THE JULY FIELDS
“Through rich green solitudes,
And wildly hanging woods
With blossoms and with bell,
In rich redundant swell,
And the pride
Of the mountain daisy there,
And the forest everywhere,
With the dress and with the air
Of a bride.”
DUNCAN BAN MACINTYRE.
Amid the brilliant floral gathering which crowds into the arena of
the Alps upon the blazoned entry of July, one marks no sign of the
fair and frail St. Bruno’s Lily. Nor is this as it should not be.
Dainty to the point of extreme delicacy, this flower of Paradise is
justly of a season more restrained, and one should not heap regrets
upon its absence from so flamboyant a concourse as this present. The
rich-blue Bell Gentian is likewise absent from the gay and jostling
crowd, having at last vanished from the shadier nooks where, in fond
persistency, it has been continuing the cult of spring. But these two
precious field-flowers form, possibly, the sum of June’s distinguished
absentees.
“Why fret about them if to-day be sweet!”
And, surely, to-day is as sweet as ever yesterday was! The glory of
the Bistort is not yet on the wane, and to it the tall Buttercup has
wedded its lustre, and _Ranunculus aconitifolius_, the Fair Maid of
France; consequently, the moister meadows are a knee-deep wealth of
pink, yellow, and white. On the drier fields, too, the rich blue
and mauve expanses of Salvia and Geranium are now reinforced by the
crowded blue bells of _Campanula rhomboidalis_, and hosts of the
mauve-blossomed Scabious; while upon the slopes the now declining
Biscutella and Strawberry-flowered Potentilla have for new companions
_Hieracium alpinum_, _Hypochœris maculata_, _Crepis aurea_, _Campanula
barbata_, and _C. Scheuchzeri_, the tall lemon-yellow _Hypochœris
uniflora_, and the lilac _Gentiana campestris_. The tall blue and
tall white _Phyteuma betonicæfolium_, and the blue, round-headed _P.
orbiculare_ are everywhere, and have been joined by the tall blue
_P. Micheli_ and the little blue _P. hemisphæricum_ of onion-like
leaves. The Orchids, also everywhere, are still in full beauty, their
numbers having been swelled by the arrival of _Gymnadenia albida_.
The stately _Veratrum album_ is in flower, companioning the equally
stately Yellow Gentian, to which, in habit and foliage, though not in
blossom, it bears a strong resemblance. The Arnica, also, is coming
into bloom: the tall, red-brown Martagon Lily is fast filling out its
buds; the Yellow Rattle and Anthyllis are ubiquitous; the graceful
Thesium, with sprays of olive-coloured stems and leaves and tiny white
stars (and ugly English name of Bastard Toadflax), is looking its
daintiest; and hosts of Ox-eyed Marguerites and pink Umbelliferæ top
the meadows far and wide. On the rough banks and edges of the fields,
or on the rocks that so often crop up in these pastures, _Saponaria
ocymoides_, _Helianthemum alpestre_, _Calamintha alpina_, _Veronica
saxatilis_, and _Silene rupestris_ add respectively their bright pink,
orange-yellow, mauve, blue, and white abundance to the radiance of the
field-flowers proper. In “the grassy hollow that holds the bubbling
well-spring,” _Myosotis palustris_ is opening its myriad blue eyes;
the Bartsia lingers by “the flower-lit stream” and is joined by the
tiny bright blue _Gentiana nivalis_, here and there showing its rarer
white form; whilst up upon the mountain-sides, backing and dominating
the whole of this crowded, gay array, the Rhododendron is fast putting
forth its red, amazing fulness.
If June be reckoned as a millionaire, then surely July must also,
and with the additional prefix “multi”! “It is with flowers as with
men,” says Major Reginald Rankin in “The Royal Ordering of Gardens,”
and “Providence is on the side of big battalions.” And, of a truth,
this is so in these fields; bigger battalions it would indeed be hard
to find. Is there not here some striking suggestion of an element
in ultimate beauty—that of an harmonious brotherhood? One certainly
seems to catch a glimpse of that economic state where individuality
is general rather than particular; where personality is absorbed by
the mass, and beauty is conspicuous only in the whole; where, so to
speak, the red neckties of leadership do not flare out in designed
and conscious isolation. Among themselves plants have their likes
and dislikes. It is well known that, for example, certain flowers
are only found in the company of Corn, and it is said that in the
kitchen-garden the Radish simply detests the Thyme. But here, on these
meadows, all trace of discord seems lost in one great accord, and the
plants, both great and small, blue-blooded and plebeian,
“A social commerce hold, and firm support
The full adjusted harmony of things.”
