continuance. His note will soon change. He will become hoarse and only
half-articulate. He will cease to be the flying echo of the mystery of
skies and wood at dawn and in the still evening. The disreputable bat,
whose little wings flutter half visibly like waves of heat rising
above a stove, will outlast him.
There is no getting beyond the old image of things in general as a
stream that disappears. The flowers and the birds come in tides that
sweep over the world and in a moment are lost like a broken wave. The
lilacs filled with purple; laburnum followed, and in a few days all
the gold ebbed, and nothing was left but a drift of withered blossoms
on the ground; then came the acacia-flowers, white as the morning
among the cool green plumage of the tree, and now they, too, have been
turned into dirtiness and deserted foam. And in the hedges change has
been as swift, as merciless--change so imperceptible in what it is
doing, so manifest in what it has done. The white blossoms of the sloe
gave place to the foam of the hawthorn and the flat clusters of the
wayfaring-tree; now in its turn has come the flood of the
elder-flowers, a flood of commonness, and June on the roads would
hardly be beautiful were it not for the roses that settle, delicate
and fleeting as butterflies, on the long and crooked briers. Perhaps
one has not the right to say of any flower or any bird that it is not
beautiful Even elder-flowers, seen at a distance, can give
cheerfulness to a roadside. But, if we have to pick and choose among
flowers, there are many who will give the lowest prize to the flowers
that have been compared to umbrellas--elder-flowers, cow's parsley,
hemlock, and the rest. These are the plebeians of the hedges and
ditches. They have the air of something useful. One would imagine they
were intended to be cooked and eaten in cheap restaurants. We
experience no lifting of the heart at sight of them. We should be
surprised to hear the abrupt ecstasy of a wren issuing from among
their leaves. And yet it is hardly a week since, walking in a Sussex
lane, I saw a long procession of cow's parsley on the top of a high
bank silhouetted against the twilight sky. There seemed never to have
been more exquisite flowers. They had captured the silver of evening
as in a net.
There are many flowers that seem ugly to an indifferent eye. Even the
red valerian, that sprouts so boldly in bushes of coral from the top
of the wall, is regarded by some people as a weed and an impudent
intruder. For myself, I love the spectacle of stone walls breaking out
into flower with red valerian and ivy-leaved toad-flax. The country
people have greeted these flowers with comic and friendly names.
Valerian they call "drunken sailor," and the ivy-leaved toad-flax that
blossoms in a thousand tiny blue butterflies from the stones has (so
prolific it is) been given the nickname of "mother of thousands." I
doubt, however, whether the country people have as many fanciful names
for the flowers as they are represented as having in the books. When
Mr W.H. Hudson first came on winter heliotrope in Cornwall, and was
attracted by its meadow-sweet smell at a season when there were few
other flowers, he was told by a countryman that it was called simply
"weed." Countrymen, if they are asked the name of a flower, will often
say that they do not know, but that they call it so-and-so. A small
boy who was gathering green-stuffs for his rabbits came up and walked
beside me the other day, and, on being shown some goose-grass, and
asked what name he knew it by, said: "I don't know its name; we calls
it 'cleavers.'" In my childhood, I never heard it called by any other
name than "robin-run-the-hedge," and under that name alone am I
attracted by it. "Cleavers" is too reminiscent of a butcher's yard or
of some dull tool. "Goose-grass" at least fills the imagination with
the picture of a bird. But "robin-run-the-hedge" is better, for it is
an image of wild adventure. It will be a pity if the tradition of
picturesque names for flowers is allowed to die. The kidney-vetch, a
long yellow claw of a flower that looks withered even at birth, may
not deserve a prettier name, but at least it is possible to give it an
ugly name with more interesting associations. "Staunch" is an older
name that reminds us that the flower was, a few generations ago, used
to staunch wounds. The other name, it is suggested, had its origin in
the supposed excellence of the plant in curing diseases of the kidney.
But there seem to be no grounds for believing this. There are,
unfortunately, some beautiful flowers for which no beautiful or even
expressive name has ever been invented. Who is there who, coming on
the blue scabious on a hill near the sea, is not conscious of the
gross failure of the human race in never having found anything but
this name out of a dustbin for one of the most charming of flowers?
Matthew Arnold, appalled by some of the names of human beings that
still flourished in the days of Victoria, and may for all I know be
flourishing to-day, once hoped to turn us into Hellenists by declaring
that there was "no Wragg on the Ilissus." Was there no "scabious" on
the Ilissus either, I wonder? Were I a flower of the field, I should
prefer to be called "nose-bleed" or "sow-thistle." On the whole,
however, the plants have little to complain of in the matter of names.
