IN STORM AND SHINE
“Well roars the storm to those that hear
A deeper voice across the storm.”
TENNYSON.
Although Nature is moving apace, and the poet declares he has even
“heard the grasses springing underneath the snow”; although one set
of flowers is surplanting another in startlingly swift succession,
and the first-fruits of the Alpine year are already on the wane, we
will take our own time and study this progress with deliberate care
and attention. We have seen May smiling; we ought—nay, we are in
duty bound—to see her frowning. Like the récluse of Walden, we ought
each of us to become a “self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and
rainstorms.”
[Illustration: JUNE MEADOWS of Salvia, Lychnis, &c., in the Val
Ferret, just before arriving at the village of Praz de Fort. ]
An undoubtedly noble and proper philosophy assures us that there
is truth and beauty in no matter what condition, and that they who
see nothing but what is tiresome or hideous in certain estates,
draw the overplus of tiresomeness and hideousness from their own
selves. “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty,” says this philosophy;
“how, then,” it queries, “can any condition be unbeautiful? Is it not
yourselves who are in part lacking in a sense of loveliness, since
truth can never really be unbeautiful?”
Now, whatever we think of this as a species of sophistry, it behoves
us to look into it with quiet and decent care. An everyday world, deep
in its old conventions, will declare that it is certainly straining
a point to try thus to make all geese appear as swans. With the
exception of the poet minded to verse the innate grandeur of gloom,
the entire sublimity of storm, the entrancing mellowness of fog and
rain, and the wild joy which comes with a blizzard; or perhaps of the
painter minded to achieve in paint what the poet is doing in ink (both
of them, most probably, contriving their rhapsodies within the snug
seclusion of their rooms)—with the exception of these two privileged
persons comfortably absorbed in justifying a bias, an everyday world,
voting bad weather a kill-joy and mar-plot, will find happiness only
in avoiding and forgetting it.
Be that as it may; be fog, wind, and cloud and driving rain and sleet
a luxury in which we should revel—or not; of all places in the world
in bad weather, the Alps at springtide and at the altitude at which
we are now studying them, are probably among the most interesting and
absorbing. Let an everyday world, or as much of it as can, come and
judge for itself.
If in our composition we have a grain of love for Nature and for
Nature-study, there is a fund of opportunity for exercising it even
in cloudland at its gloomiest; and if, as in the present case, we are
bent upon studying the flowers and the means for their more adequate
reception into our English homelands, then bad weather holds for us
an amount of experience such as will aid us materially in our object.
“Inclemency” takes so large a share in the nurture of these flowers.
By companying with them when steeped in cloud and swept by wind, we
catch an important glimpse of the grim and forceful side of their
existence which is a prime cause of the superlative loveliness that so
impresses us when the sun does shine from out an immaculate azure.
Just as the cheese-mite is a product of the cheese, and has attained
its beauty and efficiency because of the nature of cheese, so are
these Alpines the wonderful things they are because of the nature
of the conditions with which they have to contend and upon which
they have to subsist. It is all very well for us to arrive upon the
scene at this late moment in their existence, transplant them to our
gardens, and there grow them, maybe, with marked success; it is all
very well for us to annex them now to our retinue of chattels, lord
it over them, and display them on our rockworks as if it were to us
and to our care and trouble that they owe their beauty; but these
plants have arrived at what they are without us and our attentions.
Our gardens never made them what they are, or gave them one particle
of their supreme and striking beauty. Nor are our gardens likely to
heighten that beauty in any real way; much more likely is it that we
shall arrive at degrading their refinement by bringing it down from
the severe purity of the skies to the grosser, easier circumstance of
our sheltered soil.
