THE ENGLISH LANDSCAPE AND THE ENGLISH LOVE OF IT
There are as many types of natural scenery in England almost as there are
counties. To attempt to describe all in this one volume would be absurd.
Yet to generalise on English natural beauty is difficult, because of that
great diversity. Who can suggest, for instance, a common denominator to
suit the Devonshire Moors, the Norfolk Broads, the Surrey Downs, and the
Thames Valley? But since one must generalise, it is safe to give as the
predominant feature of England's natural beauty that which strikes most
obviously the eye of the stranger used to other countries.
Nine out of ten strangers coming to England for the first time, and asked
to speak of its appearance, will say something equivalent to "park-like."
England in truth looks like one great well-ordered park, under the charge
of a skilful landscape gardener. The trees seem to grow with an eye to
effect, the meadows to be designed for vistas, the hedges for reliefs. The
land indeed does not seem ever to be doing anything--not at all a correct
impression in fact, that, but it is the one conveyed irresistibly.
One soon notices that the tree must in France work for its living. It
cannot aspire to the luxurious and beautiful existence of its English
brothers, who in their woods and copses have little to do but to "utter
green leaves joyously" in the spring, glow with burnished glory in the
autumn, and unrobe delicate traceries for admiration in the winter. In
France a tree may live on the edge of a road or as one of a cluster
sheltering a farmhouse, or keep many other trees company in a State pine
forest which will help to make those execrable French matches; but its
every twig is utilised, and a hard-working existence takes away much of its
beauty. The aesthetic tree, the tree with nothing to do but just to be a
tree and look pretty, is rare in most countries; but in England it is the
commonplace. Other countries have useful trees which look pretty, forests
which are impressive in spite of man. England seems to share with Japan the
amiable thriftlessness of giving up much land to growth which is not
intended to serve any base utilitarian purpose at all.
The hedges, which take up a considerable fraction of English arable soil,
help to the park-like appearance of the country. They are inexpressibly
beautiful when spring wakes them up to pipe their roulades in tender green.
In summer they are splendid in blazon of leaf and flower. In autumn they
flaunt banners of gold and red and brown. In winter, too, they are still
beautiful, especially in the early winter when there still survive a few
scarlet berries to glow and crackle and almost burn in the frost. If
England, in a mood of thrift, swept away her hedges and put in their places
fences (or that nice sense of keeping boundaries which enables the French
cultivator to do without either), the saving of land would be enormous. But
much of the park-like beauty of the country-side would depart; and with it
the predominant note of the English landscape, which is that of the estate
of a rich, careful, orderly nobleman.
The change will be slow in coming, if it comes at all; for though he would
be the last man, probably, to suspect it, the Englishman is at heart
aesthetic. Yes, in spite of horse-hair furniture, gilt-framed oleographs,
wax-flower decorations, and Early Victorian wall-papers, and other sins of
which many of him have been, and still are, guilty, the Englishman has
planted in him an instinct for art. It shows in his love of nature, of the
green of his England. Almost every one aspires to come into touch with a
bit of plant life. In the East End of London the aspiration takes the form
of a window garden. You may see workingmen's "flats" let at six shillings a
week with their window gardens. In the West End, land which must be worth
many thousands of pounds per acre is devoted to garden use. For want of
better, a terrace of houses will have a little strip of plantation, at back
or front, common to all of them. House and "flat" agents tell that tenants
almost always demand that there shall be at least sight of a green tree
from some window. In the small suburban villas a very considerable tax of
money and labour is cheerfully paid in the effort to keep in good order a
little pocket-handkerchief of lawn and a few shrubs. This love of the
garden is holy and wholesome, and it proves, I think, that the Englishman
is at heart a lover of the beautiful, an "aesthetic," though he is supposed
to be such a dull, prosaic, practical person.
Comparing the English with the French on this point, in my opinion it is in
the practical application of aesthetic principles to life rather than in
aesthetic sensibility that the French are superior to the English. What
difference there is in aestheticism favours the English; there are deeper
springs of art and poetry in the English people than in the French. But art
has been far more carefully cherished and organised in France than in
England. There is more general artistic education, if less true artistic
feeling.
Approach a typical French village of a modern type. The first impression
given by the houses is of a vastly superior artistic consciousness. Both in
colour and in form the houses are more beautiful than the same types in
England, where domestic architecture of the villa type so often suggests
either a penal establishment or the need of a penal establishment for the
designer. But look a little closer, and one notices that, as compared with
an English town, there is in France a conspicuous absence of gardens.