The milkwort that has been scattering its fine, delicate colours among
the short grasses of the bare hills deserves its beautiful name,
"grace of God." We think of it as the sprigging of a divine mantle
cast over the June world. The greater plantain, that after the recent
rain has come out on the hills, with a ruff of purple feathers round
its brown cone, neither deserves nor possesses a name connoting
sacredness. It is interesting mainly as a plant that somehow became
associated with the voyages and travels of Englishmen, and is known in
America as "Englishman's foot," because, wherever the Englishman goes,
the plant follows him.
The riot of the spring flowers is already passing, however. As we walk
along the path through the corn, we find the wild mustard, that a few
weeks ago made a steep field blaze like a precinct of the sun, already
withering into a mass of green pods; and the hay in the valley has
been cut down with all its crimson clover. The smell of the tossed
hay, as we pass, sends back the memory into an older world. How is it
that sweet smells do not please us so much for what they are as for
the things of which they remind us? At the smell of hay newly stacked
we cease to be our present age; we are in a world as distant as that
of Theocritus. There is no ambition in it, no tears or taxes, no men
and women pretending, nothing that is not happy. Every scent is sweet,
every sound is a laugh or a bird's song. Every man and woman and
animal we behold is more interesting than if they had come out of a
Noah's Ark. Smell has been described as the most sensual of the
senses. It may be so, but it is surely also the sense that is most
closely related to the memory. Old landscapes, old happinesses old
gardens, old people, come to life again--at times, almost unbearably
so--with the smell of wallflower or hay or the sea. It may be,
however, that this is not a universal experience. Some of us, no
doubt, live more in our memories than others: it is our doom.
Even we, however, are sensualists of the open air, and the spectacle
of the wind foaming among the leaves of the oak and elm can easily
make us forget all but the present. The blue hills in the distance
when rain is about, the grey arras of wet that advances over the
plain, the whitethroat that sings or rather scolds above the hedge as
he dances on the wing, the tree-pipit--or is it another bird?--that
sinks down to the juniper-tip through a honey of music, a rough sea
seen in the distance, half shine, half scowl--any of these things may
easily cut us off from history and from hope and immure us in the
present hour. Or may they? Or do these things too not leave us
home-sick, discontented, gloomy--gloomy if it is only because we are
not nearly so gloomy as we ought to be?
XIII
ON FEELING GAY
Gaiety has come back at least to parts of London. There never were
greater crowds of people eating with bottles at their sides in public
places. On the whole, however, there has been little down-heartedness
at the restaurants during the past four and a half years Even while
the housewife in the red-brick street was wasting her mornings in the
patient vigil of the queue, only to find at the end of it that there
was no butter, no lard, no tea, no jam, no golden syrup, no prunes, no
potatoes, no currants, no olive oil, or whatever it might be she
wanted most, the restaurants never shut their doors as the grocers'
shops and the confectioners' sometimes did. When rationing came, one
could eat the greater part of the week's beef allowance at a single
meal in the home, but in a restaurant one could get four excellent
meat meals--in some restaurants even eight excellent meals--in return
for a week's coupons. There were, no doubt, parts of the country in
which the housewife was hardly more restricted than the diner-out in
restaurants. Travellers came back from places in Dorsetshire,
Gloucestershire, and Scotland, as from Ireland, with gorgeous
narratives of areas in which the King's writ did not run so far as
coupons were concerned and beef was free if only you paid for it. But
in London, and especially in the Home Counties, there was no such
reign of liberty. The housewife went shopping, as it were, on
ticket-of-leave, and even the sleepiest suburbans began to realise
that the arrival of our daily bread is a daily miracle instead of the
commonplace it once seemed to be. Had Dr Faustus come back to life a
modern lady would have invoked the aid of his magic for some food less
romantic than grapes out of season: she would have been content with a
tin of golden syrup. As for butter, it is surprising that no one wrote
a sonnet to butter during the war. I have seen eyes positively moisten
with love at the sight of a small dish of it. Even from the
restaurants it seemed to vanish for a time, and some of them are still
doing their best to help one to deceive oneself with a curl of what is
called butter substitute. The restaurant, however, seem to be better
supplied than the home with the three great aids to gaiety--wine, jam
and currants. I confess I have never been able to understand why
currants should be generally regarded as one of the necessary
ingredients of perfect pleasure. But they unquestionably are The child
on a holiday will eat a bun with only three currants in it with three
times more pleasure than he will eat a frankly plain bun A suet
pudding without currants or raisins is prison fare, barren to the eye
and cheerless: let but an infrequent currant or raisin peep from the
mass and it is a pudding for a birthday. So universal is the passion
for currants as an aid to pleasure that during the past three weeks
the only matter that rivalled in general interest the question whether
the Kaiser was to be hanged was the question whether we should have
currants before Christmas. So profound is the disappointment of the
public at the non-arrival of the currants that explanations have been
put in the papers, calling on us to practise the sublime virtue of
self-sacrifice, happy in the knowledge that all the currants are
needed for invalid soldiers. But if the currants are needed for
soldiers, how comes it that we sometimes find them in the puddings in
restaurants? Those who are concerned for the preservation of home life
in this country cannot but be perturbed by the way in which in this
matter of currants the scales have been weighted in favour of the
restaurant and against the home. As for jam, the diner in the
restaurant rejoices in jam roll while the child in the home labours
its way through tapioca pudding. Is it any wonder if, as the
pessimists believe, the English home decays?
