Thames, is a really noble horse-chestnut, whose boughs, untouched by
cattle, come sweeping down to the ground, and then, continuing, seem to
lie on and extend themselves along it, yards beyond their contact.
Underneath, it reminds one of sketches of encampments in Hindostan
beneath banyan trees, where white tent cloths are stretched from branch
to branch. Tent cloths might be stretched here in similar manner, and
would enclose a goodly space. Or in the boughs above, a savage's
tree-hut might be built, and yet scarcely be seen.
My roaming and uncertain steps next bring me under a plane, and I am
forced to admire it; I do not like planes, but this is so straight of
trunk, so vast of size, and so immense of height that I cannot choose
but look up into it. A jackdaw, perched on an upper bough, makes off as
I glance up. But the trees constantly afford unexpected pleasure; you
wander among the timber of the world, now under the shadow of the trees
which the Red Indian haunts, now by those which grow on Himalayan
slopes. The interest lies in the fact that they are trees, not shrubs or
mere saplings, but timber trees which cast a broad shadow.
So great is their variety and number that it is not always easy to find
an oak or an elm; there are plenty, but they are often lost in the
foreign forest. Yet every English shrub and bush is here; the hawthorn,
the dogwood, the wayfaring tree, gorse and broom, and here is a round
plot of heather. Weary at last, I rest again near the Herbaceous Ground,
as the sun declines and the shadows lengthen.
As evening draws on, the whistling of blackbirds and the song of
thrushes seem to come from everywhere around. The trees are full of
them. Every few moments a blackbird passes over, flying at some height,
from the villa gardens and the orchards without. The song increases; the
mellow whistling is without intermission; but the shadow has nearly
reached the wall, and I must go.
TREES ABOUT TOWN
Just outside London there is a circle of fine, large houses, each
standing in its own grounds, highly rented, and furnished with every
convenience money can supply. If any one will look at the trees and
shrubs growing in the grounds about such a house, chosen at random for
an example, and make a list of them, he may then go round the entire
circumference of Greater London, mile after mile, many days' journey,
and find the list ceaselessly repeated.
There are acacias, sumachs, cedar deodaras, araucarias, laurels, planes,
beds of rhododendrons, and so on. There are various other foreign shrubs
and trees whose names have not become familiar, and then the next
grounds contain exactly the same, somewhat differently arranged. Had
they all been planted by Act of Parliament, the result could scarcely
have been more uniform.
If, again, search were made in these enclosures for English trees and
English shrubs, it would be found that none have been introduced. The
English trees, timber trees, that are there, grew before the house was
built; for the rest, the products of English woods and hedgerows have
been carefully excluded. The law is, "Plant planes, laurels, and
rhododendrons; root up everything natural to this country."
To those who have any affection for our own woodlands this is a pitiful
spectacle, produced, too, by the expenditure of large sums of money.
Will no one break through the practice, and try the effect of English
trees? There is no lack of them, and they far excel anything yet
imported in beauty and grandeur.
Though such suburban grounds mimic the isolation and retirement of
ancient country-houses surrounded with parks, the distinctive feature of
the ancient houses is omitted. There are no massed bodies, as it were,
of our own trees to give a substance to the view. Are young oaks ever
seen in those grounds so often described as park-like? Some time since
it was customary for the builder to carefully cut down every piece of
timber on the property before putting in the foundations.
Fortunately, the influence of a better taste now preserves such trees as
chance to be growing on the site at the moment it is purchased. These
remain, but no others are planted. A young oak is not to be seen. The
oaks that are there drop their acorns in vain, for if one takes root it
is at once cut off; it would spoil the laurels. It is the same with
elms; the old elms are decaying, and no successors are provided.
As for ash, it is doubtful if a young ash is anywhere to be found; if so
it is an accident. The ash is even rarer than the rest. In their places
are put more laurels, cedar deodaras, various evergreens, rhododendrons,
planes. How tame and insignificant are these compared with the oak!
Thrice a year the oaks become beautiful in a different way.
