sees the delicate
parachutes of Dandelion, Coltsfoot, or of Thistle-fly when there is not
a breath of wind, then there will be rain. They read the skies, hear
voices in the wind, take courses from the stars, and know the time of
day from flowers. These men, having none of the spirit that inspires
your gardener, see the results of the work and smile pleasantly, ask,
perhaps, the name of some flower, to please you, know something of
soils, praise your Mulberries, and admire your collection of Violas, but
soon they are off and away, breathing more freely for leaving the
sheltered peace of your well-kept place, and vanish to Spitzbergen or
the Chinese desert in search of what their souls crave. We are
different; we sit in the cool of the evening, overlooking our
sweet-scented borders, gaining joy from the gathering night that paints
out the detail of our world, and hope quietly for a soft, gentle rain in
the night to stiffen the flowers’ drooping heads. We English are
gardeners by nature: perhaps the greyness of our skies accounts for our
desire to make our gardens blaze with colours.
We have our memories, our desire for peace, our love of colour, and, at
the back of all, something infinitely more grand.
“No lily muffled hum of a summer bee
But finds some coupling with the spinning stars;
No pebble at your foot, but proves a sphere;
... Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who knows takes off his shoes.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
II
THE GARDEN OF ENGLAND: THE
PATCHWORK QUILT
Even your most unadventurous fellow can hardly look on a fair prospect
of fields and meadows, woods, villages with smoking chimneys, a river,
and a road, without a certain feeling rising in him that he would like
to tread the road that winds so dapperly through the country, and
discover for himself where it leads.
To those who love their country the road is but a garden path running
between borders of fair flowers whose names and virtues should be known
to every child.
A poet can weave a story from the speck of mud on a fellow traveller’s
boot—the red soil of a Devonshire lane calls up such pictures of
fern-covered banks, such rushing streams, as make a poem in themselves.
It strikes one from the very first how neatly most of England is kept.
The dip and rise of softly swelling hills across which the curling
ribbon of the road winds leisurely between neat hedges, the fields in
patches, coloured brown and green, golden with Corn, scarlet with
Poppies, yellow with Buttercups; the circular bunches of trees under
whose shade fat cattle stand lazily switching their tails at flies; the
woods, hangers, shaws and coppices, glades, dells, dingles and combes,
all set out so orderly and precise that, from a hill, the country has
the appearance of a patchwork quilt set in a pleasant irregularity,
studded with straggling farms, and little sleepy villages where the
resonant note of the church clock checks off the drowsy hours. The road
that runs through this quilt land seems like a thread on which villages
and market towns are strung, beads of endless variety, some huddled in a
bunch upon a hill, some long and straggling, some thatched and warm,
red-bricked and creeper-covered, others white with roofs of purple
slate, others of grey stone, others of warm yellow. All alive with birds
and flowers and village children, butterflies and trees; fed by broad
rivers, or hanging over singing streams or deep in the lush grass of
water meadows gay with kingcups.
This garden is for us who care to know it. We can take the road, our
garden path, and pluck, as we will, flowers of all kinds from our
borders; sleep in our garden on beds of bracken pulled and piled high
under trees; or on soft heaps of heather heaped under sheltering stones.
If we know our garden well enough it will give us food—salads, fruits
and nuts; it will cure us of our ills by its herbs; feed our imagination
by the quaint names of flower and herb. Here’s a small list that will
sing a man to sleep, dreaming of England.
Poet’s Asphodel.
Shepherd’s Purse.
Our Lady’s Bedstraw.
Water Soldier.
Rowan.
Hound’s Tongue.
Gipsy Rose.
Fool’s Parsley.
Celandine.
Columbine.
Adder’s Tongue.
Speedwell.
Thorn Apple.
Virgin Bower.
Whin.
These alone of hundreds give a lift to the day: there’s a story to each
of them.
Take our England as a garden and let the eye roam over the land. Here’s
the flat country of the Fens, long, long vistas of fields, with spires
and towers sticking up against the sky. Plenty of rare flowers there for
your gardener, marsh flowers, water plants galore. That’s the place to
see the sky, to watch a summer storm across the plain, to see the
Poplars bending in an angry wind, and the white windmills glare against
purple rain clouds. Few hedges here but plenty of banks and dykes, and
canals they call drains. Here you may find Marsh Valerian, Water
Crowsfoot, Frogbit, pink Cuckoo-flowers, Bog Bean, Sundews, Sea
Lavender, and Bladder-worts. The Sundews alone will give you an hour’s
pleasure with their glistening red glands tricked out to catch unwary
flies and midges.
Then there’s a wild garden waiting you by stone walls in the dales of
Derbyshire, or in the Yorkshire wolds, or the Lancashire fells. On the
open heaths, where the grey roads wind through warm carpets of ling and
heather, you can fill your nostrils with the sweet scent of Gorse and
Thyme.
I was sitting one hot afternoon, drawing the twisted bole of a Beech
tree. All the wood in which I sat was stirring with life; the dingle
below me a mist of flowers, Primroses, Wind-flowers, Hyacinths whose
bells made the air softly fragrant. Above me the sky showed through a
trellis-work of young leaves, the distance of the wood was purple with
opening buds, and the floor was a swaying sea of Bluebells dancing in a
gentle breeze. Squirrels chattered in the trees; now and then a wood
pigeon flopped out of a tree, and a blackbird whistled in some hidden
place.
All absorbed in my work, following the grotesquely beautiful curves of
the beech roots, I heard no sound of approaching footsteps. A voice
behind me said “Good,” and I started, dropping my pencil in my
confusion.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” said the voice.
I turned round and saw a man standing behind me, a man without a cap,
with curly brown hair, and a face coloured deep brown by the sun. He was
dressed in a faded suit of greenish tweed, wore a blue flannel shirt,
carried a thick stick in his hand, and had a worn-looking box slung over
his shoulders by a stained leather strap.
I suppose my surprise showed in my face in some comic way, for he
laughed heartily, showing a set of strong white teeth.
“No, I’m not Pan,” he said laughing, “or a keeper, or a vision. I’m a
gardener.”
His admirable assurance and pleasant address were very captivating.
I asked him what he did there, and he immediately sat down by me, pulled
out a black clay pipe, and lit up before replying. He extended the
honours of his match to my cigarette and I noticed that his hands were
well formed, and that he wore a silver ring on the little finger of his
right hand.
When he had arranged himself to his comfort, propping his back against a
tree and crossing his legs, he told me he was a gardener on a very large
scale.
I wished him joy of his garden, at which he smiled broadly, and informed
me in the most matter-of-fact way that he gardened the whole of Great
Britain.
For a moment I wondered if I had fallen in with an amiable lunatic, but
a closer inspection of his face showed me he was sane, uncommonly
healthy, and, I judged, a clever man.
“A vast garden?” I said.
Without exactly replying to my remark, which was put half in the manner
of a question, he said, partly to himself, “The slight fingers of April.
Do you notice how delicate everything is?”
I had noticed. The air was full of suggestion, the flowers were very
fairylike, the green of the trees very tender.
“Pied April,” said I.
Instead of answering me again he unstrapped the box that now lay beside
him on the grass, opened it and took from it a beautiful Fritillaria.
“There’s one of the April Princesses, if you like,” he said. “There are
not many about here, just an odd one or two; plenty near Oxford though.”
“You know Oxford?” said I.
“Guess again,” he said, smiling. “I’m no Oxford man, but I know the
woods about there well. Please go on working; I’ll talk.”
I was about to look at my watch when he stopped me.
“It’s half-past two,” he said. “The slant of the sun on the leaves ought
to tell you that.”
I was amused, interested in the man; he was so odd and quaint. “I’ve not
eaten my lunch yet,” I said. “Perhaps you’ll share it with me.”
“I was wondering if you’d invite me,” he replied. “I’m rather hungry.”
I had, luckily, enough for two. Slices of ham, some cheese, a loaf of
new bread, and a full flask. Very soon we were eating together like old
friends.
In an inconsequent way he asked me what I thought of the name of Noakes.
I said it was as good as any other.
“Let’s have it Noakes, then,” he said, laughing again. A very merry man.
“About this garden of yours, Mr. Noakes?” I asked.
He tapped his wooden box and said, “If you want to know, I’m a
herbalist. You can scarcely call me a civilised being, except on
occasions when I do go among my fellow men to winter.” He pulled a cap
and a pair of gloves out of his pocket. “My titles to respectability,”
he said.
“And in the Spring?”
“I take to the road with the Coltsfoot and the Butterburrs. I come out
with the first Violet, and the Pussy-cat Willow. I wander, all through
the year, up and down the length and breadth of England, with my box of
herbs. I get my bread and cheese that way—while you draw for pleasure.”
“Partly.”
“It must be for pleasure, or you wouldn’t take so much pains. I suppose
you think I’m a very disgraceful person, a bad citizen, a worse patriot.
But I know the news of the world better than those who read newspapers.
Although I trade on superstitions, I do no harm.”
“Do you sell your herbs?”
“Colchicum for gout—Autumn Crocus, you know it,” he replied.
“Willow-bark quinine; Violet distilled, for coughs. Not a bad
trade—besides, it keeps me free.”
I hazarded a question. “Tell me—you must observe these things—do swifts
drink as they fly? It has often puzzled me.”
“I don’t know,” said he. “Ask Mother Nature. Some of these things are
the province of professors. I’m not a learned man; just a herbalist.”
At that moment a thrush began to sing in a tree overhead. My friend
cocked his head, just like an animal.
“There’s the wise thrush,” he quoted softly, “he sings his song twice
over.”
“So you read Browning,” I said.
“I have a garret and a library,” he said. “Winter quarters. We shall
meet one day, and you’ll be surprised. I actually possess two dress
suits. It’s a mad world.” He stopped abruptly to listen to the thrush.
“This is better than the Carlton or Delmonico’s, anyhow!”
“What do you do?” I asked. “Go from village to village selling herbs?”
“That’s about it. Lord! Listen to that bird. I heard and saw a
nightingale sing once in a shaw near Ewelme. I think a thrush is the
better musician, though. Yes, I sell my herbs, all sorts and kinds.
Drugs and ointments, very simple I assure you—Hemlock and Poppy to cure
the toothache. Wood Sorrel—full of oxalic acid, you know, like
Rhubarb—for fevers. Aconite for rheumatics—very popular medicine I make
of that, sells like hot cakes in water meadow land, so does Agrimony for
Fen ague. Tansy and Camomile for liver—excellent. Hellebore for
blisters, and Cowslip pips for measles—I’m a regular quack, you see.”
“And it’s worth doing, is it?”
