human mind into two great categories—the intellectual and the emotional.
The intellectual faculty is characteristic of the West, the emotional
faculty prevails in the East. Next comes the question of Form and Colour
in Art. “Form,” he says, “has dominated Art whenever and wherever the
intellectual faculty was dominant in life; colour has dominated Art
whenever and wherever the emotional faculty has dominated life.” Later in
the book, when speaking of the contrast between the Art of the West and
the Art of the East, he proceeds: “Form, as we were saying, is chiefly
a matter of the intellect. The arts which deal with form convey ideas.
Their appeal is to the mind. _Colour, on the other hand, conveys no
ideas._ [My italics.] It is emotional and appeals to the senses rather
than to the intellect. And this being so, it seems natural that the
Western temperament, intellectual rather than sensuous, should excel
in form rather than in colour; while the Eastern, sensuous rather than
intellectual, should excel in colour rather than in form.”
This theory of colour and form gives us much food for thought, and it
is impossible not to be struck by the aptness with which it may be
applied to the gardener’s craft. The gorgeous colour of the one school of
gardening appeals directly to the senses, and, like other similar appeals
where there is no relief from monotony, it soon satiates and wearies.
The kaleidoscopic beds which remind us of Pallas Athene springing fully
armed from the brain of Zeus, are at the outset the same as they will be
four months later, when their glory will be ignominiously wheeled away to
the rubbish heap. Day after day you look out from your window and there
is no change—nothing but an eternal Oriental glare of scarlet and yellow.
How can such a garden create ideas? Compare with this the garden of form.
Here there is plenty to excite ideas and fire the imagination, for here
you have life with all its changes and accidents, from the tender birth
of the bud to the vigour of the mature plant, the loves of the flowers,
and the happy ripening of the fruit, which is the mystery of maternity.
No two days are alike; as they follow one another, each brings with
it something new, some fresh beauty, some intimate revelation of
Nature’s secrets. And when the year has nearly run its course, when
the autumn leaves fall to the ground in a shower of gold such as that
which broke through Danaë’s prison, there is no death or decay of the
plant, no carting off to the _fosse commune_, but just a long, happy
winter’s sleep, enviable as that of a dormouse resting in the sure hope
of a glorious new birth when the first kiss of spring shall awaken the
sleeping beauty in the wood.
Colour, then, is of the East sensuous; form is of the West intellectual.
It is, of course, a mere coincidence, and not a rule capable of being
laid down; but as I was walking to-day in a garden of form with Mr.
Phillips’ theory seething in my brain, I could not but be struck by
noting that, besides our own native trees, by far the greater number of
those that have been naturalized here for the sake of their shape are of
Western origin; while, with the exception of the American oaks, those
that we value for their gorgeous colouring—such, for instance, as the
Japanese maples and vines—come to us from the East.
It is hardly worth noticing, but it was certainly curious that, wherever
I looked, there I saw form transported from the West. The caravans which
crossed the Rocky Mountains in search of gold, not without leaving
many skeletons by the way; the orchid hunters of the Amazon, braving
sickness, fevers and poisoned arrows, have enriched our pleasaunces with
treasures, not to speak of the brilliantly-coloured gems of which they
were primarily in search, which, could our grandfathers, and even our
fathers, come to life again, would make them open their eyes wide with
astonishment, wondering whether some magician could have waved his wand
over their cherished grounds, changing them into fairyland.
The diplomatists, who opened up Japan in 1858, the pioneers of trade,
who have penetrated into the secret places of Western China, carrying
their lives in their hands, have all added to our wealth of plants, both
in form and colour, but chiefly in colour. When we see the glorious
velvety shafts of Lawson’s Cypress, or _Libocedrous decurrens_, shooting
up heavenward like church spires, when we look upon the great American
conifers, so rich and so various, or among the lowlier plants, are
startled by the huge leaves of the Chilian Gunneras, we cannot but admit
that for form we have to thank the West.
In a later chapter, in the course of a fascinating disquisition on
Byzantine architecture, Mr. Phillips goes on to say: “We must recognize
that between these ideas of colour and softness there is something more
than an accidental connection ... softness and colour go together as
naturally as hardness and form.”