Whether as a result of the jam roll or the rare currants in the
puddings, it has been unusually difficult to get a table at some of
the restaurants since the signing of the Armistice. No doubt the
signing of the Armistice itself had something to do with it. Christian
men, whenever anything epoch-making happens, must have something to
eat. Marriage, the return of a conquering hero, the visit of a great
statesman, the birth of Christ--we find in all these things a reason
for calling on the cooks to do their damnedest. Even the dyspeptic
forgets his doctor's orders in the general excitement and chases
oysters down the narrow stairway of his throat with thick soup, follow
thick soup with lobster, and lobster with turkey and turkey with a
savoury, and the savoury with a _pêche Melba_, and at the end of it
will not reject cheese and a banana, all of this accompanied with
streams of liquid in the form of wine coffee and brandy. I have often
wondered why a man should feel gay doing violence to his entrails in
this fashion. I have noticed again and again that he loses a little of
his gaiety if the dinner is served slowly enough to give him time to
think. The gay meal, like the farce, must be enacted quickly. The very
spectacle of waiters hurrying to and fro with an air of peril to the
dishes quickens the fancy, and the gastric juices flow to an anapæstic
measure. Who does not know what it is to sit through a slow meal and
digest in spondees? One is given time between the courses to turn
philosopher--to meditate becoming a hermit and dining on a bowl of
rice in a cave. Nothing can prevent one from there and then coming to
a decision on the matter save a waiter with the eye of a psychoanalyst
ready to rush forward at the first sadness of an eyelid and tempt one
either with a new dish or with a glass refilled. "Stay me with
flagons; comfort me with apples." It is a universal cry. Our desire is
for the banqueting-house. Perhaps it is not so much that we feel gay
as that we are afraid of feeling gloomy. We have no force within us
that will enable us to laugh over a lettuce and become wits on water.
There must be an element of riot in our eating and drinking if we are
to drive dull care away. That is the defence of cakes and ale. Cakes,
no doubt, are not what they used to be, and ale is even less so. But
human beings are symbolists, and, if you give them something that
looks like cakes and something that looks like beer, it is surprising
how content they will be. Our eating and drinking is but a game, and
we deceive ourselves at table like children among their toys. Even the
vegetarian lies his food into grandeur not its own. There is a
vegetarian restaurant in London in which one of the dishes on the bill
of fare bears the name "Like chicken." _Splendide mendax!_
One of the most amazing features in the appearance of London at the
present time is surely the absence of the signs of widespread
mourning. The windows of the shops are full of all the colours of the
parrot. The hats are as bright as a scrap-book. The confectioners'
shops are making a desperate effort to look as if nothing had
happened. The death of a single monarch would have darkened Christmas
in Regent Street more effectually than the million mournings of the
war. It is as though we were eager to conceal from ourselves the news
of this terrible disaster. After all, to judge by the crowds in the
streets, most people still remain alive. We have sworn we will never
forget those others, but one has only to read some of the election
speeches to see that with many of us our own greed and vindictiveness
are already ousting the ideals for which hundreds of thousands of men
gave up their lives. Can it be that we are feeling gay not only
because we have escaped from the disasters of the war but because we
are escaping from the ideals of the war? It is as though we had
returned from the barren snows of the mountain-tops to the cosy plenty
of the valleys. We are glad to exchange the stars as companions for
the nearer illuminations of the streets. The familiar world is coming
back, and civilian youths have begun once more to sing music-hall
choruses on the way home on the tops of buses:--
So I dillied,
And dallied,
And dallied,
And dillied;
But you can't trust a speshul
Like an old-time copper
When you can't find your way home.
Peace had returned without question when nonsense of this venerable
kind sped into the air from the roof of a late bus. Well, we have
always wanted the world to be "as usual." We were angry with the
Germans for plunging us into the unusualness of war, and we feel
scarcely more friendly to those who would plunge us into the
unusualness of Utopia. We feel at home among neither horrors nor
ideals. We are glad at the prospect of having the old world back
rather than at having to make a new world. Lord Birkenhead, I observe,
declares that it would be an awful thing if the war had left us
unchanged, but we look in vain for signs of any deep change even in
the speeches of Lord Birkenhead. One noticeable change the war has
unquestionably made: more women smoke in the restaurants than
formerly. Sanguine people declare that other changes are impending;
but other people, equally sanguine, are doing their best to prevent
this. The human race is gradually feeling its way back to its
traditional division into those who desire a change and those who
desire to keep things as they are. The Christmas festival appeals to
both equally. It is at once an old custom and the prophecy of a new
earth. On such a day one can rejoice even without currants or the
League of Nations. The world is a good place. Let us eat, drink, and
be merry.