Alpine plants, perhaps because of the extreme conditions with which
they have to contend, and therefore because of the extreme measures
they have to take in order to defend themselves, seem to be possessed
of an efficiency surpassing that of most other plants. They are what
incessant warfare has made of them; they delight in it. Strenuous
children of strenuous circumstance, they are self-reliant to a degree,
and hold themselves with a winning air of independence. But it is
independence begot of strict dependence; they admit as much quite
frankly and sanely—an admittal of which man might well make a note in
red ink. Nature all over the world is saying, not, “Let me help you
to be independent,” but, “You shall and must depend upon me for your
independence.” And no living things have better understood this truth
than have the Alpines; no living things have acknowledged and mastered
this obligation more thoroughly than they. Hence their beauty; hence
their serenity and “nerve”; hence their “blended holiness of earth and
sky.”
Mark with what consummate efficiency these Alpine field-flowers cope
with stern inclemency. Tossed and torn by storms for which the Alps
are famous, see how they anchor themselves to Mother Earth! Washed
by torrential rains upon the rapid slopes, or parched by the most
personal of suns, small wonder that their roots, in many cases, should
form by far the greater part of their bulk and stature. They recall
to mind that learned professor who, wishing possibly to postulate
something “new,” declared to an unconvinced but amused world that what
it saw of a tree was not the tree—the tree was underground.
Whilst painting in the Val d’Arpette in June of this year (1910), I
met with a striking instance of the boisterous treatment to which
these plants must accustom themselves. The day was radiantly fine (as
any one may see from the picture facing page 24), yet suddenly, and
without warning, a most violent wind tore through the little valley,
sweeping everything loose and insecure before it, upsetting my easel
and camp-stool, carrying my Panama hat up on to the snow, and making
of the Anemones and Violas a truly sorry sight.
This violence, albeit of a somewhat different nature, reminded me
of several experiences I had had of uncommonly powerful eddies of
wind, travelling, like some waterspout at sea, slowly, in growling,
whirring spirals, over the steep pastures, tearing up the grass and
blossoms and carrying them straight and high up into the air; whilst
all around—except myself!—remained unmoved and peaceful. I have seen
such eddies strike a forest, shaking and swaying the giant pines like
saplings, wrenching off dead wood and many a piece of living branch,
and whirling them aloft. Under a glorious sky and amid the solitude
and stillness of the Alps, such violence is at least uncanny, if
not a little unnerving. One is moved to turn in admiration to the
ever-smiling Alpines and ejaculate:
“Brave flowers—that I could gallant it like you,
And be as little vain!”
With this as a sample—and a by no means uncommon sample—of what they
have to withstand, small wonder that so many of these plants have
endowed themselves with such a deep, tenacious grip upon their home!
Try with your trowel to dig up an entire root of, for instance,
the Alpine Clover (_Trifolium alpinum_), or the Sulphur Anemone,
or the Bearded Campanula, or the tall blue Rampion (_Phyteuma
betonicifolium_), or even so diminutive a plant as _Sibbaldia
procumbens_, or of so modest a one as _Plantago alpina_, and you will
be astounded at the depth to which you must delve. You will find it
the same with a hundred other subjects; and, unless you be digging
in some loose and gritty soil, most probably your amazement will end
in despair, and in destruction to the plant. More likely than not,
you will hack through the main root long before you have unearthed
the end of it. If for no other reason than this, then, it is at least
unwise to try to uproot these pasture-flowers. Should they be required
for the home-garden, it is far wiser and better behaviour to gather
seed from them later in the season. Most of them grow admirably from
seed thus gathered and _sown as soon as possible_; most of them
develop rapidly and blossom within two years; and with this grand
advantage over uprooted plants—they are able to acclimatize themselves
from birth to their new conditions and surroundings, their translation
being no rude and abrupt transition from one climate to another.
In this and in many other directions, it is when bad weather sweeps
the Alps that we can perhaps best learn from Nature what Emerson
learnt from her: that “she suffers nothing to remain in her Kingdom
which cannot help itself.” And, in learning how these plants help
themselves, we are also learning how best we can help them when we
remove them to our gardens. Bad weather is the greatest of teachers
all the world over. On sunny days we enjoy and admire what is very
largely the product of the storms.
Everything, even the worst thing, in its place, is a good thing. As
all sunshine and no storm would make man a nonentity, so would it
produce Alpines devoid of their present great ability and comeliness.