In spring the opening buds give the tree a ruddy hue; in summer the
great head of green is not to be surpassed; in autumn, with the falling
leaf and acorn, they appear buff and brown. The nobility of the oak
casts the pitiful laurel into utter insignificance. With elms it is the
same; they are reddish with flower and bud very early in the year, the
fresh leaf is a tender green; in autumn they are sometimes one mass of
yellow.
Ashes change from almost black to a light green, then a deeper green,
and again light green and yellow. Where is the foreign evergreen in the
competition? Put side by side, competition is out of the question; you
have only to get an artist to paint the oak in its three phases to see
this. There is less to be said against the deodara than the rest, as it
is a graceful tree; but it is not English in any sense.
The point, however, is that the foreigners oust the English altogether.
Let the cedar and the laurel, and the whole host of invading evergreens,
be put aside by themselves, in a separate and detached shrubbery,
maintained for the purpose of exhibiting strange growths. Let them not
crowd the lovely English trees out of the place. Planes are much planted
now, with ill effect; the blotches where the bark peels, the leaves
which lie on the sward like brown leather, the branches wide apart and
giving no shelter to birds--in short, the whole ensemble of the plane is
unfit for our country.
It was selected for London plantations, as the Thames Embankment,
because its peeling bark was believed to protect it against the deposit
of sooty particles, and because it grows quickly. For use in London
itself it may be preferable: for semi-country seats, as the modern
houses surrounded with their own grounds assume to be, it is unsightly.
It has no association. No one has seen a plane in a hedgerow, or a wood,
or a copse. There are no fragments of English history clinging to it as
there are to the oak.
If trees of the plane class be desirable, sycamores may be planted, as
they have in a measure become acclimatised. If trees that grow fast are
required, there are limes and horse-chestnuts; the lime will run a race
with any tree. The lime, too, has a pale yellow blossom, to which bees
resort in numbers, making a pleasant hum, which seems the natural
accompaniment of summer sunshine. Its leaves are put forth early.
Horse-chestnuts, too, grow quickly and without any attention, the bloom
is familiar, and acknowledged to be fine, and in autumn the large sprays
of leaves take orange and even scarlet tints. The plane is not to be
mentioned beside either of them. Other trees as well as the plane would
have flourished on the Thames Embankment, in consequence of the current
of fresh air caused by the river. Imagine the Embankment with double
rows of oaks, elms, or beeches; or, if not, even with limes or
horse-chestnuts! To these certainly birds would have resorted--possibly
rooks, which do not fear cities. On such a site the experiment would
have been worth making.
If in the semi-country seats fast-growing trees are needed, there are,
as I have observed, the lime and horse-chestnut; and if more variety be
desired, add the Spanish chestnut and the walnut. The Spanish chestnut
is a very fine tree; the walnut, it is true, grows slowly. If as many
beeches as cedar deodaras and laurels and planes were planted in these
grounds, in due course of time the tap of the woodpecker would be heard:
a sound truly worth ten thousand laurels. At Kew, far closer to town
than many of the semi-country seats are now, all our trees flourish in
perfection.
Hardy birches, too, will grow in thin soil. Just compare the delicate
drooping boughs of birch--they could not have been more delicate if
sketched with a pencil--compare these with the gaunt planes!
Of all the foreign shrubs that have been brought to these shores, there
is not one that presents us with so beautiful a spectacle as the bloom
of the common old English hawthorn in May. The mass of blossom, the
pleasant fragrance, its divided and elegant leaf, place it far above any
of the importations. Besides which, the traditions and associations of
the May give it a human interest.
The hawthorn is a part of natural English life--country life. It stands
side by side with the Englishman, as the palm tree is pictured side by
side with the Arab. You cannot pick up an old play, or book of the time
when old English life was in the prime, without finding some reference
to the hawthorn. There is nothing of this in the laurel, or any shrub
whatever that may be thrust in with a ticket to tell you its name; it
has a ticket because it has no interest, or else you would know it.
For use there is nothing like hawthorn; it will trim into a thick hedge,
defending the enclosure from trespassers, and warding off the bitter
winds; or it will grow into a tree. Again, the old hedge-crab--the
common, despised crab-apple--in spring is covered with blossom, such a
mass of blossom that it may be distinguished a mile. Did any one ever
see a plane or a laurel look like that?