XIV
IN THE TRAIN
It is said that travelling by train is to be made still more
uncomfortable. I doubt if there is a man of sufficient genius in the
Government to accomplish this. Are not the trains already merely
elongated buses without the racing instincts of the bus? Have they not
already learned to crawl past mile after mile of backyard and back
garden at such a snail's pace that we have come to know like an old
friend every disreputable garment hung out on the clothes-lines of a
score of suburbs? Do they not stand still at the most unreasonable
places with the obstinacy of an ass? Stations, the names of which used
to be an indistinguishable blur as we swept past them as on a
swallow's wing, have now become a part of the known world, and have as
much attention paid to them as though they were Paris or Vienna.
Equality has not yet been established among men, but it has been
established among stations. There never was such a democracy of
frightfulness.
We seldom see a station which has about it the air of permanence.
There are, I believe good historical reasons why there are no Tudor
stations or Queen Anne stations to be found in the country. Still, I
know of no reason why so many stations should look as though they had
been built hurriedly to serve the needs of a month, like a travelling
show in a piece of waste ground. Not that the railway station has any
of the gaudy detail of the travelling show. It resembles it only in
its dusty and haphazard setting. It is more like a builder's or a
tombstone-maker's yard. The very letters in which the name of the
station is printed are often of a deliberate ugliness. No newspaper
would tolerate letters of such an ugliness in its headlines. They
stare at one vacuously, joylessly. It is said that the village of
Amberley is known to the natives as "Amberley, God help us!" How many
stations look at us from their name-plates with that "God help us!"
air! What I should like to see would be a name-plate that would seem
to announce to us in passing: "Glasgow, thank God!" or whatever the
name of the station may be. I have never yet discovered a merry
station. Here and there a station-master has done his best to make the
place attractive by planting geraniums in the form of letters to spell
the name of the place on a neighbouring embankment. But these things
remind one of the flowers on a grave. And the people who walk up and
down the platform, their noses cold in the wind, are hardly more
cheerful than undertakers' men. Even the porters in their green
trousers, who roll the milk-cans along the platform to the luggage-van
with an energy and a clatter that would satisfy the ambition of any
healthy child, do not look merry. There was one cheerful porter who
used to welcome you like a host, and make a jest as he clipped your
railway ticket--"Just to lighten your load, sir!"--but the Government
had him removed and put to mind gates at a crossing where he would not
be able to speak to the passengers. As a rule, however, nobody looks
as if he liked being in a railway station or would stop there if he
could go anywhere else. I trust the Ministry of Reconstruction will
see to it that the railway stations of the country are rebuilt and
vivified. One does not really wish to stop at any station at all
except one's own station. But if one has to do so, let the stations be
made more amusing.
Unfortunately, it is not only the frequent stops that have made
railway travelling almost ideally uncomfortable. The Government seems
also to have hired a staff of workers to impregnate the seats of the
carriages with dust and to scatter all the dust that can be spared in
these exiguous days on the floors. They have also a gang of old and
wheezy gentlemen who travel up and down the line all day shutting the
windows. This work is sometimes deputed to women. They are forbidden
to say "May I?" or "Do you mind?" or to make use of any civil
expression that might mollify the traveller sitting by the window. It
is part of their instructions to reach past him with an air of
independence and to have the window shut and the book that he is
reading knocked out of his hand before he has time to see what has
happened. Some day someone will write a book about the alteration of
English manners that took place during the Great War. I believe the
alteration is largely due to these Government hirelings whose duty it
is to make railway travel a burden and never to say "Please" or "Thank
you."
Even now, however, there are compensations. In the morning the shadows
are long, and, as one rattles north among the water-meadows, the
flying plumes of the engine leave a procession of melting silhouettes
on the fields to the west. Rooks oar their way towards their homes
with long twigs in their beaks. Horses go through the last days of
their kingship dragging ploughs and harrows over the fields with slow
and monotonous tread. Here a hill has been ploughed into a sea of
little brown waves. Further on a meadow is already bright with the
green of winter-sown corn. The country has never been so laboured
before. Chalk and sand and brown earth and red are all being turned up
and broken and bathed in the sun and wind. Adam has begun to delve
again. There is the urgency of life in fields long idle. It is not
that the fields have become populous. One sees many laboured fields,
but little labour. The occasional plough-horse, however, brings
strength into the stillness. How noble a figure of energy he makes!