THE BLUE FLOWER BORDER
"Blue thou art, intensely blue!
Flower! whence came thy dazzling hue?
When I opened first mine eye,
Upward glancing to the sky,
Straightway from the firmament
Was the sapphire brilliance sent."
--JAMES MONTGOMERY.
Questions of color relations in a garden are most opinion-making and
controversy-provoking. Shall we plant by chance, or by a flower-loving
instinct for sheltered and suited locations, as was done in all old-time
gardens, and with most happy and most unaffected results? or shall we
plant severely by colors--all yellow flowers in a border together? all
red flowers side by side? all pink flowers near each other? This might
be satisfactory in small gardens, but I am uncertain whether any
profound gratification or full flower succession would come from such
rigid planting in long flower borders.
William Morris warns us that flowers in masses are "mighty strong
color," and must be used with caution. A still greater cause for
hesitation would be the ugly jarring of juxtaposing tints of the same
color. Yellows do little injury to each other; but I cannot believe that
a mixed border of red flowers would ever be satisfactory or scarcely
endurable; and few persons would care for beds of all white flowers. But
when I reach the Blue Border, then I can speak with decision; I know
whereof I write, I know the variety and beauty of a garden bed of blue
flowers. In blue you may have much difference in tint and quality
without losing color effect. The Persian art workers have accomplished
the combining of varying blues most wonderfully and successfully:
purplish blues next to green-blues, and sapphire-blues alongside; and
blues seldom clash in the flower beds.
Blue is my best beloved color; I love it as the bees love it. Every blue
flower is mine; and I am as pleased as with a tribute of praise to a
friend to learn that scientists have proved that blue flowers represent
the most highly developed lines of descent. These learned men believe
that all flowers were at first yellow, being perhaps only developed
stamens; then some became white, others red; while the purple and blue
were the latest and highest forms. The simplest shaped flowers, open to
be visited by every insect, are still yellow or white, running into red
or pink. Thus the Rose family have simple open symmetrical flowers; and
there are no blue Roses--the flower has never risen to the blue stage.
In the Pea family the simpler flowers are yellow or red; while the
highly evolved members, such as Lupines, Wistaria, Everlasting Pea, are
purple or blue, varying to white. Bees are among the highest forms of
insect life, and the labiate flowers are adapted to their visits; these
nearly all have purple or blue petals--Thyme, Sage, Mint, Marjoram,
Basil, Prunella, etc.
Of course the Blue Border runs into tints of pale lilac and purple and
is thereby the gainer; but I would remove from it the purple Clematis,
Wistaria, and Passion-flower, all of which a friend has planted to cover
the wall behind her blue flower bed. Sometimes the line between blue and
purple is hard to define. Keats invented a word, _purplue_, which he
used for this indeterminate color.
I would not, in my Blue Border, exclude an occasional group of flowers
of other colors; I love a border of all colors far too well to do that.
Here, as everywhere in my garden, should be white flowers, especially
tall white flowers: white Foxgloves, white Delphinium, white Lupine,
white Hollyhock, white Bell-flower, nor should I object to a few spires
at one end of the bed of sulphur-yellow Lupines, or yellow Hollyhocks,
or a group of Paris Daisies. I have seen a great Oriental Poppy growing
in wonderful beauty near a mass of pale blue Larkspur, and Shirley
Poppies are a delight with blues; and any one could arrange the
pompadour tints of pink and blue in a garden who could in a gown.
[Illustration: Scilla.]
Let me name some of the favorites of the Blue Border. The earliest but
not the eldest is the pretty spicy Scilla in several varieties, and most
satisfactory it is in perfection of tint, length of bloom, and great
hardiness. It would be welcomed as we eagerly greet all the early spring
blooms, even if it were not the perfect little blossom that is pictured
on page 254, the very little Scilla that grew in my mother's garden.
The early spring blooming of the beloved Grape Hyacinth gives us an
overflowing bowl of "blue principle"; the whole plant is imbued and
fairly exudes blue. Ruskin gave the beautiful and appropriate term
"blue-flushing" to this plant and others, which at the time of their
blossoming send out through their veins their blue color into the
surrounding leaves and the stem; he says they "breathe out" their color,
and tells of a "saturated purple" tint.
[Illustration: Sweet Alyssum Edging.]