Decorative trees, shrubberies, flowers are rare. Where there is garden
space it is, as like as not, devoted to some shocking attempt at grandiose
_rococo_ work. The interiors, too, are disappointing. Thrift suggests the
hideous closed-in stove as a substitute for open fires; but the garish
wall-papers, the coloured prints, the "decorations" of shell-work or china,
and so on, are not necessary, and are far more ugly than those of the
average poor home in England, even of the "Early Victorian type." I repeat,
the natural artistic standard of the French does not seem to be so high as
that of the English, but the standard of artistic education is very much
higher.
[Illustration: A KENT MANOR-HOUSE AND GARDEN]
I have noticed among all classes in England the same natural love of
beauty. It does not exist only in the rich (but as a class it exists among
them to a very marked degree: there is nothing in the world more beautiful
than an English manor house, with its park and garden); it permeates the
whole people. I recall a farmer to whom I spoke of the waste caused by the
gorgeous yellow-blossomed weeds which invaded his wheat. "Yes," he said,
half content, half sorry, "but they do look so beautiful." It was not that
he was a lazy farmer, but he did actually love the beautiful wild life
which came to rob his wheat of its nourishment.
At another time I remember meeting on a country road a draper's porter (one
of those poor casual labourers who make an odd penny here and there by
carrying parcels for small drapers). He had an enforced holiday and he was
tramping out into the country from the town "to see the green fields." He
did not say in so many words that he "loved" the green fields. It would not
occur to him probably to attempt to phrase his feeling towards them. But it
was clear that he did, most fondly; and he was fairly typical of the
Englishman of his class.
As an exile the Englishman carries away with him the ideal of the soft
green English country-side, and tries to reconstruct England wherever he
may settle overseas. English trees, English grass, English flowers he
sedulously cultivates in Australia, in Canada, in South Africa, and wins
some strange triumphs over Nature in many of his acclimatisations.
Occasionally the transplanting succeeds too well. An Englishman with a
touch of nostalgia--not enough of it to send him back to his Home
country--introduced rabbits to Australia. It would be home-like, he
thought, to see rabbits popping in and out of their burrows. That was the
beginning. Now there are places in Australia where you can hardly put your
foot down without treading on a rabbit, and sufficient of money to build a
large navy has had to be spent in keeping the rabbit-pest in check. Another
home-sick colonist, who came possibly, however, from north of the Tweed,
introduced Scottish thistles into the same country with disastrous results.
Yet another English acclimatisation was that of the field daisy to
Tasmania. It flourished wonderfully in its new surroundings, and had such a
bad effect on the pasturage that a war had to be waged against its spread.
But, seeing an English meadow decked with daisies, as thick as stars in the
Milky Way, one might almost argue that such beauty is good compensation for
a little loss of grass, as my farmer thought with his invaded wheat patch.
The wide grass walks of Kew Gardens in the daisy time are lovely enough to
make one forget all material things. To give a thought to the niceties of a
cow's appetite, or to the yield of butter, when remembering such daisies,
would not be possible.
All along the English country-side the gardens are delicious, from the
winsome cottage plots to the nobly sweeping landscape surrounding a typical
manor house, blending a hundred individual beauties of lawn, rosery, herb
border, walled garden, wild garden into one enchanting mosaic. But, withal,
it is the wonderful variety and perfection of the trees that is most
remarkable. The affectionate regard for trees in England is a most pleasing
thing to one who in his own country has had often to protest against a sort
of rage against trees, as if they were enemies of the human race. (The
pioneer who has to clear a forest for the sake of his crop and pasture gets
into an unhappy habit afterwards of tree-murder out of sheer wantonness.)
At Ampthill Park (an old Henry VIII. hunting seat) I have been shown oaks
which in Cromwell's time were recorded as "too old to be cut down for the
building of ships." They are still carefully preserved, some of them
enjoying old-age pensions in the shape of props to keep up their venerable
limbs.
Were I advising a friend abroad who knew nothing of England and wished to
make a pilgrimage to its chief shrines of beauty, I think I should urge him
to come in the late winter to Plymouth and explore first Cornwall and
Devon, seeing, in the first case, how England's "rocky shores beat back the
envious siege of watery Neptune." The coming of the waves of an Atlantic
storm to Land's End offers a grand spectacle. He should stay in the
south-west to see the first breath of spring bring the trees to green, and
the earliest of the daffodils to flower. He will very likely encounter some
wet weather. The Dartmoor people themselves say:--
The south wind blows and brings wet weather,
The north gives wet and cold together,
The west wind comes brimful of rain,
The east wind drives it back again.
Then if the sun in red should set,
We know the morrow must be wet;
And if the eve is clad in grey
The next is sure a rainy day.