He leaned back, his pipe between his lips, a very contented man. “Worth
doing!” he said. “Worth owning England, with all the wonderful mornings,
and the clean air; worth waking up to the scent of Violets; worth lying
on your back near a Bean field on a summer day; worth seeing the Bracken
fronds uncurl; watching kingfishers; worth having the fields and
hedgerows for a garden, full of flowers always—I should think so. I earn
my bread, and I’m happy, far happier than most men. I can lend a hand at
haymaking, at the harvest; at sheep-shearing, at the cider press, at
hoeing, when I’m tired of my own company. I’ve worked the seines in the
mackerel season on the South coast—do you know the bend of shore by Lyme
and Charmouth? I’ve ploughed in the Lowlands, and found lost sheep in
the Lake Country; caught moles for a living in Norfolk, and cut
Hop-poles in Kent, and Heather in the Highlands.—And I’m not forty, and
I’m never ill.”
[Illustration: THE WEALD OF KENT SHOWING THE COUNTRY LIKE A PATCHWORK
QUILT.]
“It sounds delightful.”
He rose to his feet and gave me his hand.
“We shall meet again,” he said laughing. “Perhaps in the conventional
armour of starched shirts and inky black. For the present—to my work,”
he pointed over his shoulder. “I’m building hen-coops for a widow.
_Hasta luego._”
With that he vanished as quietly as he came. Almost as soon as the trees
had hidden him from my sight, a blackbird began to whistle, then
stopped, and a laugh came out of the woods.
Altogether a very strange man.
I found, when he had gone, that he had written something on a piece of
paper and had pinned it to the tree with a long thorn. It was this:
“I think, very likely, you may not know Ben Jonson’s ‘Gipsy
Benediction.’ If you don’t, accept the offering as a return for my
excellent lunch.
“The faerybeam upon you—
The stars to glisten on you—
A moon of light
In the noon of night,
Till the firedrake hath o’er gone you!
The wheel of fortune guide you;
The boy with the bow beside you;
Run aye in the way
Till the bird of day,
And the luckier lot, betide you.”
He signed, at the foot, “Noakes, Under the Greenwood Tree.” And he
seemed to have written some of his clear laughter into it.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
A COUNTRY LANE: A MEMORY
FROM ABROAD
I was looking at a vision of the world upside down, mirrored in the deep
blue of a still sea. Where the inverted picture of my boat gleamed
white, and the rope that moored her to a tree showed grey, I saw the
dark fir trees growing upside down, the bank of emerald grass looking
more brilliant because of the grey-green lichened rocks; a black rock,
glistening, hung with brown seaweed, made the vision clear, and, over
all, clouds chased each other in the sky, seemingly below me. They were
those round fleecy clouds, like sheep, and they reminded me of something
I could not quite arrest.
A fish swam—dash—across my mirror, another and another, rippling the
sky, the trees, the bank, distorting everything. Then I looked up and
saw a fishing-boat come sailing by with its great orange and tawny sails
all set out to catch the land breeze; and bright blue nets hung out
ready, floating and billowing in the slight wind. There was a creaking
of ropes and a hum of Breton as the sailors talked. From my moorings by
the island I watched her sail—_Saint Nicholas_ she was called, and had a
little figure of the Madonna on her stern. Out of the land-locked
harbour she slipped, tacking to make the neck that led to the outer
harbour, and there she was going to meet other gaily coloured ships and
sail with them to the sardine grounds off the coast of Spain.
After she had passed, leaving her wide white wake in the still waters, I
followed her in my mind, seeing the nets cast and the shimmering silver
fish drawn up, and the long loaves of bread eaten, with wine and onions,
until the waters round me were quiet again, and I could look once more
into my mirror and wonder what it was the flocks of clouds said to my
brain.
It came in a flash. Big Claus said to Little Claus, “After I threw you
into the river in the sack, where did you get all those sheep and
cattle?” And Little Claus said, “Out of the river, brother, for there I
came upon a man in beautiful meadows, and he was tending the sheep and
cattle. There were so many that he gave me a flock of sheep and a herd
of cattle for myself, and I drove them out of the river and up here to
graze.” Now they were looking over the bridge at the time, and the
description Little Claus gave of the meadows and the sheep below in the
river made the mouth of Big Claus begin to water with greed. As they
looked, Little Claus pointed excitedly at the water, and said, “Look,
brother, there go a flock of sheep under your very nose.” It was,
really, nothing but the reflection of the clouds in the water, but Big
Claus was too interested to think of this, and he implored his brother
to tie him in a sack and push him into the water, that he, too, might
get some of these wonderful herds. This Little Claus did, and that was
the end of Big Claus.
How well I remember now—so well that when I looked into the water and
saw the fleecy clouds go floating by, the picture changed for me and I
saw an English country lane, and a small boy sitting under a hedge out
of a summer shower, and he was deep in dreams over an old brown volume
of “Grimm’s Fairy Tales.”
How wonderful the lane smelt after the rain! The Honeysuckle filled the
air and mingled with the smell of warm wet earth. It was a deep lane,
with the high hedges grown so rank and wild that they nearly crossed
overhead, and the curved arms of the Dog Roses criss-crossed against the
patch of turquoise sky. The thin new thread of a single wire crossed
high overhead, shining like gold in the sun. It went, I knew, to the
Coast Guard Station below me, and I remember clearly how I used to
wonder what flashed across the wire to those fortunate men: news of
thrilling wrecks, of smugglers creeping round the point, of battle-ships
put out to sea, and other tales the sailors told me.
The lane was deep and twisted, and so narrow that when a flock of sheep
was driven down it, the dogs ran across the backs of the sheep to head
off stragglers. What a cloud of white dust they made, and how thick it
lay on the leaves and flowers until the rain washed them clean again.
On the day of which I was dreaming, there had been one of those sharp
angry storms, very short and fierce, with growling thunder in the
distance, and purple and deep grey clouds flying along with torn,
rust-coloured edges. I had sheltered under a quick-set hedge (set, that
is, while the thorn was alive—quick, and bent into a kind of wattle
pattern by men with sheepskin gloves) and where I sat, under a wayfaring
tree (the Guelder Rose), the lane had a double turn, fore and aft, so
that a space of it was quite shut off, like an island. I had my garden
here and knew all the flowers and the butterflies.
On this day the rain washed the Foxgloves and made them gay and bright,
each bell with a sparkling drop of water on its lips. The Brambles had
long rows of drops on them, all shining like jewels, until a
yellow-hammer perched on one of the arched sprays and shook all the
raindrops off in a fluster of bright light.
Behind me, and in front, trailing Black Bryony twisted its arms round
Traveller’s Joy, Honeysuckle and Wild Roses. Here and there, pink and
white Bindweed hung, clinging to the hedge. By me, on the bank,
Monkshood, Our Lady’s Cushion, and Butterfly Orchis grew, all shining
with the rain, and the Silverweed shone better than them all.
Presently came two great cart horses, their trappings jingling, down my
lane, and on the back of one, riding sideways, a small boy, swaying as
he rode. His face was a perfect country poem, blue eyes, shaded by a
battered hat of felt, into the band of which a Dog Rose was stuck. His
hair, like Corn, shone in the sun, and his face, red and freckled, a
blue shirt, faded by many washings and sun-bleached to a fine colour,
thick boots, a hard horny young fist, and in his mouth a long stem of
feathery grass. He looked as much part of Nature as the flowers
themselves. There was some sort of greeting as he passed. I can see the
group now; the slow patient horses, the boy, the yellow canvas coat
slung to dry across the horse’s neck, a straw basket, from which a
bottle neck protruded, hitched on the horse’s collar. They passed the
bend in the lane and the boy began to whistle an aimless tune, but very
good to hear. And it was England, every bit of it, the kind of thing one
hungers for when a southern sun is beating pitilessly on one’s head, or
when the rains in the tropics bring out overpowering scents, heavy and
stifling.
So I might have dreamed on about this garden lane I carried in my mind,
had not the tide turned and little waves begun to lop the sides of my
boat.
I slipped my moorings, shipped the oars, and sailed home quietly on the
tide under a clear blue sky from which all the clouds had vanished like
my dream.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
IV
FIELDS
A man will tell you how he has walked to such and such a place “across
the fields,” with an air of saying, “You, I suppose, not knowing the
country, painfully pursue the highroad.” He has the look of one who has
made the discovery that it is good and wise to leave the beaten track,
the cart rut, and the plain and obvious road, and has adventured in a
daring spirit from stile to stile, from gate to ditch, where only the
knowing ones may go. He is generally so occupied in the pride of
reaching his destination by these means, that he has had little time to
look about him and enjoy the expanse of country. For all that, he is a
man after my own heart for, in a sense, he becomes part owner of England
with me as soon as he puts his leg across a stile and begins to cast an
eye across country.
There is an extraordinary satisfaction in following a footpath, that is
made doubly sweet if one sucks in the joy of the day, and the blitheness
of that through which we pass. To be knee-high in a bean field in flower
is as good a thing as I know, more especially if it be on a hillside
overlooking the sea.
I sat once on the polished rail of a stile (very well made with cross
arms to hold by, like two short step-ladders, each with one long arm)
and looked at a path I had taken that lay through a field of whispering
oats. They seemed to hold a thousand secrets that they passed from ear
to ear all down the field, and when the breeze came, and blew birds
across the hedge, the whole field swayed, showing a rustling, silken
surface, as if it enjoyed a great joke. The Poppies and Cornflowers and
the White Convolvulus had no part in the conversation of the Oats, but
field mice had, and ran across the path hurrying like urgent messengers,
and once a mole nosed its way from the earth by my stile and vanished
grumbling—like some gruff old gentleman—along the hedgerow. I never saw
a field laugh as much as that field, or be so frivolous, or so feminine.
The field at my back was more like a great lady in a green velvet gown,
embroidered with Daisies. There, at the bottom of the field, was a pond
like a bright blue eye in the green, and lazy cattle, red and white,
stood in it, while others lay under a chestnut tree near by.
Down in the valley, a long undulating spread before me, fields of
different hues, some green, some brown, some golden with ripe Corn, lay
baked in the heat, quivering under a calm blue sky. In one field a man
was sharpening a scythe with a whetstone—the rasp came floating up to me
clearly, and presently he began to open a field of wheat for the reaping
machine I could see, with men round her, under a clump of trees. Next to
this field was a narrow strip of coarse grass all aglow with Buttercups,
then a wide triangular field, with a pit in the corner of it, snowed
over with Daisies, and then a farm looking like a toy place, neat with
white painted railings, and a dovecote, and a long barn covered over
with yellow Stone Crop. I could see—all in miniature—the farmer come out
of his house door, beckon to a dog, and walk past a row of Hollyhocks
and a flush of pink Sweet Williams, open the gate and cross a road to
the Corn-field. The dog leapt ahead of him, barking joyously.