Not content with the confines of the garden border, the Grape Hyacinth
has "escaped the garden," and become a field flower. The "seeing eye,"
ever quick to feel a difference in shade or color, which often proves
very slight upon close examination, viewed on Long Island a splendid sea
of blue; and it seemed neither the time nor tint for the expected
Violet. We found it a field of Grape Hyacinth, blue of leaf, of stem, of
flower. While all flowers are in a sense perfect, some certainly do not
appear so in shape, among the latter those of irregular sepals. Some
flowers seem imperfect without any cause save the fancy of the one who
is regarding them; thus to me the Balsam is an imperfect flower. Other
flowers impress me delightfully with a sense of perfection. Such is the
Grape Hyacinth, doubly grateful in this perfection in the time it comes
in early spring. The Grape Hyacinth is the favorite spring flower of my
garden--but no! I thought a minute ago the Scilla was! and what place
has the Violet? the Flower de Luce? I cannot decide, but this I know--it
is some blue flower.
Ruskin says of the Grape Hyacinth, as he saw it growing in southern
France, its native home, "It was as if a cluster of grapes and a hive of
honey had been distilled and pressed together into one small boss of
celled and beaded blue." I always think of his term "beaded blue" when I
look at it. There are several varieties, from a deep blue or purple to
sky-blue, and one is fringed with the most delicate feathery petals.
Some varieties have a faint perfume, and country folk call the flower
"Baby's Breath" therefrom.
[Illustration: Bachelor's Buttons in a Salem Garden.]
Purely blue, too, are some of our garden Hyacinths, especially a rather
meagre single Hyacinth which looks a little chilly; and Gavin Douglas
wrote in the springtime of 1500, "The Flower de Luce forth spread his
heavenly blue." It always jars upon my sense of appropriateness to hear
this old garden favorite called Fleur de Lis. The accepted derivation
of the word is that given by Grandmaison in his _Heraldic Dictionary_.
Louis VII. of France, whose name was then written Loys, first gave the
name to the flower, "Fleur de Loys"; then it became Fleur de Louis, and
finally, Fleur de Lis. Our flower caught its name from Louis. Tusser in
his list of flowers for windows and pots gave plainly Flower de Luce;
and finally Gerarde called the plant Flower de Luce, and he advised its
use as a domestic remedy in a manner which is in vogue in country homes
in New England to-day. He said that the root "stamped plaister-wise,
doth take away the blewnesse or blacknesse of any stroke" that is, a
black and blue bruise. Another use advised of him is as obsolete as the
form in which it was rendered. He said it was "good in a loch or licking
medicine for shortness of breath." Our apothecaries no longer make, nor
do our physicians prescribe, "licking medicines." The powdered root was
urged as a complexion beautifier, especially to remove morphew, and as
orris-root may be found in many of our modern skin lotions.
Ruskin most beautifully describes the Flower de Luce as the flower of
chivalry--"with a sword for its leaf, and a Lily for its heart." These
grand clumps of erect old soldiers, with leafy swords of green and
splendid cuirasses and plumes of gold and bronze and blue, were planted
a century ago in our grandmothers' garden, and were then Flower de Luce.
A hundred years those sturdy sentinels have stood guard on either side
of the garden gates--still Flower de Luce. There are the same clean-cut
leaf swords, the same exquisite blossoms, far more beautiful than our
tropical Orchids, though similar in shape; let us not change now their
historic name, they still are Flower de Luce--the Flower de Louis.
The Violet family, with its Pansies and Ladies' Delights, has honored
place in our Blue Border, though the rigid color list of a prosaic
practical dyer finds these Violet allies a debased purple instead of
blue.
Our wild Violets, the blue ones, have for me a sad lack for a Violet,
that of perfume. They are not as lovely in the woodlands as their
earlier coming neighbor, the shy, pure Hepatica. Bryant, calling the
Hepatica Squirrelcups (a name I never heard given them elsewhere), says
they form "a graceful company hiding in their bells a soft aerial blue."
Of course, they vary through blue and pinky purple, but the blue is well
hidden, and I never think of them save as an almost white flower. Nor
are the Violets as lovely on the meadow and field slopes, as the mild
Innocence, the Houstonia, called also Bluets, which is scarcely a
distinctly blue expanse, but rather "a milky way of minute stars." An
English botanist denies that it is blue at all. A field covered with
Innocence always looks to me as if little clouds and puffs of blue-white
smoke had descended and rested on the grass.
[Illustration: A "Sweet Garden-side" in Salem, Massachusetts.]