But despite showers, spring on Dartmoor is a glowing pageant of green and
gold. After feasting upon it a week or so, my imaginary pilgrim would make
his way to the Thames valley to welcome yet another spring. The Gulf Stream
gives the south-west corner of England a softer climate and an earlier
spring than the east enjoys. By the time the daffodils are nodding their
golden heads in Cornwall, the crocus will be just showing its flame along
the borders of the Thames, and the pilgrim will understand Browning's
rapture:--
Oh to be in England
Now that April's there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm tree hole are in tiny leaf;
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England--now!
When once the spring is in full tide towards summer, it is difficult to say
where one should search for special beauty in England, for all is so
beautiful, from the Yorkshire hills to the Sussex marshes beloved of
Coventry Patmore--flat lands whose drowsy beauties glow under the broad
sunshine and suggest a tranquil charm of quiet joy tinged with melancholy,
too subtle to appeal to the casual "tripper," but of insistent call to all
who understood the more intimate charms of Nature. It is spacious is
Sussex. It shelters solitudes. Its quiet, slow-voiced people are
sympathetic with their surroundings. When storms rage Sussex takes a new
aspect. The screaming of the gulls, the sobbing of the sedges in the wind,
the wide, flat expanse laid, as it were, bare to the rage of the storm,
gives to the wind a sense of poignant desolation.
In Sussex, when Henry VIII. was king, many "great cannones and shotters
were caste for His Majestie's service"; and the county was notable for its
iron mines and foundries. From Sussex earlier had come all of the 3000
horseshoes on which an English king's army had galloped to ruin at
Bannockburn. Owing to the iron in the soil the Sussex streams sometimes run
red, so that "at times the grounde weepes bloud." Now there is an end of
iron-working there. The foundry at Ashburnham, the last of the Sussex
furnaces, was closed down in 1828. One reason given was that the workers
were too drunken, helped as they were to unsober habits by the facilities
for smuggling in Holland's gin.
But more probably the Sussex ironworks closed down in the main for the same
reason that other southern works did. The past two centuries have seen a
gradual transference of the great industries and the great centres of
population from the south to the north-west and the Midlands. The northern
coal mines are the real magnets. So the Sussex iron-workers of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries may not justly be accused of killing an
industry with their dissolute love of Holland's gin. Their country is
to-day the more picturesque without the iron foundries, though one may give
a sigh to Sussex iron, which had the repute of being the toughest in all
England.
I have given this little space to Sussex, by way of proof that everywhere
in England there is beauty, for Sussex is not a "scenery" county in the
general sense. It will, indeed, prove puzzling to my imaginary pilgrim in
search of the highest natural beauty of England to find time within one
spring and summer to get an idea of its wide variety of charm. Fortunate he
if he resists all temptation to rush (by motor car or otherwise) through a
"comprehensive tour" mapped out by hours. I remember encountering--with
deep pity on my part--a group of delegates to some great Imperial
Conference, who were being "shown England" by some misguided and misguiding
official. They were at Oxford for lunch, and were due to "do" Oxford and
lunch--or rather lunch and Oxford--within three hours. Motoring up they had
already "done" a great deal of country in a morning, including a visit to
Banbury. After lunch--and Oxford--they were on their way to Worcester and
yet farther that day. It was an unhappy experiment in quick-change scenery,
proving conclusively the cleverness of motor cars and the stupidity of
human beings.
[Illustration: A SUSSEX VILLAGE]
May and June in this fancied Pilgrimage of Beauty should be given up wholly
to the Thames valley from Greenwich to Oxford, and past. An intelligent
lover of the beautiful in Nature and Art will at least learn in those two
months that a life-time is not sufficient for due faithful worship at all
the shrines of Beauty he will encounter. My pilgrim has now seen wild coast
scenery and river scenery. July should be given to the hills and the lakes,
these enchanting lakes which have won new beauties from the poets and wise
men who dwelt by them. Then August to the Yorkshire Wolds, with their
sweeping outlines, clear in the amber air shining over white roads and
blue-green fields.
The attractions of the Yorkshire Wolds are proof against the wet sea-mists,
the penetrating winds, and the merciless rain which sometimes sweep over
them. The very severity of the weather appeals to nature lovers. The
Yorkshire Wolds terminate on the east with the great Flamborough headland,
the chalky cliffs of which have remarkable strength to resist ocean
erosion. Owing to this fact Flamborough headland has been for centuries
becoming more and more the outstanding feature of the east coast of
England, because the sea continues to eat into the low shores of
Holderness.
With the end of August comes the end of the English summer (though at times
it ends at a very much earlier date, and offers with its brief life poor
reason for having appeared at all; "seeing that I was so soon to be done
for, why ever was I begun for"). It is then time to go to Kent and see the
burnishing of the woods by Autumn, the ripening of hop and apple. To the
New Forest afterwards, and the sands of the south coast. At the end of the
year our pilgrim will know how varied is the beauty of the English
landscape, and how faithfully it is loved in its different forms by those
who live near to it.