[Illustration: POPPIES IN SURREY.]
A little further down, and cut off partly from view by the May tree that
sheltered me, was a village, white and grey, sheltered by Elm trees. In
the midst of the handful of cottages the square-towered flint church
stood with Ivy on the tower and dark Yews in the churchyard. The graves
in the churchyard looked like the Daisies in the distant field, as if
they grew there. At the back of the church, and facing the high road,
was a line of trees from whence came an incessant noise of rooks.
Very few things moved on the high road, a lumbering waggon, the doctor’s
trap, a bicycle, and then the carrier’s cart with a man I knew driving
it, a very pleasant man who preached in the Sion Chapel on Sundays and
chalked up texts in the tilt of his waggon—but with a shrewd eye to
business: a man who never forgave a debt.
As I sat on my stile I felt this was all mine: no person there knew the
beauty of it as I did, or cared to capture its sweetness as I did. No
one but I saw the field of Oats laugh, or cared to note the business of
the dragon fly, or the flashing patterns of the butterflies. I had seen
these fields turned up, rich and brown, under the plough, and tender
green when the seeds came up, and waving green, and gold when they bore
their harvest of Corn, or silver and green with roots and red with
Beets. I had counted the sheep on the hillsides, and watched the cattle
stray in a long line to be milked at milking time, and though I did not
farm an acre of it, I owned it with my heart, and gathered its harvest
with my eyes.
Every field footpath had its story, the road was rich in old romance,
and hidden by the trees at the head of the valley was the big house
where my hostess lived and with a loving hand directed all this little
world—but I doubt if she owned it more than I.
To end all this, comes a little maid through the Oats, almost hidden by
them, her face quivering with tears because of a misplaced trust in a
bunch of Nettles. So we apply Dock leaves and a penny, and a farthing’s
worth of country wisdom, and part friends—I to the head of the valley,
she to her father’s farm on the other side of the hill.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
V
EPISODE OF THE CONTENTED TAILOR
Not a hundred yards out of a certain village I came across a little man
dressed in grey. We were alone on the road, we were going in the same
direction, and I came to learn that he travelled with as little purpose
as I.
As soon as I saw his face, his jaunty walk, his knapsack and his stick,
I knew him for a friend.
I hailed him. He stopped, smiled pleasantly, and fell in with my stride.
We soon found a mutual bond of esteem. It appeared we were out in search
of adventures.
He explained to me, quite simply, that he was not going anywhere, and
that he proposed to be some four months about it.
“Just walking about looking at things,” he volunteered.
“That is my case,” I replied.
“I’m a tailor, sir,” said he.
“Having a look at the cut of the country?”
He gave a little friendly nod.
“And do you tailor as you go along?” I asked, for I had never met a
travelling tailor before: tinkers galore; haberdashers aplenty; patent
medicine men a few; sailors; old soldiers (the worst); apothecaries I
have mentioned; gentlemen, many; ploughboys, purse thieves, one or two,
and ugly customers—they were in a dark lane—but a tailor, never. It
seemed all the world could tread the high road but a tailor. Then I
remembered my fairy tales—“Seven at a Blow”—and laughed aloud.
“I’ve given up my trade,” he explained, as we began to mount the hill.
“No more sitting on a bench for me in the spring or summer. I do a bit
in the winter, but I’m a free man on two pounds ten a week.”
And he was young—forty at the most.
“Put by?” said I.
He smiled again. “Not quite, sir. I had a little bit put by, but a
brother of mine went to Australia, and made a fortune—he died, poor Tom,
and left his money to me and my sister. Two pound ten a week for each of
us.”
“And it has brought you—this,” I explained, pointing with my stick at
the expanse of country. “It’s like a romance.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Then you read romances?” I asked quickly.
“I read all I can lay hands on,” he replied. “I’m living just as my
sister and I dreamed we’d live if ever something wonderful happened.”
“And it has happened?”
“You’re right, sir. My sister lives in the little cottage I bought with
my savings. She’s got all she wants—all anybody might want, you might
say. A cottage, six-roomed, all white, with a Pink Rose growing over the
porch, and a canary in a cage in the parlour. Then there’s a garden, and
a bit of orchard, and bees and a river at the bottom of the little
meadow, and a Catholic Church within a stone’s throw—so it’s all right.
She’s a rare good gardener, is my sister.”
“I envy you both,” I said.
He looked me up and down for a moment before speaking. “No cause for you
to do that, I expect, sir.”
“Well, you know what you want, and you’ve got it.”
We had reached the crest of the hill now after a longish climb. It was a
hot day and I proposed a rest. Besides, it was one o’clock and I was
hungry.
I had four hard boiled eggs, and he had bread and cheese—we divided our
goods evenly, and ate comfortably under a hedge in a field.
“I’ve often sat on my bench,” he said, “and looked out at the sun in the
dusty street and wondered if I should ever be able to sit out in it on
the grass and have nothing to do. We used to go for a day in the
country, I and my sister, whenever I could spare the money, and it was a
holiday. You wouldn’t believe what the sight of green fields and trees
meant to me and my sister: you see the hedgerows were the only garden we
could afford, and we could ill-afford that. My sister used to talk about
the Roses she’d have, and the Carnations, and the Sunflowers and Asters,
when our ship came home. It came home—think of that.” He stretched his
limbs luxuriously. “And here we are with everything, and more.”
“And more?” I asked.
“Well, you see, it is more, somehow. I’m ‘me’ now—do you follow the
idea? I never knew what it was to be on my own: just ‘me.’ I can lie
abed now as long as I want to, I can wear what I like, do what I like.
And I’ve a garden of my own.”
“But you don’t stop there,” I said.
“Well,” he said, “I wonder if you’d know what I meant if I said that a
garden and sitting about is a bit too much for me for the present. I
want to walk and walk in the open air, and see things, and stretch my
legs a bit to get rid of twenty odd years of the bench. I want to run up
the top of hills and shout because—well, because I feel as if I had a
right to shout when the sun is shining.”
“I quite understand that,” I said.
“And then,” he went on, and his face showed the joy he felt, “everything
is so wonderful. Look at that village we came through: those people
there feel the same as you and me. They’ve got to express themselves
somehow, so they grow flowers right out into the road, just as a gift to
you and me. A sort of something comes to them that they must have
flowers at the front door. Whenever I see a good garden, full of Pinks
and Roses and Larkspur, I get a bed at that cottage, if I can. I’ve
slept all over the place, all over England, you might say; and cheap,
too.”
“That was a beautiful village, below there,” I said.
He nodded wisely. “Seems as if they’d decorated the street on purpose to
make the cottages look as if they grew like the flowers. All the porches
covered with Honeysuckle and Roses, and everlasting Peas, and flowers up
against the windows. I’ve a perfect craze for flowers—can’t think where
I get it from.”
“You are the real gardener,” said I.
“I believe I am,” he said. “And why I took to tailoring beats me, now.
My father was a butcher.”
I pointed over my shoulder towards the village. “Do you live in a place
like that?” I asked.
“Better than that,” he answered proudly. “It took me nearly two years to
find the place my sister and I had dreamed of. We wanted a cottage in a
county as much like a garden as possible. I found it—in Devonshire; my
eye, it’s a wonderful place, all orchards. In the blossom time it looks
like—well, as if it was expecting somebody, it’s so beautiful.”
“I know,” I said. “Sometimes the country dresses itself as if a lover
were coming.”
“Do you ever read Browning?” he asked. “Because he answers a lot of
questions for me.”
“For me too.”
“Well,” he said, and reddened shyly as he said it; “do you remember the
poem that ends
‘What if that friend happened to be God?’”
I understood perfectly. He was a man of soul, my tailor.
“I expect you are surprised to find I read a lot,” he went on in his
artless way. “But when I was a boy I was in a book shop, before my
father lost all his money, and put me out to be a tailor. My mother was
a lady’s maid, and she encouraged me to read. There was a priest, Father
Brown, who helped me too; it was from him I first learned to love
flowers.”
“Then, as you are a Catholic, you know what to-day is,” said I.
“The twenty-ninth of August. No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t.”
“It is dedicated to one of our patron Saints—there are two for
gardeners—Saint Phocas, a Greek, and Saint Fiacre, an Irishman. To-day
is the day of Saint Phocas.”
The tailor crossed himself reverently.
“I’ll tell you the story if you like.” And, as he lay on his back, I
told him the little legend of
SAINT PHOCAS: PATRON SAINT OF GARDENERS.
“At the end of the third century there lived a certain good man called
Phocas, who had a little dwelling outside the gates of the city of
Sinope, in Pontus. He had a small garden in which he grew flowers and
vegetables for the poor and for his own needs. Prayer, love of his
labour, and care for the things he grew filled his life.”
My tailor interrupted here to ask, apologetically, what manner of garden
Saint Phocas would have.
“Neat beds,” said I—for I had gone into the matter myself—“edged with
box. The flowers and vegetables growing together. Violets, Leeks,
Onions, with Crocuses, Narcissus, and Lilies. Then, in their season,
Gladiolus, Hyacinths, Iris, Poppies, and plenty of Roses. Melons, also,
and Gherkins, Peaches, Plums, Apples and Pomegranates, Olives, Almonds,
Medlars, Cherries, and Pears, of which quite thirty kinds were known. In
his house, on the window ledge, if he had one, he may have grown Violets
and Lilies in window pots, for they did that in those days.”
“Now, isn’t that interesting?” said the tailor. “My sister will care to
know that. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to find her putting a statue
of Saint Phocas over the door. She’s all for figures.”
“I’m afraid,” said I, “there will be some trouble over that. There is a
statue of him in Saint Mark’s in Venice, a great old man with a fine
beard, dressed like a gardener, and holding a spade in his hand. There’s
one of him, too, in the Cathedral at Palermo, but I have never seen them
copied. Now I must tell you the rest of the story.
“There were days, you know, when Christians were hunted out and killed.
One evening there came to the house of the Saint, two strangers. It was
the habit of this good man to give of what he had to all travellers,
food, rest, water to bathe their feet, and a kindly welcome. On this
occasion the Saint performed his hospitable offices as usual—set the
strangers at his board, prepared a meal for them, and led them
afterwards to a place where they might sleep. Before going to rest they
told him their errand; they were searching for a certain man of the name
of Phocas, a Christian, and, having found him, they were to slay him.