I well recall when the Aquilegia, under the name of California
Columbine, entered my mother's garden, to which its sister, the red and
yellow Columbine, had been brought from a rocky New England pasture when
the garden was new. This Aquilegia came to us about the year 1870. I
presume old catalogues of American florists would give details and dates
of the journey of the plant from the Pacific to the Atlantic. It chanced
that this first Aquilegia of my acquaintance was of a distinct light
blue tint; and it grew apace and thrived and was vastly admired, and
filled the border with blueness of that singular tint seen of late years
in its fullest extent and most prominent position in the great masses of
bloom of the blue Hydrangea, the show plant of such splendid summer
homes as may be found at Newport. These blue Hydrangeas are ever to me a
color blot. They accord with no other flower and no foliage. I am
ever reminded of blue mould, of stale damp. I looked with inexpressible
aversion on a photograph of Cecil Rhodes' garden at Cape Town--several
solid acres set with this blue Hydrangea and nothing else, unbroken by
tree or shrub, and scarce a path, growing as thick as a field sown with
ensilage corn, and then I thought what would be the color of that mass!
that crop of Hydrangeas! Yet I am told that Rhodes is a flower-lover and
flower-thinker. Now this Aquilegia was of similar tint; it was blue, but
it was not a pleasing blue, and additional plants of pink, lilac, and
purple tints had to be added before the Aquilegia was really included in
our list of well-beloveds.
[Illustration: Salpiglossis.]
There are other flowers for the blue border. It is pleasant to plant
common Flax, if you have ample room; it is a superb blue; to many
persons the blossom is unfamiliar, and is always of interest. Its lovely
flowers have been much sung in English verse. The Salpiglossis, shown on
the opposite page, is in its azure tint a lovely flower, though it is a
kinsman of the despised Petunia.
How the Campanulaceae enriched the beauty and the blueness of the garden.
We had our splendid clusters of Canterbury Bells, both blue and white. I
have told elsewhere of our love for them in childhood. Equally dear to
us was a hardy old Campanula whose full name I know not, perhaps it is
the Pyramidalis; it is shown on page 263, the very plant my mother set
out, still growing and blooming; nothing in the garden is more gladly
welcomed from year to year. It partakes of the charm shared by every
bell-shaped flower, a simple form, but an ever pleasing one. We had also
the _Campanula persicifolia_ and _trachelium_, and one we called
Bluebells of Scotland, which was not the correct name. It now has died
out, and no one recalls enough of its exact detail to learn its real
name. The showiest bell-flower was the _Platycodon grandiflorum_, the
Chinese or Japanese Bell-flower, shown on page 264. Another name is the
Balloon-flower, this on account of the characteristic buds shaped like
an inflated balloon. It is a lovely blue in tint, though this photograph
was taken from a white-flowered plant in the white border at Indian
Hill. The Giant Bell-flower is a _fin de siecle_ blossom named
_Ostrowskia_, with flowers four inches deep and six inches in diameter;
it has not yet become common in our gardens, where the _Platycodon_
rules in size among its bell-shaped fellows.
[Illustration: The Old Campanula.]
There are several pretty low-growing blue flowers suitable for edgings,
among them the tiny stars of the Swan River Daisy (_Brachycome
iberidifolia_) sold as purple, but as brightly blue as Scilla. The
dwarf Ageratum is also a long-blossoming soft-tinted blue flower; it
made a charming edging in my sister's garden last summer; but I should
never put either of them on the edge of the blue border.
[Illustration: Chinese Bell-flower.]
The dull blue, sparsely set flowers of the various members of the Mint
family have no beauty in color, nor any noticeable elegance; the Blue
Sage is the only vivid-hued one, and it is a true ornament to the
border. Prunella was ever found in old gardens, now it is a wayside
weed. Thoreau loved the Prunella for its blueness, its various lights,
and noted that its color deepened toward night. This flower, regarded
with indifference by nearly every one, and distaste by many, always to
him suggested coolness and freshness by its presence. The Prunella was
beloved also by Ruskin, who called it the soft warm-scented Brunelle,
and told of the fine purple gleam of its hooded blossom: "the two
uppermost petals joined like an old-fashioned enormous hood or bonnet;
the lower petal torn deep at the edges into a kind of fringe,"--and he
said it was a "Brownie flower," a little eerie and elusive in its
meaning. I do not like it because it has such a disorderly, unkempt
look, it always seems bedraggled.
