They've taken all the spring from the country to the town--
Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow....
So began to jig and jingle my thoughts as in my letters and newspapers
this morning I read, buried alive among the solitary fastnesses of the
Surrey hills, the last news from town. The news I envied most was that
spring had already reached London. 'Now,' ran a pretty article on spring
fashions, 'the sunshine makes bright the streets, and the
flower-baskets, like huge bouquets, announce the gay arrival of spring.'
I looked up and out through my hillside window. The black ridge on the
other side of the valley stood a grim wall of burnt heather against the
sky--which sky, like the bullets in the nursery rhyme, was made
unmistakably of lead; a close rain was falling methodically, and,
generally speaking, the world looked like a soaked mackintosh. It wasn't
much like the gay arrival of spring, and grimly I mused on the
advantages of life in town.
Certainly, it did seem hard, I reflected, that town should be ahead of
us even in such a country matter as spring. Flower-baskets indeed! Why,
we haven't as much as a daisy for miles around. It is true that on the
terrace there the crocuses blaze like a street on fire, that the
primroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves like
pounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the little
grape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes!
and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly _enceinte_ with
their buxom waxen blooms, so fat and fragrant--(one is already delivered
of a fine blossom. Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! say the other
hyacinths, with babes no less bonny under their own green aprons--all
waiting for the doctor sun). Then among the blue-green blades of the
narcissus, here and there you see a stem topped with a creamish
chrysalis-like envelope, from which will soon emerge a beautiful eye,
rayed round with white wings, looking as though it were meant to fly,
but remaining rooted--a butterfly on a stalk; while all the beds are
crowded with indeterminate beak and blade, pushing and elbowing each
other for a look at the sun, which, however, sulkily declines to look at
them. It is true there is spring on the terrace, but even so it is
spring imported from the town--spring bought in Holborn, spring
delivered free by parcel post; for where would the terrace have been but
for the city seedsman--that magician who sends you strangely spotted
beans and mysterious bulbs in shrivelled cerements, weird little
flower-mummies that suggest centuries of forgotten silence in painted
Egyptian tombs. This strange and shrivelled thing can surely never live
again, we say, as we hold it in our hands, seeing not the glowing
circles of colour, tiny rings of Saturn, packed so carefully inside this
flower-egg, the folds of green and silver silk wound round and round the
precious life within.
But, of course, this is all the seedsman's cunning, and no credit to
Nature; and I repeat, that were it not for railways and the parcel
post--goodness knows whether we should ever get any spring at all in the
country! Think of the days when it had to travel down by stage-coach.
For, left to herself, what is the best Nature can do for you with March
well on the way? Personally, I find the face of the country practically
unchanged. It is, to all intents and purposes, the same as it has been
for the last three or four months--as grim, as unadorned, as bleak, as
draughty, and generally as comfortless as ever. There isn't a flower to
be seen, hardly a bird worth listening to, not a tree that is not
winter-naked, and not a chair to sit down upon. If you want flowers on
your walks you must bring them with you; songs, you must take a poet
under your arm; and if you want to rest, lean laboriously on your
stick--or take your chance of rheumatism.
Of course your specialists, your botanists, your nature-detectives, will
tell you otherwise. They have surprised a violet in the act of
blossoming; after long and excited chase have discovered a clump of
primroses in their wild state; seen one butterfly, heard one cuckoo. But
as one swallow does not make a summer, it takes more than one cuckoo to
make a spring. I confess that only yesterday I saw three sulphur
butterflies, with my own eyes; I admit the catkins, and the
silver-notched palm; and I am told on good colour-authority that there
is a lovely purplish bloom, almost like plum-bloom, over certain copses
in the valley; by taking thought, I have observed the long horizontal
arms of the beech growing spurred with little forked branches of
spear-shaped buds, and I see little green nipples pushing out through
the wolf-coloured rind of the dwarf fir-trees. Spring is arming in
secret to attack the winter--that is sure enough, but spring in secret
is no spring for me. I want to see her marching gaily with green
pennons, and flashing sun-blades, and a good band.
I want butterflies as they have them at the Lyceum--'butterflies all
white,' 'butterflies all blue,' 'butterflies of gold,' and I should
particularly fancy 'butterflies all black.' But there, again, you
see,--you must go to town, within hearing of Mrs. Patrick Campbell's
_voix d'or_. I want the meadows thickly inlaid with buttercups and
daisies; I want the trees thick with green leaves, the sky all larks and
sunshine; I want hawthorn and wild roses--both at once; I want some go,
some colour, some warmth in the world. Oh, where are the pipes of Pan?
The pipes of Pan are in town, playing at street corners and in the
centres of crowded circuses, piled high with flower-baskets blazing with
refulgent flowery masses of white and gold. Here are the flowers you can
only buy in town; simple flowers enough, but only to be had in town.
Here are fragrant banks of violets every few yards, conflagrations of
daffodils at every crossing, and narcissus in scented starry garlands
for your hair.
You wander through the Strand, or along Regent Street, as through the
meadows of Enna--sweet scents, sweet sounds, sweet shapes, are all about
you; the town-butterflies, white, blue, and gold, 'wheel and shine' and
flutter from shop to shop, suddenly resurgent from their winter
wardrobes as from a chrysalis; bright eyes flash and flirt along the
merry, jostling street, while the sun pours out his golden wine
overhead, splashing it about from gilded domes and bright-faced
windows--and ever are the voices at the corners and the crossings
calling out the sweet flower-names of the spring!
* * * * *
But here in the country it is still all rain and iron. I am tired of
waiting for this slow-moving provincial spring. Let us to the town to
meet the spring--for:
They've taken all the spring from the country to the town--
Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow;
And if you want a primrose, you write to London now,
And if you need a nightingale, well,--Whiteley sends it down.