When they were asleep, the Saint, after offering up his prayers, went
into his garden and dug a grave in the middle of the flower beds.
“The morning came, and the strangers prepared to depart, but the Saint,
standing before them, told them he was the very man whom they sought. A
horror seized them that they should have eaten with the man they had set
out to kill, but Saint Phocas, leading them to the grave among the
flowers, bid them do their work. They cut off his head, and buried him
in his own garden, in the grave he had dug.”
[Illustration: PORCHES GROWN OVER WITH HONEYSUCKLE AND ROSES AT BROADWAY
IN THE COTSWOLDS.]
The little tailor was silent. I lit my pipe, and began to put my traps
together.
Then he spoke. “I couldn’t do that, you know. Those martyrs—by gum!”
“Death,” said I, “was life to them. Their life was only a preparation
for death.”
The tailor sat up. “My sister’s like that,” he said. “She’s bought a
tombstone—think of that. Said she’d like to have it by her. She’s a one
for a bargain, if you like; saw this tombstone marked ‘Cheap,’ in a
stonemason’s yard down our way, and went in at once to ask the price.
She’d price anything, my sister would. You’ve only got to mark a thing
down ‘Cheap’ and she’s after the price in a minute.”
“How did the tombstone come to be marked ‘cheap’?” I asked, laughing
with him.
“It was this way,” said the tailor. Then he turned, in his inconsequent
way to me. “I wonder,” he said, “if, as you’re so kind as to take an
interest, you’d care to see our cottage. We’d be proud, my sister and I,
if you would come. If you are just walking about for pleasure, perhaps
you’d come down as far as that one day and—and, well, sir, it’s very
humble, but we’d do our best.”
“When shall you be there?” I said. “Because I want to come very much.”
“I’m going back; I’m on my way now,” he said; “I always go back two or
three times in the summer just to tell her the news. I tell her what’s
happened, and what flowers they grow where I’ve been. If you would
really come, sir, perhaps you’d come in three weeks from now, if you
have nothing better to do. I’d let her know.”
“Then she could tell me the story of the tombstone herself?” I said.
It ended at that. He wrote the address for me in my sketch-book, and
took his leave of me in characteristic fashion.
“I hope I’m not taking a liberty,” he said, as he jerked his knapsack
into a comfortable place between his shoulders.
“There’s nothing I should like better,” said I.
“You’ll like the garden,” he said as an inducement.
And this was how I came to hear the story of the “Tailor’s Sister’s
Tombstone.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VI
THE BLUEBELL WOOD AND THE CALM
STONE DOG
Man is an autobiographical animal, he speaks only from his thimbleful of
human experience, and the I, I, I, of his talk drops out like an
insistent drip of water. Even the knowledge we gain from books has to be
grafted on to the knowledge we have of life before it bears fruit in our
minds. Like patient clerks we are always adding up the columns of facts,
fancies, and ideas, and arriving at the very tiny total at the end of
the day.
In order to give themselves scope when they wish to soliloquise, many
authors address their conversation to a cat, a grandfather clock, a dog,
a picture on the wall, or what-not. Cats, I think, have the preference.
I have often wondered what Crome, the painter, said to his cat when he
pulled hairs out of her to make paint-brushes; or what Doctor Johnson
said to his cat Hodge, about Boswell. Having explained this much, I may
easily be forgiven for repeating the conversation I had with a Stone Dog
who sat on his haunches outside the door of a woodman’s cottage.
The cottage stood on the edge of a wood, and was, as I shall point out,
a remnant of departed glory, of which the dog was the most pertinent
reminder.
A cottage on the borders of a wood is in itself one of the most valuable
pictures for a romance. A woodcutter may be in league with goodness
knows how many fairies, elves, and witches. It is a place where heroes
meet heroines; where kings in disguise eat humble pie; where dukes, lost
in hunting a white stag, meet enchanted princesses.
The wood, of which I speak, was once, years ago—about three hundred
years—part of the park of Tanglewood Court, an extensive property, an
old house, a great family possession.
Gone, like last winter’s snow, were the family of Bois; gone the pack;
gone the glories of the great family; gone the portraits, the armour,
the very windows of Tanglewood Court, of which but a fine ruin remained.
And the lane, a mere cart track, was all that was left of the fine sweep
of drive to the house; and a tangled undergrowth under ancient trees all
that stood for the grand avenue down which my Lord Bois had once ridden
so madly. They call the lane Purgatory Lane, and they tell a story of
wild doings and of a beautiful avenue, that cannot have its place here.
The great gates that once swung open to admit the carriage of Perpetua
Bois (of the red hair, the full voluptuous figure, the smile Sir Peter
Lely painted) were now two stone stumps at the feet of which two slots,
green and worn, showed where the hinges had been. These fine gates once
boasted, on the top of stone pillars, the greyhounds of Bois in stone.
One of these dogs had been rescued from the undergrowth by the
woodcutter, the other lies broken and bramble-covered in the wood. I
wonder if they miss each other.
So you see I was addressing myself to a high-born Jacobean dog.
This dog, very calm and dignified, with a stone tail and a back worn
smooth by wind and weather, sat with his back to the cottage which had
been built out of the remains of the old stone lodge by a gentleman of
the name of Bellington, who was afterwards found drowned in the lake.
That lake held many secrets, indeed, some said (the woodcutter’s wife
told me this) it held Lady Perpetua’s jewels. That did not concern me,
for it held for me the finer jewels of Water Lilies that grew there in
profusion, though I will not deny that the idea of Lady Perpetua gave an
added touch of romance. How often had the clear water of the lake
reflected her satin-clad figure and the forms of her little toy
spaniels?
It so happening, I sat by the Stone Dog, on a wooden seat, to eat my
lunch one day, and dropped into conversation with him, after a bite or
two, in the most natural way in the world.
There was the wood in front of us, blue-purple with wild Hyacinths.
There was the old cottage behind clothed with rambling Creepers; a
carpet of smooth rabbit-worn grass at our feet; a profusion of
Primroses, Wind Flowers, and budding trees before our eyes. There was
also the enchanting hum of wild bees (like those wild bees Horace knew,
that sought the mountain of Matinus in Calabria, and there “laboriously
gathered the grateful thyme”) to soothe us in our solitude.
I addressed him then, “Stone Dog,” I said, “this is a very beautiful
wood. Nature, laughing at the ghosts of the Bois family, steel-clad,
periwigged, or patched, has reclaimed her own.”
The dog answered me never a word but kept his gaze fixed in front of him
as if he saw visions in the wood.
“This was a Park once,” said I, “the pleasure-ground of great folk,
where they might sport in playful dalliance”—I thought that sounded
rather Jacobean.
But, as I looked at him, it seemed, as though he listened for the sound
of wheels, and turned his sightless eyes to look for the figure of Lady
Perpetua.
“She was very fair,” I said, understanding him, knowing that he had seen
many generations drive through the gates he sat to guard. “She would
come down to the lodge-keeper’s house to take her breakfast draught of
small ale. Poor Lady Perpetua, she was a good house wife, and saw to the
pickling of Nasturtium buds, and Lime Tree buds, and Elder roots; and
ordered the salting of the winter beef; and looked to it that plenty of
Parsnips were stored to eat with it. What sights you must have seen!”
Even as I talked there emanated from the Stone Dog some atmosphere of
the past, and we were once more in a fair English park, with its
orangeries, and houses of exotic plants, and its maze, and leaden
statues, and cut yew trees, and lordly peacocks. The great trees had
been cut down, and the timber sold; acres of land, once grazing ground
for herds of deer, were ploughed; here, in front of us, was the tangled
wood, a corner of what was, once, a wild garden—a fancy of Lady
Perpetua’s, no doubt, who loved solitudes, and sentimental poetry:
“I could not love thee, dear, so much;
Loved I not honour more.”
Perhaps it was here she met young Hervey; perhaps it was here Lord Bois
found them, cutting initials on one of those very trees, G. H. and P. B.
and two hearts with an arrow through them. Ah! then the smile Sir Peter
Lely painted faded to a quiver of the lips. Lord Bois looked at the
trembling mouth and his glance flew to the initials on the tree. “So
this is why, madam,” I could hear him say, “you took to sylvan glades
like a timid deer; so this is why you coaxed me up to London, leaving
you alone—but, not unprotected.” I could see his sneering bow to young
Hervey—a bow that was a blow.
And all the while I was only seeing with the Stone Dog’s eyes. There was
just the rippling sea of wild Hyacinths, the pale gold of the Primroses,
the innocent white of the wood Anemones—like fairies’ washing—and the
purple haze of bursting buds.
Once the Stone Dog had looked along an avenue and had seen a vista of
Tanglewood Court, and smooth terraces, and bright beds of flowers, with
Lords and Ladies walking up and down, taking the air, discussing fruit
trees, and Dutch gardening, and glass hives for bees. Now, he saw
nothing but the woods all brimming with Spring flowers: a garden made by
Nature.
And then I thought I saw one Bluebell detach itself from its fellows and
come wafting to us with a fairy’s message, but it was a bright blue
butterfly who sailed, rejoicing in the sun. Somehow the butterfly
reminded me of the Lady Perpetua, soft and smiling, and fluttering in
the sun: as if she had returned to her woods in that guise to hover near
the tree, the trysting-place, on which the initials were cut.
I said as much to the Stone Dog, but received no answer.
“Stone Dog,” I said, “England is a very wonderful place: every park,
every field, every little wood is full of stories. I cannot pass a park
gate without thinking of the men and women who have been through it.
What a Garden of History the whole place is! I’ll warrant a Roman has
kissed a Saxon girl in this very place, for there’s a camp not far
off—perhaps you have seen twinkling ghostly watch-fires gleaming in the
night. Young Hervey’s dead, but you never saw him die; they fought in
the garden on the smooth grass, and the story goes that he slipped, and
Bois ran him through as he lay on the grass. What flowers grow over his
head now? And Perpetua is dead. They say she ran out and saw her lover
dead, and bared her breast to her husband’s sword. The grass was wet
with her blood when you saw Lord Bois ride madly down the drive, through
the gates, and out into the open country. The smile Sir Peter Lely
painted is carved by the hand of Death. She was only a girl, after all.
Who places flowers on her grave?”
Meanwhile the sun shone on the Bluebells, and struck odd leaves of the
trees, picking them out with a fanciful finger till they shone like
green fires.