How pleasant, too, to see the clear white flower of the blackthorn come
out in the midst of the bitter easterly breezes! It is like a white
handkerchief beckoning to the sun to come. There will not be much more
frost; if the wind is bitter to-day, the sun is rapidly gaining power.
Probably, if a blackthorn bush were by any chance discovered in the
semi-parks or enclosures alluded to, it would at once be rooted out as
an accursed thing. The very brambles are superior; there is the flower,
the sweet berry, and afterwards the crimson leaves--three things in
succession.
What can the world produce equal to the June rose? The common briar, the
commonest of all, offers a flower which, whether in itself, or the
moment of its appearance at the juncture of all sweet summer things, or
its history and associations, is not to be approached by anything a
millionaire could purchase. The labourer casually gathers it as he goes
to his work in the field, and yet none of the rich families whose names
are synonymous with wealth can get anything to equal it if they ransack
the earth.
After these, fill every nook and corner with hazel, and make filbert
walks. Up and down such walks men strolled with rapiers by their sides
while our admirals were hammering at the Spaniards with culverin and
demi-cannon, and looked at the sun-dial and adjourned for a game at
bowls, wishing that they only had a chance to bowl shot instead of
peaceful wood. Fill in the corners with nut-trees, then, and make
filbert walks. All these are like old story books, and the old stories
are always best.
Still, there are others for variety, as the wild guelder rose, which
produces heavy bunches of red berries; dogwood, whose leaves when
frost-touched take deep colours; barberry, yielding a pleasantly acid
fruit; the wayfaring tree; not even forgetting the elder, but putting it
at the outside, because, though flowering, the scent is heavy, and
because the elder was believed of old time to possess some of the virtue
now attributed to the blue gum, and to neutralise malaria by its own
odour.
For colour add the wild broom and some furze. Those who have seen broom
in full flower, golden to the tip of every slender bough, cannot need
any persuasion, surely, to introduce it. Furze is specked with yellow
when the skies are dark and the storms sweep around, besides its prime
display. Let wild clematis climb wherever it will. Then laurels may come
after these, put somewhere by themselves, with their thick changeless
leaves, unpleasant to the touch; no one ever gathers a spray.
Rhododendrons it is unkind to attack, for in themselves they afford a
rich flower. It is not the rhododendron, but the abuse of it, which must
be protested against. Whether the soil suits or not--and, for the most
part, it does not suit--rhododendrons are thrust in everywhere. Just
walk in amongst them--behind the show--and look at the spindly, crooked
stems, straggling how they may, and then look at the earth under them,
where not a weed even will grow. The rhododendron is admirable in its
place, but it is often overdone and a failure, and has no right to
exclude those shrubs that are fitter. Most of the foreign shrubs about
these semi-country seats look exactly like the stiff and painted little
wooden trees that are sold for children's toys, and, like the toys, are
the same colour all the year round.
Now, if you enter a copse in spring the eye is delighted with cowslips
on the banks where the sunlight comes, with blue-bells, or earlier with
anemones and violets, while later the ferns rise. But enter the
semi-parks of the semi-country seat, with its affected assumption of
countryness, and there is not one of these. The fern is actually
purposely eradicated--just think! Purposely! Though indeed they would
not grow, one would think, under rhododendrons and laurels, cold-blooded
laurels. They will grow under hawthorn, ash, or beside the bramble
bushes.
If there chance to be a little pond or "fountain," there is no such
thing as a reed, or a flag, or a rush. How the rushes would be hastily
hauled out and hurled away with execrations!
Besides the greater beauty of English trees, shrubs, and plants, they
also attract the birds, without which the grandest plantation is a
vacancy, and another interest, too, arises from watching the progress of
their growth and the advance of the season. Our own trees and shrubs
literally keep pace with the stars which shine in our northern skies. An
astronomical floral almanack might almost be constructed, showing how,
as the constellations marched on by night, the buds and leaves and
flowers appeared by day.
The lower that brilliant Sirius sinks in the western sky after ruling
the winter heavens, and the higher that red Arcturus rises, so the buds
thicken, open, and bloom. When the Pleiades begin to rise in the early
evening, the leaves are turning colour, and the seed vessels of the
flowers take the place of the petals. The coincidences of floral and
bird life, and of these with the movements of the heavens, impart a
sense of breadth to their observation.