The pretty ladder-like leaf of Jacob's Ladder is most delicate and
pleasing in the garden, and its blue bell-flowers are equally refined.
This is truly an old-fashioned plant, but well worth universal
cultivation.
In answer to the question, What is the bluest flower in the garden or
field? one answered Fringed Gentian; another the Forget-me-not, which
has much pink in its buds and yellow in its blossoms; another Bee
Larkspur; and the others _Centaurea cyanus_ or Bachelor's Buttons, a
local American name for them, which is not even a standard folk name,
since there are twenty-one English plants called Bachelor's Buttons.
Ragged Sailor is another American name. Corn-flower, Blue-tops, Blue
Bonnets, Bluebottles, Loggerheads are old English names. Queerer still
is the title Break-your-spectacles. Hawdods is the oldest name of all.
Fitzherbert, in his _Boke of Husbandry_, 1586, thus describes briefly
the plant:--
"Hawdod hath a blewe floure, and a few lytle leaves, and hath fyve
or syxe branches floured at the top."
In varied shades of blue, purple, lilac, pink, and white, Bachelor's
Buttons are found in every old garden, growing in a confused tangle of
"lytle leaves" and vari-colored flowers, very happily and with very good
effect. The illustration on page 258 shows their growth and value in the
garden.
In _The Promise of May_ Dora's eyes are said to be as blue as the
Bluebell, Harebell, Speedwell, Bluebottle, Succory, Forget-me-not, and
Violets; so we know what flowers Tennyson deemed blue.
Another poet named as the bluest flower, the Monk's-hood, so wonderful
of color, one of the very rarest of garden tints; graceful of growth,
blooming till frost, and one of the garden's delights. In a list of
garden flowers published in Boston, in 1828, it is called Cupid's Car.
Southey says in _The Doctor_, of Miss Allison's garden: "The Monk's-hood
of stately growth Betsey called 'Dumbledores Delight,' and was not aware
that the plant, in whose helmet--rather than cowl-shaped flowers, that
busy and best-natured of all insects appears to revel more than any
other, is the deadly Aconite of which she read in poetry." The
dumbledore was the bumblebee, and this folk name was given, as many
others have been, from a close observance of plant habits; for the
fertilization of the Monk's-hood is accomplished only by the aid of the
bumblebee.
[Illustration: Garden at Tudor Place.]
Many call Chicory or Succory our bluest flower. Thoreau happily termed
it "a cool blue." It is not often the fortune of a flower to be brought
to notice and affection because of a poem; we expect the poem to
celebrate the virtues of flowers already loved. The Succory is an
example of a plant, known certainly to flower students, yet little
thought of by careless observers until the beautiful poem of Margaret
Deland touched all who read it. I think this a gem of modern poesy,
having in full that great element of a true poem, the most essential
element indeed of a short poem--the power of suggestion. Who can read it
without being stirred by its tenderness and sentiment, yet how few are
the words.
"Oh, not in ladies' gardens,
My peasant posy,
Shine thy dear blue eyes;
Nor only--nearer to the skies
In upland pastures, dim and sweet,
But by the dusty road,
Where tired feet
Toil to and fro,
Where flaunting Sin
May see thy heavenly hue,
Or weary Sorrow look from thee
Toward a tenderer blue."
I recall perfectly every flower I saw in pasture, swamp, forest, or lane
when I was a child; and I know I never saw Chicory save in old gardens.
It has increased and spread wonderfully along the roadside within twenty
years. By tradition it was first brought to us from England by Governor
Bowdoin more than a century ago, to plant as forage.
In our common Larkspur, the old-fashioned garden found its most constant
and reliable blue banner, its most valuable color giver. Self-sown,
this Larkspur sprung up freely every year; needing no special cherishing
or nourishing, it grew apace, and bloomed with a luxuriance and length
of flowering that cheerfully blued the garden for the whole summer. It
was a favorite of children in their floral games, and pretty in the
housewife's vases, but its chief hold on favor was in its democracy and
endurance. Other flowers drew admirers and lost them; some grew very
ugly in their decay; certain choice seedlings often had stunted
development, garden scourges attacked tender beauties; fierce July suns
dried up the whole border, all save the Larkspur, which neither withered
nor decayed; and often, unaided, saved the midsummer garden from scanty
unkemptness and dire disrepute.