Then the idea came to me that this wood held the spirit of Lady Perpetua
fast for ever. The Bluebells were the satin sheen of her dress (blue
like the Lely portrait), the red-brown autumn leaves and the dead
Bracken were her hair; the Wind Flowers, like her body linen; the
Violets, her eyes; the Primroses, her breath; the Cowslips, her golden
ornaments; the Daisy petals like her pure white skin. A gentle breeze
stirred all the flowers together, and—behold! there she was, alive. The
wood was yielding up her secret, as woods and flowers will do to those
who love them.
So the Stone Dog and I had a bond of sympathy between us, the bond of
old memories, and the wood united us with its store of romance and
beauty: and he who loves wild flowers and woods, as well as walled
gardens and trees clipped in images, may gather store of pictures for
his mind.
So the afternoon passed in this pleasant manner, and I took opportunity
to speak once more to the Stone Dog before the woodcutter’s children
came home from school to spoil our peace.
[Illustration: BLUEBELLS IN SURREY.]
I said, “There is no man so poor but he can afford to take pleasure in
Bluebells, and, even if he live in a town, there are wild flowers for
sale in the streets, and a bunch of Spring to be bought for a penny. And
there is no man so rich that he can wall up the treasures of heaven, or
build his walls so high but a Rose will peep over the edge. Poor and
rich are free of their thoughts, and there are thoughts and enough to
spare, in a hedgerow or a wood. Uncaged birds sing best, and wild
flowers yield the purest scents. You and I are fellow dreamers, and this
wood is our garden, and these birds our orchestra, and this grass our
carpet; and even when I am underneath the brown earth I love so well,
you will sit here and listen for the sound of carriage wheels, and
wonder if you will catch a glimpse of red hair and a satin dress through
the long-silent avenue. There are mountains, Stone Dog, that still feel
the pressure of the foot of Moses; and hills under which Roman soldiers
lie; and there are woods growing where orchard gardens were; and gardens
planted where the wild boar once ravaged.”
After I had said this came wild shouts, and the laughter of children,
and a great clatter as the four children of the woodcutter came running
from the village school.
As I left that place, and turned, before a bend of the road shut out the
sight of the wood, I saw the sea of Bluebells, and the sky above, the
Primroses and the Wind Flowers and last year’s leaves all melt into one.
The figure they made was the figure of Lady Perpetua standing there
smiling. Then I heard the wheels of a carriage on the road, and I could
have sworn I saw the Stone Dog turn his head.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VII
THE TAILOR’S SISTER’S TOMBSTONE
I was on the hill over against the village where my friend the tailor
lived, and was preparing to descend into the valley to inquire the
whereabouts of his cottage, when one of those sharp summer storms came
on, the sky being darkened as if a hand had drawn a curtain across it,
and the entire village lit by a vivid, unnatural light, like limelight
in its intensity.
Turning about, as the first great drops fell, to look for shelter, I
spied a rough shed by the wayside, shut in on three sides with gorse,
wattle and mud, and roofed over with heather thatch. Into this I
scuttled and found a comfortable seat on a sack placed on a pile of
hurdles.
It was evidently a place used by a shepherd for a store-house of the
implements of his craft. At the back of a shed was one of those houses
on wheels shepherds use in the lambing season; besides this were
hurdles, sacks, several rusty tins, and a very rusty oil-stove. All very
primitive, and possessed of a nice earthy smell. It gave me a sudden
desire to be a shepherd.
Looking down into the valley I saw men running for shelter, hastily
pulling their coats over their shoulders as they ran. In a field on the
far side of the valley they were carting Wheat, and I saw two men
quickly unhitch the cart horses, and lead them away to some place hidden
from me by trees.
The village was buried in orchards, and lay along the bank of a quickly
running river that caught a glint of the weird light here and there
between the trees like a path of shining silver. A squat church tower
stuck up among the red roofs.
For a moment the scene shone in the fierce light, then the low growling
thunder broke into a tremendous crash, and the light was gone in an
instant. Then the rain blotted out everything.
The hiss of the rain on the dry heather thatch over my head was good
enough company, and it was added to, soon, by the entrance of seven
swallows that flew into my shelter and sat twittering on a beam just
inside the opening. Then came an inky darkness, broken violently by a
blare of lightning as if some hand had rent the dark curtain across in a
rage. A great torn jagged edge of blue-white light streamed across the
valley, showing everything in wet, glistening detail.
Only that morning I had been reading by the wayside an account of a
storm in the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. It came very pat for the day.
It was at the time when Cellini rode from Paris carrying two precious
vases on a mule of burden, lent him to go as far as Lyons, by the Bishop
of Pavia. When they were a day’s journey from Lyons, it being almost ten
o’clock at night, such a terrific storm burst upon them that Cellini
thought it was the day of judgment. The hailstones were the size of
Lemons; and the event caused him to sing psalms and wrap his clothes
about his head. All the trees were broken down, all the cattle deprived
of life, and a great many shepherds were killed.
I was still engaged in picturing this when the sky above me grew
lighter, the rain fell less heavily, and, in a very short time, all that
was left of the storm was a distant sound as of a giant murmuring, a
dark blot of rain cloud on the distant hills, and the ceaseless patter
of dripping trees. The sun shone out and showed the village and
landscape all fresh and shining. Then, as I looked, against the dark
bank of distant clouds, a rainbow arched in glorious colours, one step
of the arch on the hills tailing into mist, and one in the corn field
below. The sight of the rainbow with its wonderful beauty, and its great
message of hope thrilled me, as it always does. I do not care what the
scientist tells me of its formation: he has not added one atom to my
feeling, with all his knowledge. It remains for me the sign of God’s
compact with man.
“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make
between me and you, and every living creature that is with you,
for perpetual generations.
“I set my bow in a cloud, and it shall be for a token of a
covenant between me and the earth.
“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.
“And I will remember my covenant which is between me and you,
and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no
more become a flood to destroy all flesh.
“And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it,
that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and
every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”
I learnt to love that when I was a child, and being still, in many ways,
the same child, I look upon a rainbow and think of God remembering his
covenant: and it makes me very happy.
Now as the storm was over, and I had no further excuse for stopping in
my shelter, I took my knapsack again on to my shoulder and walked down,
across two fields of grass, round the high hedges of two orchards, and
came out into the road in the valley, about two hundred yards distant
from the village church. It was about four of the afternoon.
I was about to turn towards the village to ask my best way to the
tailor’s cottage, when who should turn the bend of the road but the
tailor himself with all the air of looking for some one.
I grasped him warmly by the hand, and he held mine in a good grip like
the good fellow he was, saying, “I was looking about for you, sir,
thinking you might have forgotten my direction” (as indeed, I had), “and
knowing you would most likely go to the village to inquire, I was on my
way there.”
As we turned to walk down the road away from the church, the tailor
informed me his sister was all agog to see me, but very nervous that I
might think theirs too poor a place to put up with, and she had, at the
last moment, implored him to take me to the inn instead.
The affection I had gained for the little man in my few hours’ talk with
him made me certain I should be happy in his company, and I laughed at
his fears.
“Why, man,” said I, “I have walked a good hundred miles to see you, do
you think it likely I shall turn away at the last minute?”
“There,” cried the tailor, “I told her so. She’s a small body, you’ll
understand, sir, and gets worried at times.”
We turned a corner and I saw before me one of the prettiest cottages I
have ever seen. A low, sloping roof of thatch, golden brown where it had
been mended, rich brown and green in the older part. The body of the
cottage was white, with a fine tree of Cluster Roses, the Seven Sisters,
I think it is called, growing over the porch and on the walls. The
garden was one mass of bloom, a wonderful garden—as artists say, “juicy”
with colour. Standard Roses, Sweet Williams, Hollyhocks, patches of
Violas, Red Hot Pokers, Japanese Anemones, a hedge of Sweet Peas “all
tip-toe for a flight” as Keats has it, clumps of Dahlias just coming
out, with red pots on sticks to catch the earwigs; an old Lavender
hedge, grey-green. A rain butt painted green; round a corner, three
blue-coloured beehives; and all about, such flowers—I could not mention
half of them. Bushes of Phlox, for instance; and great brown-eyed
Sunflowers cracked across with wealth of seed; and tall spikes of
Larkspur like the summer skies: and Carnations couched in their grey
grass or tied to sticks. A worn brick pathway leading through it all.
The tailor watched the effect on me anxiously.
I stood with one hand on the gate and drank in the beauty of it. Set, as
the place was, in a bower of orchards, it looked like a jewelled nest, a
place out of a fairy tale, everything complete. The diamond panes of the
windows with neat muslin curtains behind them, with fine Geraniums in
very red pots on the window-sill, were like friendly eyes beaming
pleasantly at the passing world. To a tired traveller making his way
upon that road, such a sight would bring delight to his eyes, and cause
him, most certainly, to pause before the glad garden. If he were a
romantic man he would take off his hat, as men do abroad to a wayside
Calvary, in honour of the peace that dwelt over all.
Like a rich illuminated page the garden glowed among the trees—like a
jewel of many colours it shone in its velvet nest.
The tailor could restrain himself no longer. He said, “As neat as
anything you’ve seen, sir?”
“Perfect,” said I. “As much as a man could want.”
He walked before me down the garden path and called, “Rose,” through the
open door.
In another minute I was shaking hands with the tailor’s sister.
In appearance she was as spotlessly clean as her muslin curtains. She
was a tiny woman of about forty-five, very quick in her movements, with
a little round red face and very bright blue eyes. She wore, in my
honour, a black silk dress, and a black silk apron and a large cornelian
brooch at her neck.
“Pray step inside, sir,” she said throwing open the door of the parlour.
When I was seated at tea with these people I kept wondering where they
had learnt the refinement and taste everywhere exhibited. For one thing
the few family possessions were good, and there was no tawdry rubbish. A
grandfather clock, its case shining with polishing, ticked comfortably
in one corner of the room. An old-fashioned sofa filled the window
space. We sat upon Windsor chairs with our feet on a rag carpet. Most of
the household gods were over or upon the mantelpiece, most prominent
among which was a really fine landscape, hung in the centre. I inquired
whose work this might be.
One had only to look in the direction of any object to get its history
from the tailor.
“I bought that, sir,” he said, when I was looking at the picture, “of a
man near Norwich. It cost me half a crown.”
“Three shillings,” said the sister. Then to me, “He takes a sixpence
off, now and again, sir, because he’s jealous of my bargains; aren’t
you, Tom?”
Tom smiled at her and winked at me. “She will have her bit of fun,” he
said.
“But it’s a fine picture,” said I.
“Proud to have you say so,” he answered; “I like it, and the man didn’t
seem to care about it. He was going to the Colonies and parting with a
lot of odds and ends. I bought the brass candlesticks off him at the
same time—a shilling.”