These are words which might be applied with special fitness to the
garden. But although form is of its very essence hard, so far as outlines
are concerned, we are not without one corrective which softens and
subdues it. That corrective is atmosphere.
I hold, and I think that most fellow-craftsmen, if I may dare to reckon
myself among gardeners, will agree with me, that background is absolutely
essential to success; yet if you place a statue, or plant a specimen
tree, immediately against the finest background that imagination could
desire, it will remain hard and shorn of much of its charm, because it
will lack the softening influence of atmosphere.
I know no better illustration of this than the way in which the Venus
of Milo is shown at the Louvre. It is so skilfully placed that the air
plays all round it, and the outlines of the marble melt, as it were, into
the surrounding atmosphere. Were it pressed, as statues so often are,
close against a curtain or a dead wall, the supreme beauty of the goddess
would be cruelly sacrificed. The form, the inspiration of the sculptor,
would be there, but the hardness of the material would be unredeemed; it
would represent death instead of life. That is why so many photographic
portraits fail to render beauty. The model is placed immediately in
front of a screen—all sense of aerial perspective is lost—and the
result is, from an artistic point of view, a deadly failure, even should
the photograph be technically perfect, so far as optics and chemistry
are concerned. No composition is good, or even tolerable, where aerial
perspective is neglected, and that is as true in gardening as it is in
the plastic arts.
It is the lack of aerial perspective—in other words, of atmosphere—which
so fatally mars the very real beauty of Oriental art. In the paintings of
the Chinese artists, and the extravagantly-admired coloured prints of the
famous wood engravers of Japan, there is often a rare skill of colour and
a firmness of hand worthy of Giotto, especially in the matchless drawing
of flowing lines such as drapery. The birds and trees and grasses of the
Kano school, the lovely outlines of the landscape painters, the monkeys
and deer of Chōsen, are in many respects wonderful. But there is almost
always something wanting. For want of aerial perspective the lines remain
rigid; there is no soft atmospheric roundness, and on that account the
pictures fail to satisfy. The result is like the fascinating work of very
clever children.
Compare with the vaunted eighteenth-century art of Japan the contemporary
work of the French painters, Watteau, Lancret, Fragonard, who, to my
mind, have never been excelled in their rendering of the mystery of
atmosphere. See how their woodland scenes melt into unfathomable
distances like those of the great Dutchmen, such as Cuyp and others.
There you have the poetry of nature and of gardens, and when you are
laying out your domain and combining your succession of pictures and
surprises, ask yourself this question: Would Watteau have found here
anything worthy of his brush? To be sure you cannot have his pretty
powdered dames, and his musical courtiers, with their viols and tabors
and flutes. But they were mere accessories. That which so obviously gave
him the greatest joy—that upon which he bestowed his supreme skill—was
the scenery in which he placed them to give it life, even though that
life should have something of a meretricious and theatrical character.
If it be true, according to Phillips, that softness and colour, hardness
and form, go together, we can account for the prevalence of the garden of
mere colour in the days when the lady of the house ruled the gardener.
The garden of colour is feminine and emotional; the garden of form
masculine and intellectual—it is the garden of the master.
And here we come to something akin to the Chinese doctrine of Yang and
Yin, the male and female principles ruling creation. The garden of form
belongs to Yang, the garden of colour to Yin. This is not intended in
any way to undervalue the woman’s influence. It is only natural that
a woman who is all softness and emotion should surround herself with
effects which mirror her own sweet nature. The man, on the other hand,
strong and hard, will be inclined to try and imitate the sterner pictures
of creation. He will work in what Addison called the Pindaric style,
“without affecting the nicer elegancies of Art.”
Take the books which have been written upon the subject; their name is
legion. The women’s books, full of delicate charm, busy themselves for
the most part with the marriage of colours, the blending of hues, the
reconciliation of hostile shades. They are very clever, very ingenious,
very attractive; but, setting on one side a few of the great lady
writers, among whom Miss Willmott and Miss Jekyll are queens, they
represent no more than the millinery of plants—the stockings to match the
frock.