A thing of complete beauty is a thing of all weathers; and it is a
thing of present joy, and of joy for ever, because of much anguish in
the past. You and I could see nothing of loveliness if it were not for
ugliness; and these Alpines would not be worth looking at were it not
for the awful attempts made by Nature to overwhelm them. “A perpetual
calm will never make a sailor”; or, as Mr. Dooley says, “Foorce rules
the wurruld”—and keeps it peacefully disturbed, bewitchingly “alive.”
And Alpine inclemency possesses an æsthetic value which is as
important as it is alluring. Whether “in the smiles or anger of the
high air,” these flower-fields are invariably things of beauty; even
as the diamond glitters in the gloom, so do these pastures shine
throughout the storm. What could be more æsthetically beautiful than
the rosy expanses of Mealy Primrose bathed in dense, driving mists,
or (as in the picture facing page 16) the regiments of Globe-Flower,
standing pale but fascinating, in weather which, were we down on
the plains, we should consider “not fit for a dog to be abroad
in”? Or what more winsome than the widespread colonies of Bartsia,
Micheli’s Daisy, Pedicularis, Biscutella, and Bell-Gentian (_Gentiana
verna_, unfortunately, is closed when the sun hides itself), lying
subdued but colour-full beside the steaming waters of the lake?
[Illustration: Field of _CAMPANULA RHOMBOIDALIS_ on the Col de la
Forclaz, about the beginning of July. ]
Ah! where one of these Alpine lakes is in the landscape, what wonders
of Nature’s artistry we may watch when rough winds howl and toss the
seething cloud into ever-changing combinations of tint, form, and
texture!
“With how ceaseless motion, with how strange
Flowing and fading, do the high Mists range
The gloomy gorges of the Mountains bare”!
A hundred hues of grey fill the vapour-laden air and are mirrored in
receptive waters—hues with which the fresh rose of the Primula and the
rich, full yellow of the Marsh-Marigold blend with perfect felicity,
lending that touch of human appeal which makes the scene ideal.
The forests, too, are never so picturesque as when clouds cling to
the pine and larch, softening the tone and carriage of these somewhat
formal trees, and breaking up every suggestion of monotony in their
reiterated masses. A soft, weird, intimately mysterious beauty reigns
over everything. What matter the winds and the rains if they bring
us such expression? By what is regret justified in all this witchery?
Regret that the sun no longer shines, inducing the Vernal Gentian to
open wide its bright blue eyes? Nay; here, in Alp-land, if nowhere
else, does an ultimate philosophy speak possibly of what is actual;
here, if nowhere else, bad weather is but a delightful foil to bright
and sunny days. Regret! There is no right room for such repining: no
sound and balanced reason to moan, as moans, for instance, the Chinese
poet:
“If only to darken the darkness, O Thou in Thy heavens above,
Why dost Thou light for a moment the lamp of a beautiful thing?”
For in the Alps the lamp of Beauty burns without cessation; and where
wondrous flowering pastures border some rough-cut lake, legacy from
glaciers long since retired, the lamp burns always brightly.
By writing of inclemency in such full-flavoured tones, I am not trying
to make the best of a bad case; I am simply and honestly setting
forth the undoubted good there is in what may seem “impossible.” Any
one who has lived with these things and has watched them springtime
after springtime, is usually in no way eager to run away, although
well aware that the sheltered distractions of the towns are within
quite easy reach. One finds no really compensating counterpart in
kursaals and shop-windows for an Alpine springtime where flowering
pastures kiss “the crystal treasures of the liquid world.” One need
not be a poet, one need not be a painter, one need not be a mystic,
and one certainly need be no “neurasthenic” to appreciate the
figurative sunshine of which spring’s Alpine inclemency is redolent.