And what pageantry it all is; what consummate pageantry! “The flowers
are at their Bacchanals!” The Old Mother, unlike many other parents,
is not outdistanced by her children. Though man be loath to admit it,
she holds the lead, and sets him both pace and tune. What are his
pageants beside the pageantry of this his age-full parent? He summons
up his past for glory, and, rightly or wrongly, sees magnificence
only in what he has been; but his old mother, as here on these fairy
fields, seeks naught further than the present. Were it not well that
he read in this the lesson: “Nature must once more become his home, as
it is the home of the animals and angels”? Were it not well that he
should shift his ground and thus amend his outlook? Scarcely does it
befit him to brag about
“Nature’s fair, fruitless, aimless world
Men take and mould at will!”
“Fruitless, aimless world”? Why, willy-nilly, Nature moulds _him_—even
by allowing him to think he is moulding _her_.
Behold these meadows! Will he take them and mould them to anything
better than they are? No, he certainly will not. Will he give them an
aim higher than they possess at present? Possibly. There is, however,
only one way by which he may succeed: let him unbend, and let him
gather these meadows closer to his heart and understanding: let him
transport what he can of them to his parks and gardens. But let him
not for one moment imagine that by so doing he is “moulding” them;
for, indubitably, it is they who will be moulding him.
And for this reason: Alpine fields are such superlatively true art
that he cannot but find in them, as in all true art, a common ground
of interest, fellowship, happiness, advancement; “a means”—as Tolstoi
says of true art—“of union among men, joining them together in the
same feelings”—feelings that must ameliorate, must refine.
* * * * *
We are now nearing the dread but necessary moment when the scythe
will be laying low the flowers; but ere the arrival of this careful,
callous friend of the cows, we have a few more hours in which to cast
another greedy look around. The Bistort and Buttercup, Orchid and
tall Rampion, have become, or are fast becoming, dingy and seed-full,
but there are several handsome and interesting newcomers; and many of
these subjects, such as the Martagon Lily and Field Gentian, which
at the commencement of the month had only a bloom or two open here
and there, are now at perfection. The red _Centaurea uniflora_ is a
vivid object among the grasses: a “distinct advance,” as nurserymen
would say, upon _C. scabiosa_, our common Hard-heads or Knobweed,
blooming beside it. The sturdy Brown Gentian (_Gentiana purpurea_)
and its near relation, the cream-coloured or greenish-yellow _G.
punctata_, are conspicuous objects, and _Hieracium aurantiacum_,
the fiery, orange-red Hawkweed or Grimm the Collier, burns as a
jewel among them. _Astrantia major_, the Great Masterwort, unique
and charming—more particularly when its flower-heads take on their
truly Alpine tint of rosy magenta—is here with its little brother,
_A. minor_, pale and fragile, perhaps from its habit of living in
shadier places than _major_. The Campanulas are glorious, and
the lilac pyramidal heads of _C. spicata_ are striking “bits of
colour” where the grass is sparser. So also are the lovely deep-blue,
pea-like masses of _Vicia onobrychioides_, associating with Rampion,
Arnica, and Martagon or Turk’s-cap Lily. _Dianthus superbus_ spreads
a lace-like mantle of pink and white over the shadier portions of
the fields by the forest’s edge; and _D. sylvestris_ is a glory of
flesh-pink upon the hotter slopes by the rocks. _Aconitum Napellus_,
blue Monkshood or _Char de Venus_, is not hereabouts as on the
higher pastures; neither are the yellow and orange pea-like _Orobus
luteus_ and that curious Bellflower, _Campanula thyrsoides_, with
its stumpy hollow stem surmounted by a close-set mass of washed-out
yellow flowers; nor is the handsome large-flowered yellow Foxglove
(_Digitalis ambigua_) so plentiful in the Jura Mountains and in other
limestone districts. But _Thalictrum aquilegifolium_, most seductive
of the Meadowrues, raises its soft-lilac or cream-white plumes—often
beside the majestic cream-white plumes of _Spiræa Aruncus_, Queen of
the Fields—in luxuriant hollows where dwell bushes of Alpine Eglantine
and Honeysuckle. In these rich, grassy hollows, too, are noble plants
of the sticky, yellow _Salvia glutinosa_, or Jupiter’s Distaff; the
tall mauve _Mulgedium alpinum_, the _Laitue des Alpes_ or Alpine
Lettuce of the French; the equally tall red _Adenostyles albifrons_;
and the Lesser Foxglove (_Digitalis lutea_), with dark, shiny
foliage and packed spikes of pale yellow blossoms. The orange-yellow
Leopard’s-Bane, _Senecio Doronicum_, and the pink and white _Valeriana
montana_, are upon the dry, turfy banks; and down upon the lower
slopes, among the shrubs or out in the sun-baked open, is a brilliant
concourse of yellow _Ononis natrix_, pink _O. rotundifolia_ (here
and there white in form), blue, Thrift-like _Jasione montana_,
tall, rich-blue, open-flowered _Campanula persicifolia_, and pure
yellow, red-stamened _Verbascum phlomoides_, finest of the Mulleins.