Set against these the rugged masculine vigour of a writer like William
Robinson, the man to whom, above all others, is due the notable
improvement which has grown in horticultural taste during the last forty
years. From him you will learn much, for he knows much, and he can teach
it. If you have his book, “The English Flower Garden,” you will need no
other, for it will give you all the knowledge which you require. Among
the women’s books, as I have said, there are, of course, delightful
exceptions; but of the bulk of them the best that can be said is that
they are gentle and morally innocuous. For all that is delicate and
charming and alluring, joined to many of the highest and robust qualities
which adorn mankind, I have been all my life a worshipper of the Yin
principle; but when it comes to gardening and the writing of books on
gardening, give me the Yang, give me William Robinson.
All men love trees, and it is small wonder that the sight of objects so
beautiful should have led men to think of them with awe as under the
special care, or even as the dwelling-places, of gods and goddesses;
indeed, the connection of trees with religion is as old as the conception
of the deity itself. North and south, east and west, we find the same
idea.
In the Scandinavian Sagas the mystic Ash Ygdrasil is the tree of life,
of time, and of space. Its branches spread over the whole world and its
top reaches above the heavens. Its roots strike in three directions: the
one down to Hvergelmer, the well of the dragon Nidhug; the second to the
fountain of Mimer, the source of wisdom and wit, for a drink of which
Odin pawned his eye with Mimer; the third is in Asgard, close to the
fountain of Urd the Norn of the Past, where the gods, riding over the
Bifrodh Bridge—the rainbow—assemble to sit in judgment. Here dwell the
three Norns: Urd the Norn of the Past, Verdande the Norn of the Present,
and Skuld the Norn of the Future; and here they weave the web of fate
for you and me and all mankind.
It is strange how men have been fascinated by the rough and rugged
Icelandic mythology born of ice and snow and rocks lashed by glacial
winds; and nights that are light as day, days that are black as night;
an existence which was one long fight against the elements, and struggle
for life with bears and wolves. The Roman poets, on the other hand, born
in the soft, voluptuous creed of the Greeks, a religion in which the gods
and goddesses, much too human, were worshipped in temples built amid the
enchanting fragrance of roseleaf islands, shuddered at the very idea of
the North. For them there would have been nothing but terror in those
strong Sagas, which in other countries gave birth to noble poetry and
stately music.
As told by Ovid, the story of the punishment of Erisichthon, who mocked
the gods and would not sacrifice at their altars, illustrates the worship
of trees and also the dread of the inhospitable North, and yet a North
that was no Arctic region; nothing, indeed, more terrible than the
Caucasus.
In ancient Thessaly, in the midst of a wood sacred to Ceres, there
stood an oak, a sturdy veteran, a grove in itself, covered with votive
offerings, the tokens of the honour which was paid to it. Round it
the Dryads, hand in hand, were wont to hold their choirs and dance in
festive revelry. It was a holy tree, but in spite of all its sanctity,
against it Erisichthon raised his sacrilegious axe and bade his men
strike home, swearing, when they hesitated, that were the tree not merely
dear to the goddess, but if it were the goddess herself, it should lie
low and kiss the earth with its topmost boughs. Under the stroke of the
axe the sacred tree groaned; its leaves and acorns, and even the branches
turned pale. But when the impious hand inflicted the first cruel wound,
blood flowed as from a bull at a sacrifice before the altars. Horrified,
the men were stricken dumb, and one, bolder than the others, would fain
have put a stop to the crime and stayed the falling axe.
“Be this the guerdon of thy piety?” cried the Thessalian, turning the
weapon against the man; severed his head from his body, and repeated
his attack upon the tree. From the heart of the oak there came a voice,
saying, “Under this tree am I, a nymph beloved by Ceres, and my dying
prophecy is that thy deeds shall be punished as the consolation for my
death.” Nothing stops him from his crime; at last, under the many blows,
and dragged by ropes, the tree collapses, and with its weight breaks down
much of the grove.
The mourning Dryads, stricken by their loss, don black robes and pray to
Ceres for the punishment of Erisichthon. The goddess nods assent; she
shakes the fields heavy with crops, and contrives for him a punishment
which would be pitiable had he not forfeited pity by his deeds, dooming
him to be destroyed by pestilential hunger. But since this may not be
attempted by the goddess herself, for the fates will not that Ceres and
famine should co-exist, she charges one of the mountain nymphs to summon
Famine from the cold and bleak shores of Scythia, that barren land where
there is neither corn nor tree—the abode of dull frost, pallor, shivering
and hunger. Thus does the goddess punish the impious sinner, and so she
tortures him until he is driven to gnaw at his own limbs. (Ovid, Met.