The graceful line of Dr. Holmes, "light as a loop of Larkspur," always
comes to my mind as I look at a bed of Larkspur; and I am glad to show
here a "loop of Larkspur," growing by the great boulder which he loved
in the grounds of his country home at Beverly Farms. I liked to fancy
that Dr. Holmes's expression was written by him from his memory of the
little wreaths and garlands of pressed Larkspur that have been made so
universally for over a century by New England children. But that careful
flower observer, Mrs. Wright, notes that in a profuse growth of the Bee
Larkspur, the strong flower spikes often are in complete loops before
full expansion into a straight spire; some are looped thrice. Dr. Holmes
was a minute observer of floral characteristics, as is shown in his poem
on the _Coming of Spring_, and doubtless saw this curious growth of the
Larkspur.
[Illustration: "Light as a Loop of Larkspur."]
Common annual Larkspurs now are planted in every one's garden, and
deservedly grow in favor yearly. The season of their flowering can be
prolonged, renewed in fact, by cutting away the withered flower stems.
They respond well to all caretaking, to liberal fertilizing and
watering, just as they dwindle miserably with neglect. There are a
hundred varieties in all; among them the "Rocket-flowered" and
"Ranunculus flowered" Larkspurs or Delphiniums are ever favorites. A
friend burst forth in railing at being asked to admire a bed of
Delphinium. "Why can't she call them the good old-time name of Larkspur,
and not a stiff name cooked up by the botanists." I answered naught, but
I remembered that Parkinson in his _Garden of Pleasant Flowers_ gives a
chapter to Delphinium, with Lark's-heel as a second thought. "Their most
usual name with us," he states, "is Delphinium." There is meaning in the
name: the flower is dolphin-like in shape. Of the perennial varieties
the _Delphinium brunonianum_ has lovely clear blue, musk-scented
flowers; the Chinese or Branching Larkspur is of varied blue tints and
tall growth, and blooms from midsummer until frost. And loveliest of
all, an old garden favorite, the purely blue Bee Larkspur, with a bee in
the heart of each blossom. In an ancient garden in Deerfield I saw this
year a splendid group of plants of the old _Delphinium Belladonna_: it
is a weak-kneed, weak-backed thing; but give it unobtrusive crutches and
busks and backboards (in their garden equivalents), and its incomparable
blue will reward your care. There is something singular in the blue of
Larkspur. Even on a dark night you can see it showing a distinct blue
in the garden like a blue lambent flame.
"Larkspur lifting turquoise spires
Bluer than the sorcerer's fires."
Mrs. Milne-Home says her old Scotch gardener called the white Delphinium
Elijah's Chariot--a resounding, stately title. Helmet-flower is another
name. I think the Larkspur Border, and the Blue Border both gain if a
few plants of the pure white Delphinium, especially the variety called
the Emperor, bloom by the blue flowers. In our garden the common blue
Larkspur loves to blossom by the side of the white Phlox. A bit of the
border is shown on page 162. In another corner of the garden the pink
and lilac Larkspur should be grown; for their tints, running into blue,
are as varied as those of an opal.
I have never seen the wild Larkspur which grows so plentifully in our
middle Southern states; but I have seen expanses of our common garden
Larkspur which has run wild. Nor have I seen the glorious fields of
Wyoming Larkspur, so poisonous to cattle; nor the magnificent Larkspur,
eight feet high, described so radiantly to us by John Muir, which blues
those wonders of nature, the hanging meadow gardens of California.
I am inclined to believe that Lobelia is the least pleasing blue flower
that blossoms. I never see it in any place or juxtaposition that it
satisfies me. When you take a single flower of it in your hand, its
single little delicate bloom is really just as pretty as Blue-eyed
Grass, or Innocence, or Scilla, and the whole plant regarded closely by
itself isn't at all bad; but whenever and wherever you find it growing
in a garden, you never want it in _that_ place, and you shift it here
and there. I am convinced that the Lobelia is simply impossible; it is
an alien, wrong in some subtle way in tint, in habit of growth, in time
of blooming. The last time I noted it in any large garden planting, it
was set around the roots of some standard Rose bushes; and the gardener
had displayed some thought about it; it was only at the base of white or
cream-yellow Roses; but it still was objectionable. I think I would
exterminate Lobelia if I could, banish it and forget it. In the minds of
many would linger a memory of certain ornate garden vases, each crowded
with a Pandanus-y plant, a pink Begonia, a scarlet double Geranium, a
purple Verbena or a crimson Petunia, all gracefully entwined with
Nasturtiums and Lobelia--while these folks lived, the Lobelia would not
be forgotten.