Intense-blue clumps of Hyssop enliven the hot, shaly spaces; and here,
too, is _Linum tenuifolium_, a Flax with delicate lilac flowers;
the Golden Thistle (_Carlina vulgaris_), which, with the white _C.
acaulis_, is so useful for winter decoration: the exquisite pink and
white rambling Vetch, _Coronilla varia_; and _Dianthus sylvestris_
and _D. Carthusianorum_ are wellnigh everywhere in pink and red
abundance—the latter sometimes running to so deep and fiery a shade as
to be found worthy of the additional name of _atrorubens_.
[Illustration: _GERANIUM SYLVATICUM_, _POTENTILLA RUPESTRIS_,
_CENTAUREA MONTANA_, the pink Bistort, the little Alpine Bistort,
painted on the spot in the fields at the beginning of July. ]
Truly, this is a “sun-kissed land of plenty,” with July blazoned in
tones of utmost triumph! Yet harmony, restraint, refinement, have not
in any way been sacrificed. Our sense of this is so acute that when we
return to the plains, the gardens and their gorgeous burdens are apt
to jar upon us, as will vulgarity or a flagrant want of taste.
After some three months spent in intimacy with these slopes and
fields, go down to the swallow’s summer quarters—to Martigny, or
elsewhere on the plain—and mark the Zinnias and French Marigolds,
Asters and Sweet-Williams, and the flaming beds of Petunias, Salvias,
and Geraniums. Mark how gross seems all this “cultivation” after the
Alpine wildness. You are at once constrained to ask yourself. What is
there derogatory in wildness if to be cultivated is to be as these
garden flowers? You see at once more clearly than possibly you ever
saw before that, after all, refinement is largely a relative quantity,
and that even the Rose, Dean Hole’s “Queen Rosa,” can appear coarse
after you have spent a season with the Gentian.
And perhaps it is this feeling that can account in some measure
for our habit of isolating all Alpines upon rockworks. Perhaps it
prompts us to treat them with special deference; and though we will
not, cannot deny the Balsam, or the Tropeolum, or the Cactus Dahlia
our loudest acclamations; though we keep for these and suchlike
products of cultivation a proud place in our affections, hailing
them as familiars allied most intimately to our ordinary, worldly
natures,—though, I say, we hold this grosser, gaudier vegetation
with loving tenacity to our hearts, yet is our rarer self in instant
touch with these Alpine wild-flowers, and, as it were, conducts them
honourably to a shrine apart.
* * * * *
The Aster and the Edelweiss are now in bloom above us, and we are
“list’ning with nice distant ears” to the chime of the cattle-bells,
wind-wafted from the higher pastures, half wishing it were our
business to climb. We could, if we would, be again with the youth of
the year; for one of the delightful possibilities of Alpine residence
is to be able to follow spring and summer well into the heart of
autumn. But this year we dare not; our task is to watch these half-way
fields to the end of the floral seasons. Nor is our lot a hard one.
Though flower-land hereabouts is now nearly a dream of yesterday,
yet have we much that can still hold us to the spot, enchanted and
instructed; though for some few days past the fields have seen their
best, and are now for the most part spacious park-like pleasaunces of
yellowish-green, yet have we still the famous setting of
“... dreaming mountains,
Lifted from the world together”;
yet have we still the vast, irreproachable arena which, there is no
gainsaying, has helped towards the deep and lasting impression we have
gathered from the meadows.