740.) Ovid’s description of hunger as a distinct being called to wreak
vengeance is as gruesome as anything that I know of in poetry.
The idea that trees are inhabited by supernatural beings, spirits or
lesser gods, is common enough in the folk-lore of all countries, and
that is what has given rise to the fables of trees which bleed and utter
cries if they are cruelly treated. In Japan there are endless pretty
and fanciful stories, in which the spirits of beautiful trees—often
their matchless cherry trees—fall in love with and bewitch the sons or
daughters of men. Nothing is prettier in that country, so rich in beauty,
than the Shinto shrines nestling in choice spots among the forest-clad
mountains. Around each temple are planted trees which are sacred to,
and under the special protection of, the tutelary deity of the place.
And in connection with them there is a custom called “Ushi no Toki
Mairi” (“Going to worship at the hour of the ox”).[10] It is practised
by jealous women who wish to be revenged on their faithless lovers or
husbands, and reminds us of those waxen dolls with which the witches
and adepts in black magic of the Middle Ages, and in ancient Greece,
according to Theocritus, were wont to pretend that they could rid their
patron of their enemies.
When the world is at rest, at two in the morning, the hour of which
the ox is the symbol, the woman rises; she dons a white robe and high
sandals or clogs; her coif is a metal tripod in which are thrust three
lighted candles; round her neck she hangs a mirror, which falls upon her
bosom; in her left hand she carries a small straw figure, the effigy of
the lover who has deserted her, and in her right she grasps a hammer
and nails, with which she fastens the figure to one of the sacred trees
which surround the shrine. There she prays for the death of the traitor,
vowing that if her petition be heard she will herself pull out the nails
which now offend the god by wounding the mystic tree. Night after night
she comes to the shrine, and each night she drives in two or more nails,
believing that every nail will shorten her lover’s life, for the god, to
save his beloved tree, will surely strike him dead.[11]
Whether this custom still prevails, I know not. Fifty years ago I was
assured that it was “very much alive.” Habits have undergone a mighty
change since then, but superstition dies hard, and there are many
out-of-the-way places even in Japan into which the newness of things has
hardly penetrated. It must have been a ghostly sight to meet a maiden
thus harnessed in the grove of the god on a dark night.
Lafcadio Hearn, that wayward child of the muses, a prose poet if ever
there was such an one, who, after wandering for many years through untold
misery and suffering, at last found rest and his soul in Japan, has left
to us as precious legacies many a rare conceit which would fit in well
here. It would have been strange if he, a mystic himself, had not been
willingly haunted by the folk-lore of the country which he loved, a
country “fabulosa et externis miraculis adsimilata.” Sometimes, indeed,
he was more Catholic than the Pope, living in a Japan that was almost a
dreamland of his own wild fancy. And yet he was a creature of curious
contradictions, for he seems to be half in earnest, half mocking, when he
holds us spellbound with weird tales of goblin trees, luring men to love
or to death; of a camellia tree which listens to the prayers of lovers;
of other camellias which, like spectres, walk about at night, the terror
of mankind. “There was one in the garden of a Matsné Samurai which did
this so much that it had to be cut down. Then it writhed its arms and
groaned, and blood spurted at every stroke of the axe.”
Like every other writer, native and foreign, Lafcadio Hearn is entranced
by the loveliness of the cherry blossom, the emblem of all that is bodily
delicate and spiritually beautiful. He quotes an old stanza, which says:
“If one should ask you concerning the heart of a true Samurai, point to
the mountain cherry flower gleaming in the morning sun.” Again: “As the
cherry flower is first among flowers, so should the warrior be first
among men.” By this nature-loving people, the highest form of female
beauty and excellence is symbolized by the willow for grace, the cherry
flower for youthful charm, the plum blossom for virtue and sweetness. I
should add that the oval outline of the melon seed represents in the
shape of the face the type of high breeding and aristocratic distinction.