I could see why the little man liked the picture, for the same reason I
liked it myself. It was of the Norwich School, a broad open landscape
painted with care and finish of detail, and with much of the charming
falsity of light common among certain pictures of that time. On the left
was a cottage whose garden gave on to the road, a cottage almost buried
under two great trees. The road wound past, out of the shadows of the
trees, and vanished over a hill. The middle distance showed a great
expanse of country dotted with trees with the continuation of the road
running through the vale until it was lost in a wood. A sky of banked up
clouds hung over all. Right across the middle of the picture was a
wonderfully painted gleam of sunlight, flicking trees, meadows, and the
road into bright colours; the rest of the picture being subdued to give
this effect. Up the road, coming towards the cottage, was a small man in
a three-cornered hat, knee breeches, and long skirted coat. This figure
dated the picture a little earlier than I had at first thought it.
“That’s me,” said the tailor, pointing to the figure. “That’s what Rose
said as soon as I brought it home, ‘Why that’s you, Tom.’”
“I did, sir, that’s just what I said. ‘Why Tom, that’s you,’ I said.”
“And so it is,” said the tailor.
Half a crown! Few of us are rich enough in taste to have bought it.
After tea I begged leave to see the garden. “And, Miss Rose,” I said,
“to hear about the tombstone, please.”
She put her small fat hands to her face and laughed and laughed. “He’s
been and told you that, sir? Well, I never did!”
[Illustration: A COTTAGE GARDEN.]
We went out of the back door and into a second flower garden rivalling
the one in front for a display of colour. There, sure enough, stood the
tombstone, grey and upright, planted in a bed of flowers. They seemed to
hurl themselves at the grim object, wave upon wave of coloured joy
washing the feet of the emblem of Death.
“There she is,” said the tailor’s sister proudly.
“Please tell me about it,” said I, wondering at her cheerfulness.
“You see, sir,” she began, “before Tom and I came into our fortune, and
got rich——”
Multi-millionaires, I thought, could you but hear that! But they were
rich—as rich as any one could be. The flowers in the garden were worth a
kingdom.
“—We used to wonder what we’d do if we ever had a bit of money. Of
course, we never dreamed of anything like this.” Her eyes wandered
proudly over her possessions.
“Yes,” said the tailor, joining in. “Our best dreams never came near
this. I’d seen such places, but never thought to live in one, much less
own one.”
“Well, you see, sir,” said his sister taking up the thread of her story,
“there was one thing I’d always set my mind on—a nice place to lie in
when I was dead. I had a horror of cemeteries, great ugly places, as you
might say, with the tombstones sticking up like almonds in a tipsy cake
pudding, and a lot of dirty children playing about. I lived for ten
years in London, in a room that overlooked one, a most dingy place I
called it. I couldn’t bear to think I’d be popped in with a crowd,
anyhow. Now, a churchyard in the country—that’s quite different.”
“I’d a great fancy for a spot I knew in Kent,” said the tailor. “Dark
Yew trees all round one side, and Daisies over everything, and a seat
near by for people to rest on, coming early to church.”
“Go on, Tom,” said his sister lovingly. “Ar’n’t you satisfied with what
you’ve got?”
He turned to me after putting his arm through his sister’s. “We’ve got
our piece of ground,” he said cheerfully. “I’m going to be planted next
to her, on the left of the church door—well, it’s as good a place as
you’d find anywhere, and people coming out of church will notice us
easily. I’d like to be thought of, after I’m gone.”
Death held no terrors for these people, it seemed, they talked so
happily of it, made such delightful plans to welcome it; robbed it of
all its gloom and horror, its false trappings, its dingy grandeur.
There was a flaunting Red Admiral sunning its wings on the tombstone.
“I never thought,” said the sister, “I should find just what I wanted by
accident. Isn’t it lovely?”
It certainly had a beauty of its own. It was a copy of an early
eighteenth century tombstone, the top in three arches, the centre arch
large, and round, ending in carved scroll work. In the centre of the
arch a cherub was carved, very fat and smiling, with wings on either
side of his head. Then, in good deep-cut lettering, were the words:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROSE BRANDLE
Both these curious people looked at me as I read the lettering. Arm in
arm they looked nice, cheerful, loving friends, a good deal like one
another in the face, very gay and homely, and with a certain sparkling
brightness, like the flowers they loved. To see them standing there
proudly, smiling at the grey tombstone, smiling at me, under the sun, in
the garden so full of life and of growing healthy things, gave me a
sensation that Death was present in friendly guise, a constant welcome
companion to my new friends, and a pleasant image even to myself.
“Second-hand,” said the tailor’s sister, “all except the name, and he
put that in for me at a penny the letter: that came to elevenpence, so I
gave him a shilling to make an even sum.”
“A guinea, as it stands,” said the tailor.
“You like it, sir?” asked his sister anxiously.
“On the contrary,” said I, “I admire it enormously.”
“As soon as I saw it,” she said, “I fell in love with it. It was
standing at the back of the yard among a heap of stones. The sun was
shining on it, and I said to myself, ‘If that’s cheap, it’s as good as
mine.’ The man had cut it out years ago as an advertisement to put in
the front of the yard, and it had a bit of paper pasted on it with his
terms and what not—Funerals in the best style. Distance no object—and
that sort of thing. I asked the price of it and he told me ‘One pound.’
‘Cheap,’ I said, and he told me how ’twas so, since people nowadays like
broken urns and pillars or something plainer, and had given up cherubs,
and death-heads and suchlike. So I put down the money, and he popped it
on a waggon that was coming back this way with a small load of Hay, and
Tom put it up for me in the garden. Now I can die happy, sir.”
I asked her if she had no feelings about Death, and if the idea of
leaving her garden and her cottage was not strange to her.
She replied, in the simplest way possible, being a cheerful religious
woman without a particle of sham in her nature, that when God called her
she was ready and glad to go, and as for the garden she would only go to
another one—far more beautiful.
Her faith, I found afterwards, was of a sweet simple kind, and had been
with her as a child, and remained with her as a woman, untouched by the
least doubt. She heard Mass every morning of her life in the little
church half a mile away, and spoke in loving and familiar tones of her
favourite saints as being friends of hers, though in a higher station of
life. Included in her ideas of heaven was a very distinct belief that
there would be many beautiful flowers and birds, and the pleasure with
which she looked forward to seeing them—in a humble way, as if she might
be one of a crowd in a Public Garden—gave her a quiet dignity and charm,
the equal of which I have seldom met. Her brother, who was always
marvelling at her, had, also, some of her dignity, but a wider, freer
view of things, and the natural gaiety of a bird.
The next morning, as soon as I woke in the fresh clean bedroom they had
made ready for me, I sprang from my bed and went to look out of the
window. The dew was sparkling on the flowers, and their scent came up
sweet and strong; a tubful of Mignonette, at which the bees were busy,
was especially fragrant. As I looked, the tailor’s sister came into the
garden, in a neat lavender-coloured print dress; she carried a missal in
one hand, and a rosary swung in the other. She stood opposite to her
tombstone for a minute, her lips moving softly, and then, after turning
her pleasant face towards the wealth of flowers about her, she bowed
deeply, as if saluting the morning. A little time later I heard the gate
of the front garden swing and shut, and I knew she had gone to hear
Mass.
The garden was left alone, busy in its quiet way; growing, dying,
perpetuating its kind. The bees were industriously singing as they
worked; lordly butterflies danced rigadoons and ravanes over the
flowers; a thrush, after a long hearty tug at a fat worm, swallowed it,
and then, perching on the tombstone, poured out its joy in full clear
notes. And Death was cheated of his sting.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
VIII
THE COTTAGE GARDEN
For the same reason that your town man keeps a pot of Geraniums on his
window-sill, and a caged bird in his house, your countryman plants
bright-coloured flowers by his door, and regales his children with news
of the first cuckoo. They pull as much of Heaven down as will
accommodate itself to their plot of earth.
Any man standing in the centre of however small a space of his personal
ownership—a piece of drugget in a garret, a patch of garden—makes it the
hub of the universe round which the stars spin, on which his world
revolves. Within a hand-stretch of him lie all he is, his intimate
possessions, his scraps of comfort scratched out of the hard earth:
books, pictures, photographs showing the faces of his small world of
friends and his tiny travels—how little difference there is between a
walk through Piccadilly and a journey across Asia: your great traveller
has little more to say than the man who has found Heaven in a penny
bunch of Violets, or heard the stars whisper over St. James’s
Park—within his reach are the things he has paid the price of life for,
and they are the cloak with which he covers his nakedness of soul
against the all-seeing eye he calls his Destiny.
With all this, commenced perhaps in cowardice—for the earth’s brown
crust is too like a grave, the garret floor too like a shell of
wood—your man, town or country, grown to know love of little things,
nurses a seedling as if it were his conscience, patches his drugget as
if it were a verse he’d like to polish. Out of the vast dreary waste of
faces who pass by unheeding, and the unseeing world that does not care
whether he lives or dies, he makes his small hoard of treasures, as a
child hides marbles, thinking them precious stones—as, indeed, they are
to those who have eyes to see—and, be they books, or pictures, pots of
plants, or curious conceits in china, they all answer for flowers, for
the bright-coloured spots of comfort in a life of doubt.
No man thinks this out carefully, and sets about to plan his garden in
this spirit: he feels a need, and meets it as he can. In this manner we
are all cottage gardeners.
In days gone by—days of serfdom, oppression, battle, slavery,
poverty—the countryman passed his day waiting for the next blow, living
between pestilences, and praying in the dark for small sparks of
comfort. The monks kept the land sweet by growing herbs in sheltered
places; the countryman looked dully at Periwinkles and Roses and
Columbines, thought them pretty, and passed by. Even the meanest flower,
Shepherd’s-eye or Celandine, was too high for him to reach. (The poet
who keeps Jove’s Thunder on his mantelpiece would understand that.)
Roses were common enough even in the dark ages; the English hedgerow
threw out its fingers of Wild Rose and scented the air—but where was the
man with a nose for fragrance when a mailed hand was on his shoulder.
Those Roses on the Field of Tewkesbury—think of them stained with blood
and flowering over rotting corpses.
“I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head.
And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River’s Lip on which we lean.
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen.”
Little did the dull ploughman think of Roses in the hedge, or Violets in
the bank, he’d little care except for a dish of Pulse. Yet, all the
time, curious men were studying botany, dredging the earth for secrets,
as the astronomer swept the sky. The Arviells, Gilbert and Hernicus,
were, one in Europe, the other in Asia, collecting good plants and herbs
to replenish the Jardins de Santé the monks kept—that in the thirteenth
century, too, with war clouds everywhere, and steel-clad knights wooing
maidens in castles by the secondhand means of luting troubadours.