It is not only the violet or the anemone, there are the birds coming
from immense distances to enjoy the summer with us; there are the stars
appearing in succession, so that the most distant of objects seems
brought into connection with the nearest, and the world is made one. The
sharp distinction, the line artificially drawn between things, quite
disappears when they are thus associated.
Birds, as just remarked, are attracted by our own trees and shrubs. Oaks
are favourites with rooks and wood-pigeons; blackbirds whistle in them
in spring; if there is a pheasant about in autumn he is sure to come
under the oak; jays visit them. Elms are resorted to by most of the
larger birds. Ash plantations attract wood-pigeons and turtle-doves.
Thrushes are fond of the ash, and sing much on its boughs. The beech is
the woodpecker's tree so soon as it grows old--birch one of the
missel-thrush's.
In blackthorn the long-tailed tit builds the domed nest every one
admires. Under the cover of brambles white-throats build. Nightingales
love hawthorn, and so does every bird. Plant hawthorn, and almost every
bird will come to it, from the wood-pigeon down to the wren. Do not
clear away the fallen branches and brown leaves, sweeping the plantation
as if it were the floor of a ballroom, for it is just the tangle and the
wilderness that brings the birds, and they like the disarray.
If evergreens are wanted, there are the yew, the box, and holly--all
three well sanctioned by old custom. Thrushes will come for the yew
berries, and birds are fond of building in the thick cover of high box
hedges. Notwithstanding the prickly leaves, they slip in and out of the
holly easily. A few bunches of rushes and sedges, with some weeds and
aquatic grasses, allowed to grow about a pond, will presently bring
moorhens. Bare stones--perhaps concrete--will bring nothing.
If a bough falls into the water, let it stay; sparrows will perch on it
to drink. If a sandy drinking-place can be made for them the number of
birds that will come in the course of the day will be surprising.
Kind-hearted people, when winter is approaching, should have two posts
sunk in their grounds, with planks across at the top; a raised platform
with the edges projecting beyond the posts, so that cats cannot climb
up, and of course higher than a cat can spring. The crumbs cast out upon
this platform would gather crowds of birds; they will come to feel at
home, and in spring time will return to build and sing.
TO BRIGHTON
The smooth express to Brighton has scarcely, as it seems, left the
metropolis when the banks of the railway become coloured with wild
flowers. Seen for a moment in swiftly passing, they border the line like
a continuous garden. Driven from the fields by plough and hoe, cast out
from the pleasure-grounds of modern houses, pulled up and hurled over
the wall to wither as accursed things, they have taken refuge on the
embankment and the cutting.
There they can flourish and ripen their seeds, little harassed even by
the scythe and never by grazing cattle. So it happens that, extremes
meeting, the wild flower, with its old-world associations, often grows
most freely within a few feet of the wheels of the locomotive. Purple
heathbells gleam from shrub-like bunches dotted along the slope; purple
knapweeds lower down in the grass; blue scabious, yellow hawkweeds where
the soil is thinner, and harebells on the very summit; these are but a
few upon which the eye lights while gliding by.
Glossy thistledown, heedless whither it goes, comes in at the open
window. Between thickets of broom there is a glimpse down into a meadow
shadowed by the trees of a wood. It is bordered with the cool green of
brake fern, from which a rabbit has come forth to feed, and a pheasant
strolls along with a mind, perhaps, to the barley yonder. Or a foxglove
lifts its purple spire; or woodbine crowns the bushes. The sickle has
gone over, and the poppies which grew so thick a while ago in the corn
no longer glow like a scarlet cloak thrown on the ground. But red spots
in waste places and by the ways are where they have escaped the steel.
A wood-pigeon keeps pace with the train--his vigorous pinions can race
against an engine, but cannot elude the hawk. He stops presently among
the trees. How pleasant it is from the height of the embankment to look
down upon the tops of the oaks! The stubbles stretch away, crossed with
bands of green roots where the partridges are hiding. Among flags and
weeds the moorhens feed fearlessly as we roll over the stream: then
comes a cutting, and more heath and hawkweed, harebell, and bramble
bushes red with unripe berries.