The poets are never weary of drawing upon the cherry flower for their
metaphors. A Japanese gentleman, looking out upon a snow-storm, will say:
“See how the petals of the cherries are drifting before the wind.”
The Yanagi—the weeping willow—is a much haunted tree. Here is a story
told by Lafcadio Hearn which is worth quoting:
“There is a rather pretty legend—recalling the old Greek dream of
Dryads—about a willow tree which grew in the garden of a Samurai of
Kyōto. Owing to its weird reputation, the tenant of the homestead desired
to cut it down; but another Samurai dissuaded him, saying: ‘Rather sell
it to me, that I may plant it in my garden. That tree has a soul; it were
cruel to destroy its life.’ Thus purchased and transplanted, the Yanagi
flourished well in its new home, and its spirit, out of gratitude, took
the form of a beautiful woman, and became the wife of the Samurai who
had befriended it. A charming boy was the result of this union. A few
years later the Daimio to whom the ground belonged gave orders that the
tree should be cut down. Then the wife wept bitterly, and for the first
time revealed to her husband the whole story. ‘And now,’ she added, ‘I
know that I must die, but our child will live and you will always love
him. This thought is my only solace.’ Vainly the astonished husband
sought to retain her. Bidding him farewell for ever, she vanished into
the tree. Needless to say, that the Samurai did everything in his power
to persuade the Daimio to forgo his purpose. The prince wanted the tree
for the reparation of a great Buddhist temple, the Sanjiusangendo.” (The
Temple of the 33,333 images of Kwannon, the Goddess of Mercy.) “The tree
was felled, but, having fallen, it suddenly became so heavy that three
hundred men could not move it. Then the child, taking a branch in his
little hand, said ‘Come,’ and the tree followed him, gliding along the
ground to the court of the temple.”
You may bless the Yanagi for offering you a sure cure for the toothache.
Haunted it is bound to be, and if you suffer, drive nails into it until
the spirit of the tree, to save its home, relieves you of the pain. Are
you a dreamer of dreams? Then if your climate be mild, without fail, see
that you are not without a Nanten among your shrubs. Hide it away in some
sheltered spot, both for its own sake and for yours, and let it be your
trusted confidant. If the gods should send you evil and racking dreams,
rise early and whisper the terror to your Nanten, and it shall come to
naught. Science has corrupted the Japanese name Nanten into _Nandina_,
and, for some reason best known to themselves, botanists have added the
altogether ridiculous and senseless suffix _domestica_. Perhaps such an
outrage may have robbed the plant of its virtues; we can but try it.
To go back to our cherries. In the grounds of an old Scottish castle,
rich in ghostly stories and blood-curdling legends, there stands an old
gean tree (wild cherry). It is the belief of the countryside that this
old tree is haunted by the spirit of a former mistress of the castle,
a lady who, as tradition has it, suffered much in her life-time and
cannot rest in death. One day, some forty years ago, I started off from
a neighbouring place to pay a visit at the castle with “Hang-theology”
Rogers, the famous rector of St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, than whom no
brighter companion ever cheered a long, cold drive in a rather rickety
dog-cart. We arrived just as the large party in the house were gathering
together in the drawing-room after luncheon. We were met by long and
rather pale faces. Obviously something had happened—nobody seemed at
ease. At last an old lady, who was among the guests, took me on one side
and told me what all this meant.
That morning, a visitor who was driving up to the house, when he came to
the gean tree, saw the figure of a woman come out of it, glide for some
distance beside him, and then vanish. Many of the people in the castle,
who happened to be looking out of the drawing-room window at the time,
saw the wonder, and the old lady added that she herself, having gone up
to her bedroom to put on her bonnet, distinctly saw the apparition from
her window, which was immediately over the drawing-room. All these people
were absolutely convinced that, like the visitor in his dog-cart, they
had seen the ghost which haunted the gean tree. I have told the story
without addition or ornament, exactly as I heard it an hour or two after
its occurrence and while the witnesses were still under the spell. It
could not fail to remind me of the tales of Bakémono-zakura, the haunted
cherry trees of Japanese legend, and it seemed worthy to be set down
beside them.