The Arts of Rome were dead, buried, and cut up by the plough. (How many
ploughmen, such as Chaucer knew, turned long brown furrows over Roman
vineyards, and black crows, following, pecked at bright coins, brought
by the plough to light.)
All at once, it must have seemed, the culture of flowers, was in the
air: Carnations became the rage; then men spent heaven knows what on a
Tulip bulb; built orangeries; sent Emissaries abroad to cull flowers in
the East. The great men’s gardeners, great men themselves, kept flowers
in the plot of ground about their cottages; gave out a seed or so here
and there; talked garden gossip at the village ale-house. (Tradescant
steals Apricots from Morocco into England. A Carew imports Oranges. The
Cherry orchards at Sittingbourne are planted by one of Henry the
Eighth’s gardeners. Peiresc brings all manner of flowers to bloom under
our grey skies: great numbers of Jessamines, the clay-coloured Jessamine
from China; the crimson American kind; the Violet-coloured Persian.)
[Illustration: A SURREY COTTAGE.]
The grass piece by the cottage door begins to find itself cut into beds;
uncared for flowers, wild Gilly-flowers, Thyme, Violets and the like,
give colour to the cottage garden that has only just become a garden.
With that comes competition: one man outdoes another, begs plants and
seeds of all his friends; buds a Rose on to a Briar standard, and boasts
the scent of his new Clove Pinks, And so it grew that times were not so
strenuous: Queen Victoria comes to the throne, and with prosperity come
the pretty frillings of life, and cottage gardens ape their masters’
Rose walks, and collections of this and that. To-day Africa and Asia nod
together in a sunny cottage border, and Lettuces from the Island of Cos
show their green faces next to Sir Walter Raleigh’s great gift to the
poor man, the Potato. Poplars from Lombardy grow beside the garden gate;
the Currant bush from Zante drips its jewel-like fruit tassels under a
Cherry tree given to us, indirectly, by Lucullus, lost by us in our
slumbering Saxon times, and here again, with Henry the Eighth’s
gardener, from Flanders. In some quite humble gardens the Cretan Quince
and Persian Peach grow; so that history, poetry, and romance peer over
Giles’s rustic hedge; and the wind blows scents of all the world through
the small latticed window.
Ploughman Giles, sitting by his cottage door, smoking an American weed
in his pipe while his wife shells the Peas of ancient Rome into a basin,
does not realise that his little garden, gay with Indian Pinks and
African Geraniums, and all its small crowd of joyous-coloured flowers,
is an open book of the history of his native land spread at his feet.
Here’s the conquest of America, and the discovery of the Cape, and all
the gold of Greece for his bees to play with. Here’s his child making a
chain of Chaucer’s Daisies; and there’s a Chinese mandarin nodding at
him from the Chrysanthemums; and there’s a ghost in his cabbage patch of
Sir Anthony Ashley of Wimbourne St. Giles in Dorsetshire.
Ploughman Giles is a fortunate man, and we, too, bless his enterprise
and his love of striking colours and good perfumes when we lean over the
gate of his cottage garden to give him good-day.
I showed him once a photograph of a picture by Holbein—the Merchant of
the Steel Yard—and pointed out the vase of flowers on the table and the
very same flowers growing side by side in his garden, Carnations, the
old single kind, and single Gilly-flower. He looked at the picture with
his glasses cocked at the proper angle on his nose—he’s an oldish man
and short-sighted—and said in his husky voice, “Well, zur, I be
surprised to zee un.” And he called out his wife to look—which didn’t
please her much as she was cooking—but, when she saw the flowers, “In
that there queer gentleman’s room, and as true as life, so they do be,”
she became enthusiastic, wiped her hands many times on her apron, and
looked from the picture to the actual flowers growing in her garden with
a kind of awe and wonder. It was of far more interest to them to know
that they were hand in glove with the history of their own country than
it would have been to learn that chemists made a wonderful drug called
digitalis out of the Foxgloves by the fence. I gave them the photograph
and it hangs in a proud position next to a stuffed and bloated perch in
a glass-case; and, what is more, they have an added sense of dignity
from the dim, far away time the picture represents to them.
“He might a plucked they flowers in this very garden,” she says; and
indeed, he might if he had happened that way. But the older flowers,
though they don’t realise it, are the people themselves. Ploughman Giles
and his wife, have been on the very spot far, far longer than the Pinks
and Gilly-flowers, blooming into ripe age, rearing countless families
back and back and back, until one can almost see a Giles sacrificing to
Thor and Odin at the stone on the hill behind the cottage. The Norman
Church throws its shadow over the graves of countless Gileses, and over
the graves, pleasant-eyed English Daisies shine on the grass.
After all, when we see a cottage standing in its glowing garden, with a
neat hedge cutting it off from its fellows; with children playing
eternal games with dolls (Mr. Mould’s children following the ledger to
its long home in the safe—shall I ever forget that?), we see the whole
world, cares, joys, birth, death and marriage; the wealth of nations
scattered carelessly in flowers, spoils from every continent, surrounded
by a hedge, its own birds to sing, its hundred forms of life, feeding,
breeding, dying round the cottage door; and, at night, its little patch
of stars overhead.
It was a fanciful child, perhaps, but children are full of quaint ideas,
who caught the moon in a bright tin spoon, and put it in a bottle, and
drew the cork at night to let the moon out to sail in the sky. The child
found the tin spoon, dropped by a passing tinware pedlar, in the road,
waited till night came, with his head full of a fairy story he had
heard, and when it was dark, except for the moon, he stepped into the
garden, held the bowl of the spoon to catch the moon’s reflection, and
when she showed her yellow face distorted in the bright spoon, he poured
the reflection, very solemnly, into a bottle and corked it fast and
tight. Then, with a whispered fairy spell, some nurse’s gibberish, he
took the precious bottle and hid it in a cupboard along with other
mysterious tokens. That’s a symbol of all our lives, bottling up moons
and letting them out at nights. Isn’t a garden just such a dream-treat
to some of us? There are golden Marigolds for the sun we live by, and
silver Daisies for the stars, and blue Forget-me-nots for summer skies.
Heaven at our feet, and angels singing from birds’ throats among the
trees.
Sometimes we see one cottage garden, next to a Paradise of colour,
flaunting Geraniums, and all the summer garland, and in it a poor tree
or so, a few ill-kept weedy flowers, overgrown Stocks, a patch of
drunken-looking Poppies, a grass-grown waste of choked Pinks: the whole
place with a sullen air. What is the matter with the people living
there? A decent word will beg a plant or two, seeds and cuttings can be
had for the asking. Is it a poor or a proud spirit who refuses to join
the other displays of colour? Knock at the door, and your answer comes
quick-footed; it is the poor spirit answers you. Of course, there are
men who can coax blood out of a stone, and find big strawberries in the
bottom of the basket; and others who cannot grow anything, try as they
may. It is common enough to hear this or that will not grow for
so-and-so, or that man makes such a plant flourish where mine all die.
There’s something between man and his flowers, some sympathy, that makes
a Rose bloom its best for one, and Carnations wither under his touch, or
Asters show their magic purples for one, and give a weak display for
another. No one knows what speaks in the man to the Roses that bloom for
him, or what distaste Carnations feel for all his ministrations, but the
fact remains—any gardener will tell you that. So with your man of
greenhouses, so with your humble cottage gardener, and, looking along a
village street, the first glance will show you not who loves the flowers
but whom flowers love.
This, of course, is not the reason of the weedy garden of the poor
spirit, the reason for that is obvious: the poor spirit never rejoices,
and to grow and care for flowers is a great way of rejoicing. There’s
many a man sows poems in the spring who never wrote a line of verse: his
flowers are his contribution to the world’s voice; united in expressions
of joy, the writer, the painter, the singer, the flower-grower are all
part of one great poem.
The average person who passes a cottage garden is more moved by the
senses than the imagination; he or she drinks deep draughts of perfume,
takes long comfort to the eyes from the fragrant and coloured rood of
land. They do not cast this way and that for curious imaginings; it
might add to their pleasure if they did so. There are men who find the
whole of Heaven in a grain of mustard seed; and there are those who, in
all the pomp and circumstance of a hedge of Roses, find but a passing
pleasure to the eye.
We, who take our pleasure in the Garden of England, who feast our eyes
on such rich schemes of colours she affords, have reason to be more than
grateful to those who encourage the cottage gardener in his work. It is
from the vicarage, rectory, or parsonage gardens that most encouragement
springs; it is the country clergyman and his wife who, in a large
measure, are responsible for the good cottage gardening we see nearly
everywhere. These, and the numberless societies, combine to keep up the
interest in gardening and bee-keeping, to which we owe one of our
chiefest English pleasures. The good garden is the purple and fine linen
of the poor man’s life; poets, philosophers, and kings have praised and
sung the simple flowers that he grows. Wordsworth for instance, sings of
a flower one finds in nearly every cottage garden:
LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING.
You call it “Love-lies-Bleeding”—so you may,
Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops
As we have seen it here from day to day,
From month to month, life passing not away:
A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,
(Sentient by Grecian sculpture’s marvellous power)
Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent
Earthward in uncomplaining languishment,
The dying Gladiator. So, sad Flower!
(’Tis Fancy guides me, willing to be led,
Though by a slender thread,)
So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew
Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air
The gentlest breath of resignation drew;
While Venus in a passion of despair
Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair
Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.
She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;
But pangs more lasting far that Lover knew
Who first, weighed down by scorn, in some lone bower
Did press this semblance of unpitied smart
Into the service of his constant heart,
His own dejection, downcast Flower! could share
With thine, and gave the mournful name
Which thou wilt ever bear.
Then again, Mrs. Browning, who loved Nature and England, and spoke her
love in such delicate fancies, writes of flowers in “Our Gardened
England,” in a poem called,
A FLOWER IN A LETTER.
Red Roses, used to praises long,
Contented with the poet’s song,
The nightingale’s being over;
And Lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to lover.
Deep Violets you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal!
And Cactuses a queen might don
If weary of her golden crown,
And still appear as royal!
Pansies for ladies all! I wis
That none who wear such brooches miss
A jewel in the mirror:
And Tulips, children love to stretch
Their fingers down, to feel in each
Its beauty’s secret nearer.
Love’s language may be talked with these!
To work out choicest sentences,
No blossoms can be neater—
And, such being used in Eastern bowers,
Young maids may wonder if the flowers
Or meanings be the sweeter.