Over yonder, towering high above the Grand St. Bernard road, and
reflected snow for snow and precipice for precipice in the placid
waters of the lake, is the Grand Combin, one of the noblest units of
“those great constellations of snow-peaks which Nature has massed, in
splendid and prodigal confusion,” in this part of Switzerland; away,
at the end of the Val Ferret, are the white and graceful lines of the
Grand Golliaz, flanked on the near side by the _massif_ of Saleinaz,
and on the further side by the Groupe du Grand Saint-Bernard;
while, immediately above us, suffused with the red of the flowering
Rhododendron, are the steep and rocky masses of the Breyaz, the
Clocher d’Arpette, and the Catogne, that curious mountain that can be
seen from Vevey and Lausanne, a sugarloaf-like cone, blocking the very
centre of the Rhône Valley.
What a happy thing it is that in this neighbourhood the mountains are
reminiscent of nothing except their own giant individualities. How
vexing when this is otherwise—when, I mean, there is a lion rock, or
a weeping woman, or a head of Napoleon in the landscape; as when Mark
Twain discovered that one of the aiguilles flanking Mont Blanc “took
the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit’s head.” At Château d’Oex, for
instance, the outline of the Gummfluh is a really creditable profile
likeness of the great Gladstone with his collar, and that of the Rubli
next door presents the profile of O’Connell, the Irish patriot. Apart
from the damage inflicted upon the landscape by the intrusion of
party politics, such huge examples of Nature’s unconscious incursions
into portraiture, when once they have made themselves plain, become a
distressing obsession; and especially is this so for the artist who
attempts to paint these mountains without producing a puzzle-picture.
Fortunately, there are some places which up to the present seem to
know nothing of such untoward resemblances in their surroundings;
fortunately, there are some beauty-spots which have so far escaped the
eye with the disturbing gift of “seeing forms” in clouds and trees and
whatnot; and Champex is one such. At Champex we may rest and dream
without fear of our indulgence degenerating into a nightmare.
But this is not such a season for dreaming as was the spring; we are
far more of the world than we were when the Vernal Gentian, that
“turquoise lighting a ground of green,” was heralding all that is now
so rapidly falling before the scythe. Yet it must not be supposed
that these fields have lost all power to nourish or stimulate the
imagination. The configuration and nature of the ground are so varied
that haymaking is a more lengthy and irregular operation than it is
upon the plains. We have only to turn to the ousy land where the
Grass-of-Parnassus[1] opens its white, green-veined, Ranunculus-like
flowers among the large, rich-blue bells of _Campanula Scheuchzeri_
and the tall, paler blue spikes of _Polemonium cœruleum_, the
well-known Jacob’s Ladder of our gardens; or to the drier stretches
where the Heather is just tinting its olive-green branches with a
suspicion of rose, and the Rampions, Arnica, Hieracium, and Brown
Gentian are mingling with the warm grey, feathery seed-heads of
_Anemone sulphurea_. Here we find the flowers and butterflies as
numerous and as gay as ever; here among the grasses is _Banagna
Atrata_, the little dull-black moth with white-tipped wings,
seeking sanctuary from the devastating work of the reapers; _Zygœna
carniolica_, one of the most distinct and fascinating of the bright
Burnet butterflies, a stranger to England, greedily absorbed upon the
flowers of the Scabious; numberless Fritillaries, speeding hither
and thither, their burnished pearl-backed wings flashing in the
sunlight,—here, in fact, we have summer at its height, uninjured,
undisturbed—a place, as Walden was, where we may “transact some
private business with the fewest obstacles.”
[1] The name “Grass-of-Parnassus” often occasions wonder; for the
plant, a member of the St. John’s Wort tribe, shows no affinity to
grass. Anne Pratt, in her celebrated book on English Wild-flowers,
says the name possibly arises from the fact that the plant “is as
common as the very grass itself on Mount Parnassus.”
* * * * *
_Messieurs les étrangers_ (how good a name!) are now arriving by the
hundred. Flora’s Feast in this region may be said to be over, and the
table is all but cleared. For full two months have we been revelling
in a luxury of colour which no other two months make any but an
indifferent attempt to approach; and it is when these two months have
run their unique, delightful course that the vast majority of our
fellows arrive. How strangely perverse a state of things is this! How
curiously sunken in the groove of custom!
[Illustration: _PARADISIA LILIASTRUM_, the Paradise or St. Bruno’s
Lily. ]
The fields are bald, the slopes are shorn or ragged, and the grass
that is left standing is looking for the most part very “seedy.”