One has but to be natural—a sanely-simple human being, dismissing the
hampering prejudices and conventions born of towns, and allowing the
appeal of Nature to come freely into its own. Then oneself is busy
a-weaving—a-weaving of cobweb dreams; and the cobwebs are woven of
material worthy, substantial, and real. One’s dreams are not of that
solid, sordid order, nor of that frail, unhealthy nature so common
with dreams arising from unnatural town-life. They are children of
completest sanity, and they are in no part begot of _ennui_. One
builds, and one builds for health’s sake; nor does the building know
aught of “castles in Spain.” There is no question here of anæmic
fancy. All that one dreams is not only possible, but sound, touching
upon realities which control and direct the best of destinies.
Compared with town-life, one is in a new world; and it is often
astounding to think that town-life is a necessity to which one is
obliged to add the important word “imperative.”
And all this may be so even in wet weather. Here, even when clouds
hold everything in damp and clinging embrace, we may
“Grow rich in that which never taketh rust.”
And grow rich quite comfortably; for have we not our mackintoshes and
goloshes!
The Alps are not ours for climbing purpose only. They are not for us
only when winter rules and gives us sports abounding, or when the
snows retire to the cradles of the glaciers, and the days of late
July and those of August and September grant us the conditions we
most seek for long excursions. They are ours also for an intermediate
season: a season of the utmost value, though, maybe, not for “sport.”
Mr. Frederic Harrison, speaking of “the eternal mountains, vocal with
all the most majestic and stirring appeals to the human spirit,” and
of the treatment of them by those who think only of “rushing from
pass to pass and from peak to peak in order to beat Tompkins time
or establish a new record,” says: “Switzerland might be made one of
the most exquisite schools of every sense of beauty, one of the most
pathetic schools of spiritual wonder.” And Mr. Harrison is right: this
school exists, and is no mere fiction wrought of sentimental thinking.
Nor is it ever closed to students—although there be periods when the
attendance is lamentably slack. We know that its doors stand wide open
in the winter and in the summer; let it be known, and as well known,
that they stand equally wide open in the spring. Let it be known,
moreover, that in spite sometimes of fickle, fitful weather, it is
in the spring, above all other seasons, that this school is “one of
the most exquisite schools of every sense of beauty, one of the most
pathetic schools of spiritual wonder.”
* * * * *
Then once again,
“The sunlight, leaping from the Heights,
Flames o’er the fields of May,
• • • • •
And butterflies and insect mites,
Born with the new-blown day,
Cross fires in shifting opal lights
From spray to beckoning spray,”
and we are aware that during the brief period of inclemency a very
astonishing change has been taking place in our surroundings under
cover of the heavy mists. Nature has been speedily busy, robing the
fields in garments fit for June. Before the mists closed down upon
us a few days ago insect-life was noticeable mostly by its scarcity.
Except for the Orange-Tip and Dingy Skipper butterflies, and for the
Skipper-like moth, _Euclidia Mi_, flitting among the Saponarias,
Daisies, and Geums, and for a dainty milk-white spider on the rosy
heads of _Primula farinosa_, there was little of “life” among the
flowers. But now the butterflies are legion, a brilliant pea-green
spider has joined the white one, and lustrous little beetles—among the
most beautiful of Alpine creatures—are either frolicking or basking in
the glorious sunshine on the wild Peppermint and other fragrant herbs.
As for the flowers themselves, they have more than doubled in kind, if
not actually in beauty and in number.
Indeed, there is such transformation in the meadows as makes us
rub our eyes and wonder if we have not slept the sleep of Rip van
Winkle! The Gentians have all but gone, the Anemone also, and
_Primula farinosa_ has become most rare. In their places stand the
Globe-Flower, the Bistort, the Paradise Lily (barely open), the Sylvan
Geranium, the blue Centaurea, and the pale yellow Biscutella, while
the last blossoms of _Anemone sulphurea_ have been joined by the
exquisite blush-tinted heads of _Anemone narcissiflora_. It is as
though some curtain had rolled swiftly up upon another landscape—one
which, as we are but human, we must applaud more rapturously than we
did the last. For—
“To-day fresh colours break the soil, and butterflies take wing
Down broidered lawns all bright with pearls in the garden
of the King.”
And although we still may say we are in dainty May, more than the toe
of our best foot is already in gorgeous June.