You will have some curious experiences with your Blue Border; kindly
friends, pleased with its beauty or novelty, will send to you plants and
seeds to add to its variety of form "another bright blue flower." You
will usually find you have added variety of tint as well, ranging into
crimson and deep purple, for color blindness is far more general than is
thought.
The loveliest blue flowers are the wild ones of fields and meadows;
therefore the poor, says Alphonse Karr, with these and the blue of the
sky have the best and the most of all blueness. Yet we are constantly
hearing folks speak of the lack of the color blue among wild flowers,
which always surprises me; I suppose I see blue because I love blue. In
pure cobalt tint it is rare; in compensation, when it does abound, it
makes a permanent imprint on our vision, which never vanishes. Recalling
in midwinter the expanses of color in summer waysides, I do not see them
white with Daisies, or yellow with Goldenrod, but they are in my mind's
vision brightly, beautifully blue. One special scene is the blue of
Fringed Gentians, on a sunny October day, on a rocky hill road in
Royalston, Massachusetts, where they sprung up, wide open, a solid mass
of blue, from stone wall to stone wall, with scarcely a wheel rut
showing among them. Even thus, growing in as lavish abundance as any
weed, the Fringed Gentian still preserved in collective expanse, its
delicate, its distinctly aristocratic bearing.
Bryant asserts of this flower:--
"Thou waitest late, and com'st alone
When woods are bare, and birds are flown."
But by this roadside the woods were far from bare. Many Asters,
especially the variety I call Michaelmas Daisies, Goldenrod,
Butter-and-eggs, Turtle Head, and other flowers, were in ample bloom.
And the same conditions of varied flower companionship existed when I
saw the Fringed Gentian blooming near Bryant's own home at Cummington.
[Illustration: Viper's Bugloss.]
Another vast field of blue, ever living in my memory, was that of the
Viper's Bugloss, which I viewed with surprise and delight from the
platform of a train, returning from the Columbian Exposition; when I
asked a friendly brakeman what the flower was called, he answered
"Vilets," as nearly all workingmen confidently name every blue flower;
and he sprang from the train while the locomotive was swallowing water,
and brought to me a great armful of blueness. I am not wont to like new
flowers as well as my childhood's friends, but I found this new friend,
the Viper's Bugloss, a very welcome and pleasing acquaintance. Curious,
too, it is, with the red anthers exserted beyond the bright blue
corolla, giving the field, when the wind blew across it, a new aspect
and tint, something like a red and blue changeable silk. The Viper's
Bugloss seems to have the pervasive power of many another blue and
purple flower, Lupine, Iris, Innocence, Grape Hyacinth, Vervain, Aster,
Spiked Loosestrife; it has become in many states a tiresome weed. On the
Esopus Creek (which runs into the Hudson River) and adown the Hudson,
acre after acre of meadow and field by the waterside are vivid with its
changeable hues, and the New York farmers' fields are overrun by the
newcomer.
I have seen the Viper's Bugloss often since that day on the railroad
train, now that I know it, and think of it. Thoreau noted the fact that
in a large sense we find only what we look for. And he defined well our
powers of perception when he said that many an object will not be seen,
even when it comes within the range of our visual ray, because it does
not come within the range of our intellectual ray.
Last spring, having to spend a tiresome day riding the length of Long
Island, I beguiled the hours by taking with me Thoreau's _Summer_ to
compare his notes of blossomings with those we passed. It was June 5,
and I read:--
"The Lupine is now in its glory. It is the more important because
it occurs in such extensive patches, even an acre or more
together.... It paints a whole hillside with its blue, making such
a field, if not a meadow, as Proserpine might have wandered in. Its
leaf was made to be covered with dewdrops. I am quite excited by
this prospect of blue flowers in clumps, with narrow intervals;
such a profusion of the heavenly, the Elysian color, as if these
were the Elysian Fields. That is the value of the Lupine. The earth
is blued with it.... You may have passed here a fortnight ago and
the field was comparatively barren. Now you come, and these
glorious redeemers appear to have flashed out here all at once. Who
plants the seeds of Lupines in the barren soil? Who watereth the
Lupines in the field?"
[Illustration: The Precision of Leaf and Flower of Lupine.]