Flowers grow high up the sides of the quarries; flowers cling to the
dry, crumbling chalk of the cliff-like cutting; flowers bloom on the
verge above, against the line of the sky, and over the dark arch of the
tunnel. This, it is true, is summer; but it is the same in spring.
Before a dandelion has shown in the meadow, the banks of the railway are
yellow with coltsfoot. After a time the gorse flowers everywhere along
them; but the golden broom overtops all, perfect thickets of broom
glowing in the sunlight.
Presently the copses are azure with bluebells, among which the brake is
thrusting itself up; others, again, are red with ragged robins, and the
fields adjacent fill the eye with the gaudy glare of yellow charlock.
The note of the cuckoo sounds above the rushing of the train, and the
larks may be seen, if not heard, rising high over the wheat. Some birds,
indeed, find the bushes by the railway the quietest place in which to
build their nests.
Butcher-birds or shrikes are frequently found on the telegraph wires;
from that elevation they pounce down on their prey, and return again to
the wire. There were two pairs of shrikes using the telegraph wires for
this purpose one spring only a short distance beyond noisy Clapham
Junction. Another pair came back several seasons to a particular part of
the wires, near a bridge, and I have seen a hawk perched on the wire
equally near London.
The haze hangs over the wide, dark plain, which, soon after passing
Redhill, stretches away on the right. It seems to us in the train to
extend from the foot of a great bluff there to the first rampart of the
still distant South Downs. In the evening that haze will be changed to a
flood of purple light veiling the horizon. Fitful glances at the
newspaper or the novel pass the time; but now I can read no longer, for
I know, without any marks or tangible evidence, that the hills are
drawing near. There is always hope in the hills.
The dust of London fills the eyes and blurs the vision; but it
penetrates deeper than that. There is a dust that chokes the spirit, and
it is this that makes the streets so long, the stones so stony, the desk
so wooden; the very rustiness of the iron railings about the offices
sets the teeth on edge, the sooty blackened walls (yet without shadow)
thrust back the sympathies which are ever trying to cling to the
inanimate things around us. A breeze comes in at the carriage window--a
wild puff, disturbing the heated stillness of the summer day. It is easy
to tell where that came from--silently the Downs have stolen into sight.
So easy is the outline of the ridge, so broad and flowing are the
slopes, that those who have not mounted them cannot grasp the idea of
their real height and steepness. The copse upon the summit yonder looks
but a short stroll distant; how much you would be deceived did you
attempt to walk thither! The ascent here in front seems nothing, but you
must rest before you have reached a third of the way up. Ditchling
Beacon there, on the left, is the very highest above the sea of the
whole mighty range, but so great is the mass of the hill that the glance
does not realise it.
Hope dwells there, somewhere, mayhap, in the breeze, in the sward, or
the pale cups of the harebells. Now, having gazed at these, we can lean
back on the cushions and wait patiently for the sea. There is nothing
else, except the noble sycamores on the left hand just before the train
draws into the station.
The clean dry brick pavements are scarcely less crowded than those of
London, but as you drive through the town, now and then there is a
glimpse of a greenish mist afar off between the houses. The green mist
thickens in one spot almost at the horizon; or is it the dark nebulous
sails of a vessel? Then the foam suddenly appears close at hand--a white
streak seems to run from house to house, reflecting the sunlight: and
this is Brighton.
"How different the sea looks away from the pier!" It is a new pleasure
to those who have been full of gaiety to see, for once, the sea itself.
Westwards, a mile beyond Hove, beyond the coastguard cottages, turn
aside from the road, and go up on the rough path along the ridge of
shingle. The hills are away on the right, the sea on the left; the yards
of the ships in the basin slant across the sky in front.
With a quick, sudden heave the summer sea, calm and gleaming, runs a
little way up the side of the groyne, and again retires. There is scarce
a gurgle or a bubble, but the solid timbers are polished and smooth
where the storms have worn them with pebbles. From a grassy spot ahead
a bird rises, marked with white, and another follows it; they are
wheatears; they frequent the land by the low beach in the autumn.