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IX
A FEAST OF WILD STRAWBERRIES
There’s many a child has crowned her head with Buttercups—no bad
substitute for gold—mirrored her face in a pool, and dreamed she was a
Queen. There’s many a boy has lain for hours in the Wild Thyme on a
cliff top and sent dream-fleets to Spain. The touch of imagination is
all that is required to make the world seem real, and not until that
wand is used is the world real. Only those moments when we hear the
stars, peer in through Heaven’s gates, or rub shoulders with a poet’s
vision, are real and substantial; the rest is only dreamland, vague,
unsatisfactory. Huddled rows of dingy houses, smoke, grime, roar of
traffic, scramble for the pence that make the difference, these things
are not abiding thoughts—“Here there is no abiding city”—but those great
moments when we grow as the flowers grow, sing as the birds sing, and
feel at ease with the furthest stars, those are the moments we live in
and remember. Our great garden may hold our thoughts if we wish. When we
own England with our eyes, when all the fields and woods, the mountain
streams, the pools and rills, rivers and ponds, are ours; when we are on
our own ground with Ling and Broom, Heather, Heath and Furze for our
carpet; when Harebells ring our matin’s bell and Speedwell close the day
for us; when the Water-lily is our cup, broad leaves of Dock our
platter, and King-cups our array—how vast!—of gold plate, then are we
kings indeed.
[Illustration: PATCHES OF HEATHER.]
I’ll give you joy of all your hot-house fruit, if you’ll leave me to my
Wild Strawberries. I’ll wish you pleasure of Signor What’s-his-name, the
violin player, if you’ll but listen to my choir of thrushes. What do you
care to eat? Here’s nothing over substantial, I’ll admit; but there’s
good wine in the brook, and food for a day in the fields and hedges.
Nuts, Blackberries, Wortleberries, Wild Raspberries, Mushrooms, Crabs
and Sloes, and Samphire for preserving; Elderberries to make into a
cordial; and Wild Strawberries, that’s my chiefest dish at this
season—food for princesses.
Come to the cliffs with your leaf of Wild Strawberries, and I can show
you blue Flax, and Sea Pinks, yellow Sea-Cabbage, and Sea Convolvulus,
and Golden Samphire; you shall have Sandwort, and Viper’s Bugloss, and
Ploughman’s Spikenard, and Horned Poppies, and Thyme, in plenty. We will
choose a fanciful flower for the table, the yellow Elecampane that gave
a cosmetic to Helen of Troy. And the mention of her who set Olympus and
Earth in a blaze of discord makes me remember how Hermes, of the golden
wand, gave to Odysseus the plant he had plucked from the ground, black
at the root, and with a flower like to milk—“Moly the Gods call it, but
it is hard for mortal men to dig; howbeit with the Gods all things are
possible.”
Any manner of imaginings may come to those who make a feast of Wild
Strawberries. We may follow our Classic idea and discuss the Hydromel,
or cider of the Greeks; the syrup of squills they drank to aid their
digestion, or the absinthe they took to promote appetite. We might even
try to make one of their sweet wines of Rose leaves and honey, such a
thing would go well with our Wild Strawberries. These things might all
come out of our country garden and give us a ghostly Greek flavour for
our pains. There were Wild Strawberries, I think, on Mount Ida where
Paris was shepherd, whence they fetched him when Discord threw the
Golden Apple.
It is almost impossible to reach out a hand and pick a flower without
plucking a legend with it.
I had taken, I thought, England for my garden, and Wild Strawberries for
my dish, but I find that I have taken the world for my flower patch, and
am sitting to eat with ancient Greeks. Let me but pick the Pansy by my
hand and I find that Spenser plucked its fellow years ago:
“Strew me the ground with Daffe-down-dillies,
And Cowslips, and King-cups, and loved Lilies,
The pretty Paunce (that is my wild Pansy)
The Chevisaunce
Shall watch with the fayre Fleur de Luce.”
And you may call it Phœbus’-paramour, or Herb-Trinity, or Three
Faces-under-a-Hood.
To our forefathers the fields, lanes, and gardens were a newspaper far
more valuable than the modern sheet in which we read news of no
importance day by day. To them the blossoming of the Sloe meant the time
for sowing barley; the bursting of Alder buds that eels had left their
winter holes and might be caught. The Wood Sorrel and the cuckoo came
together; when Wild Wallflower is out bees are on the wing, and linnets
have learnt their spring songs. Water Plantain is supposed to cure a mad
dog, and is a remedy against the poison of a rattlesnake; ointment of
Cowslips removes sunburn and freckles; the Self-heal is good against
cuts, and so is called also, Carpenter’s Herb, Hook-heal, and
Sicklewort. Yellow Water-lilies will drive cockroaches and crickets from
a house. Most charming intelligence of all deals with the Wild
Canterbury Bell, in which the little wild bees go to sleep, loving their
silky comfort. These are but a few paragraphs from our news-sheet, but
they serve to show how pleasant a paper it is to know—and it costs
nothing but a pair of loving and careful eyes.
If we choose to be more fanciful—and who is not, in a wild garden with a
dish of Wild Strawberries?—we shall find ourselves filling Acorn cups
with dew to drink to the fairies, and wondering how the thigh of a
honey-bee might taste. Herrick is the poet for such flights of thought.
His songs—“To Daisies, not to shut so soon.” “To Primroses filled with
Morning Dew,” and, for this instance, to
THE BAG OF THE BEE
About the sweet bag of a bee
Two Cupids fell at odds;
And whose the pretty prize should be
They vowed to ask the Gods.
Which Venus hearing, thither came
And for their boldness stripped them;
And taking thence from each his flame
With rods of Myrtle whipped them.
Which done, to still their wanton cries,
When quiet grown she’s seen them,
She kissed and wiped their dove-like eyes,
And gave the bag between them.
We can do no better than give thanks for all our garden, our house, and
our well-being in the words of the same poet. For we need to thank,
somehow, for all the joys Nature gives us. Though, in this poem, he
names no flowers, yet his poems are full of them:
“—That I, poor I,
May think, thereby,
I live and die
’Mongst Roses.”
Every man who is a gardener at heart, whether he be in love with the
flowers of the open fields, the garden of the highways and the woods, or
with his protected patch of ground, will care to know this song of
Herrick’s if he has not already found it for himself:
A THANKSGIVING TO GOD FOR HIS HOUSE
Lord, thou hast given me a cell,
Wherein to dwell;
A little house, whose humble roof
Is waterproof;
Under the spars of which I lie
Both soft and dry;
Where thou, my chamber for to ward,
Hast set a guard
Of harmless thoughts, to watch and keep
Me, while I sleep.
Low is my porch, as is my fate;
Both void of state;
And yet the threshold of my door
Is worn by th’ poor,
Who thither come, and freely get
Good words or meat.
Like as my parlour, so my hall
And kitchen’s small;
A little buttery, and therein
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead;
Some brittle sticks of Thorn or Briar
Make me a fire
Close by whose living coal I sit,
And glow like it.
Lord, I confess too, when I dine,
The Pulse is thine.
And all those other bits that be
There placed by Thee;
The Worts, the Purslain, and the mess
Of Watercress,
Which of thy kindness thou hast sent;
And my content
Makes those, and my beloved Beet,
To be more sweet.
’Tis thou that crown’st my glittering hearth,
With guiltless mirth,
And giv’st me wassail bowls to drink,
Spiced to the brink.
Lord, ’tis thy plenty-dropping hand
That soils my land,
And giv’st me, for my bushel sown,
Twice ten for one;
Thou mak’st my teeming hen to lay
Her egg each day;
Besides, my healthful ewes to bear
Me twins each year;
The while the conduits of my kine
Run cream, for wine;
All these, and better, thou dost send
Me, to this end—
That I should render, for my part,
A thankful heart;
Which, fired with incense, I resign,
As wholly thine;
—But the acceptance, that must be,
My Christ, by Thee.
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X
THE PRAISES OF A COUNTRY LIFE
_TRANSLATED FROM HORACE_
BY CHRISTOPHER SMART
Happy the man, who, remote from business, after the manner of the
ancient race of mortals, cultivates his paternal lands with his own
oxen, disengaged from every kind of usury; his is neither alarmed with
the horrible trumpet, as a soldier, nor dreads he the angry sea; he
shuns both the bar, and the proud portals of men in power.
Wherefore, he either weds the lofty Poplars to the mature branches of
the Vine; or lopping off the useless boughs with his pruning-knife, he
engrafts more fruitful ones; or takes a prospect of the herds of his
lowing cattle, wandering about in a lonely vale; or stores his honey,
pressed from the combs, in clean vessels; or shears his tender sheep.
Or, when Autumn has lifted up in the field his head adorned with mellow
fruits, how glad is he while he gathers Pears grafted by himself, and
the Grape that vies with the purple, with which he may recompense thee,
O Priapus, and thee, father Sylvanus, the guardian, of his boundaries!
Sometimes he delights to lie under an aged Holm, sometimes on the matted
grass: meanwhile the waters glide down from steep clefts; the birds
warble in the woods; and the fountains murmur with their purling
streams, which invites gentle slumbers.
But when the wintry season of the tempestuous air prepares rains and
snows, he either drives the fierce boars, with dogs on every side, into
the intercepting toils; or spreads his thin nets with the smooth pole,
as a snare for the voracious thrushes; or catches in his gin the
timorous hare, or that stranger, the crane, pleasing rewards for his
labour.
Amongst such joys as these, who does not forget those mischievous
anxieties, which are the property of love? But if a chaste wife,
assisting on her part in the management of the house and beloved
children, (such as is the Sabine, or the sunburnt spouse of the
industrious Apulian) piles up the sacred hearth with old wood, just at
the approach of her weary husband, and shutting up the fruitful cattle
in the woven hurdles milks dry their distended udders; and drawing this
year’s wine out of a well-seasoned cask, prepares the unbought
collation; not the Lucrine oysters could delight me more, nor the
turbot, nor the scar, should the tempestuous Winter drive any from the
Eastern floods to this sea: not the turkey, nor the Asiatic wild fowl,
can come into my stomach more agreeable than the Olive, gathered from
the richest branches of the trees, or the Sorrel that loves the meadows,
or Mallows salubrious for a sickly body, or a lamb slain at the feast of
the god Terminus, or a kid just rescued from a wolf.
Amidst these dainties, how it pleases one to see the well-fed sheep
hastening home? To see the weary oxen, with drooping neck, dragging the
inverted ploughshare! and numerous slaves, the test of a rich family
ranged about the smiling household gods!
[Illustration: A PERGOLA IN AN ENGLISH GARDEN.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------