I looked from a car window, and lo! the Long Island Railroad ran also
through an Elysian Field of Lupines, nay, we sailed a swift course
through a summer sea of blueness, and I seem to see it still, with its
prim precision of outline and growth of both leaf and flower. The Lupine
is beautiful in the garden border as it is in the landscape, whether the
blossom be blue, yellow, or white.
Thoreau was the slave of color, but he was the master of its
description. He was as sensitive as Keats to the charm of blue, and left
many records of his love, such as the paragraphs above quoted. He noted
with delight the abundance of "that principle which gives the air its
azure color, which makes the distant hills and meadows appear blue," the
"great blue presence" of Monadnock and Wachusett with its "far blue
eye." He loved Lowell's
"Sweet atmosphere of hazy blue,
So leisurely, so soothing, so forgiving,
That sometimes makes New England fit for living."
He revelled in the blue tints of water, of snow, of ice; in "the
blueness and softness of a mild winter day." The constant blueness of
the sky at night thrilled him with "an everlasting surprise," as did the
blue shadows within the woods and the blueness of distant woods. How he
would have rejoiced in Monet's paintings, how true he would have found
their tones. He even idealized blueberries, "a very innocent ambrosial
taste, as if made of ether itself, as they are colored with it."
Thoreau was ever ready in thought of Proserpina gathering flowers. He
offers to her the Lupine, the Blue-eyed Grass, and the Tufted Vetch,
"blue, inclining in spots to purple"; it affected him deeply to see such
an abundance of blueness in the grass. "Celestial color, I see it afar
in masses on the hillside near the meadow--so much blue."
I usually join with Thoreau in his flower loves; but I cannot understand
his feeling toward the blue Flag; that, after noting the rich fringed
recurved parasols over its anthers, and its exquisite petals, that he
could say it is "a little too showy and gaudy, like some women's
bonnets." I note that whenever he compares flowers to women it is in no
flattering humor to either; which is, perhaps, what we expect from a man
who chose to be a bachelor and a hermit. His love of obscure and small
flowers might explain his sentiment toward the radiant and dominant blue
Flag.
The most valued flower of my childhood, outside the garden, was a little
sister of the Iris--the Blue-eyed Grass. To find it blooming was a
triumph, for it was not very profuse of growth near my home; to gather
it a delight; why, I know not, since the tiny blooms promptly closed and
withered as soon as we held them in our warm little hands. Colonel
Higginson writes wittily of the Blue-eyed Grass, "It has such an
annoying way of shutting up its azure orbs the moment you gather it; and
you reach home with a bare stiff blade which deserves no better name
than _Sisyrinchium anceps_."
The only time I ever played truant was to run off one June morning to
find "the starlike gleam amid the grass and dew"; to pick Blue-eyed
Grass in a field to which I was conducted by another naughty girl. I was
simple enough to come home at mid-day with my hands full of the stiff
blades and tightly closed blooms; and at my mother's inquiry as to my
acquisition of these treasures, I promptly burst into tears. I was then
told, in impressive phraseology adapted to my youthful comprehension,
and with the flowers as eloquent proof, that all stolen pleasures were
ever like my coveted flowers, withered and unsightly as soon as
gathered--which my mother believed was true.
The blossoms of this little Iris seem to lie on the surface of the grass
like a froth of blueness; they gaze up at the sky with a sort of
intimacy as if they were a part of it. Thoreau called it an "air of easy
sympathy." The slightest clouding or grayness of atmosphere makes them
turn away and close.
The naming of Proserpina leads me to say this: that to grow in love and
knowledge of flowers, and above all of blue flowers, you must read
Ruskin's _Proserpina_. It is a book of botany, of studies of plants, but
begemmed with beautiful sentences and thoughts and expressions, with
lessons of pleasantness which you can never forget, of pictures which
you never cease to see, such sentences and pictures as this:--
"Rome. My father's Birthday. I found the loveliest blue Asphodel I
ever saw in my life in the fields beyond Monte Mario--a spire two
feet high, of more than two hundred stars, the stalks of them all
deep blue as well as the flowers. Heaven send all honest people the
gathering of the like, in the Elysian Fields, some day!"
Oh, the power of written words! when by these few lines I can carry
forever in my inner vision this spire of starry blueness. To that
writer, now in the Elysian Fields, an honest teacher if ever one lived,
I send my thanks for this beautiful vision of blueness.