The golden-flowered, pink-flowered, and white-flowered Sedums are
blossoming upon the field-rocks; the Willow-Herb is lighting up the
rough and stony places with its rosy-red spikes; the Bilberry’s fruit
is turning a dusty blue and its foliage here and there is showing
promise of a fiery autumn; the Rhododendron is developing on its thick
leaves the brilliant red excrescences which, like the hairy, red
excrescences on our common Dog Rose, are said to be so efficacious in
cases of rheumatism; the dainty, black-bordered Damon “Blue” butterfly
flits from the Heather to stray blooms of Arnica and Astrantia, and
many a brown Erebia is hampered and tired out by a horde of red
parasites beneath its wings. Summer, in fact, is leaning obviously
towards autumn, and we can expect nothing more of note from these
meadows, except a lovely wealth of magenta-pink Colchicum or “Autumn
Crocus” in August and September.
When visitors, arriving at this late stage in Flora’s fortunes, see my
coloured transcripts of the fields in May and June, they think that
I, like any prejudiced enthusiast, have falsified my evidence. They
find the pictures _ben trovato_, and they say: “How beautiful! but of
course you have used an artist’s licence?” They look at the shaven or
dingy fields, then again at my paintings, and they tell me plainly
they think they can prove an _alibi_ for the flowers in spring, or,
at any rate, for a greater part of those I have depicted. And I—I can
only assure them their case has “no leg to stand upon.” I can only
insist that if they knew of my despair when seated with my picture
among the flowers in spring—my despair of ever being able to give more
than an inkling of the glorious riot that surrounded me—they would
suspect the truth; and that if next year they came here and witnessed
for themselves, then, when again they looked upon my pictures, they
would curl the lip and speak of insufficiency.
I am aware that it is, of course, not possible for many of the
late-coming visitors to leave the home shores earlier in the year:
business is business, schooling is schooling, fixed holidays are
fixed holidays. But without doubt there are many who could be more
timely, if they chose—many who in June are crowding at Montreux, or
Geneva, or Lucerne, thinking it too early for the mountains. For there
are many who are persuaded that spring is a dangerous period in the
Alps. They will tell you in all seriousness, as they have told me,
that it is in spring in the Alps that the microbes re-awaken after
their winter’s sleep, and that, therefore, it is better to be in the
towns; in the towns, mark you, where the microbes, more monstrous and
numerous, rarely if ever, slumber—or, if they do so, it is with one
eye open!
Then there are those who, because they know nothing about flowers,
are convinced that the Alps for them would be a place of _ennui_ in
the spring when high excursions are not yet possible. But what a
mistake it is to imagine we must be botanists or gardeners in order to
feel a full joy in these fields! No particular knowledge is required
to appreciate them; there is no peremptory need to know by name a
Geranium from an Orchid, a Pansy from a Cauliflower. Indeed, I am not
at all sure but that the “plain man” or woman does not really enjoy
them more than does the plant specialist. For joy comes mostly fuller
with the broader moments of life, and analysis is apt to injure the
soul-stirring harmony of things. And as the merely emotional value
of these fields is immense, their appeal is quite as general as it
is particular, perhaps even more so; for the emotional qualities of
anything are more acceptable to the man-in-the-street than are its
precise and reasoned quantities. And, just as there are far fewer
musicians within the ranks of executants than outside, so there are
more flower-lovers and lovers of floral beauty outside the ranks of
botany and gardening than there are within. Thus amid these fields
the plain, expansive man or woman need be in no fear of _ennui_.
_Ennui!_—why, even when the visitors do come and the flowers have seen
their best, there is no _ennui_! Then how much more inspiring must it
be when the fields are in their hey-day, not their hay-day!
It is, then, upon all and sundry that I urge the claims of the Alps
from the middle of May to mid-July; it is to the merest tyro in
plant-lore, as well as to the botanical and gardening enthusiast, that
I say, and say in all persuasiveness of conviction: “You know not what
you miss by failing
‘To catch the master-note of Nature’s lyre’;
you know not what you lose by neglecting the call of the flowers from
off these Alpine fields.”
Go where you will—Champex alone is not the Alpine throne of Flora;
she reigns superbly to right and left, from Neuchatel to Valais, from
Tessin to Geneva—go where you will amid the Alps and you will find
fields that shall enchant you, rejuvenating your spirit and causing
the “knapsack of custom,” full of “city estimates of great and small,
wise and foolish,” to slip from your back. The plains of the world are
the better for the mountains of the world, and in no respect more so
than when the mountains are a-flower.