We have been enveloped all this morning in a cloud of smoke, not exactly
battlesmoke, but nearly as thick, perhaps, in these days of smokeless
powder, rather thicker. Our indefatigable Cuttle has decreed that we
must at all costs get rid of those mountains of garden rubbish, which
seem to be for ever accumulating. Hence this smoke! Never in my life did
I see such volumes! They rolled in blackish blue columns all about our
leafless copse, till towards the afternoon, a wind getting up, they were
swept finally westward, across the downs, somewhere in the direction of
Guildford.
Personally I like the smell, acrid though it undoubtedly is. The pile
itself is moreover the nearest approach one ever gets in these
degenerate days to a bonfire, for which I still retain the most
infantile affection, and which never seems to be so familiar, or so
endearing, as upon the afternoon of a winter’s day. Who can explain
those incredibly remote, yet at the same time perfectly definite
feelings of association, of which we are all at times more or less
aware? Why should certain perfectly commonplace things awaken dreams,
reminiscences, suggestions; whereas others, every bit equally qualified
to do so, find us blank, and indifferent? Of all such aids to impersonal
memory, commend me to an out-of-door fire! The wild, keen smell of it.
The red eye of flame, blinking at one out of the heap. The sleepy rolls
of smoke, tumbling about, and making one’s eyes water. The sudden
“crick, crick, crackle” of a snapping twig, travelling sharply through
the frosty air. All these separately, or the whole combined, bring with
them trains of association that have been accumulating very much longer,
or I am much mistaken, than the course of any one single lifetime.
Reminiscences, who can tell, of that remote day when the human hearth
was for the most part not an indoor, but an out-of-door one?
A friend and neighbour of ours has recently improved upon such casual
burnings by having what may be called a permanent bonfire in her
grounds, and I wonder more people who love their gardens, and spend
whole winters in the country, do not adopt the plan. In one respect it
is certainly an inferior bonfire, for its main constituents are, not
leaves and sticks, but anthracite coal. To make amends, it burns merrily
away night and day, only needing to be replenished, I am assured, once
in twenty-four hours. Her garden lies in the heart of a big pinewood,
and the fire has its home in an open lodge or gazebo, supported by larch
poles, without door or window, but made possible to sit in in cold
weather, by being match-boarded upon two sides, the south and south-east
sides alone being widely open. Until one has actually tried, it is
difficult to believe how comfortable one can be in such a spot even on a
very frosty evening, both feet extended to the blaze, and a rug tucked
round one to keep off stray draughts. As daylight wanes the red glow
increases, lighting up the big pine trunks, and awakening in one’s mind
vagrant suggestions of camp fires, and forest settlements, while at
other times it has the practical advantage of making many garden
operations possible which, without such a speedy refuge to fly to, would
in this chill-evoking climate of ours scarce be practicable.
It is odd what minute deviations from the everyday stir the mind, and
help it to shake off that crust of routine, which it ought to be the aim
of all of us to get rid of. In these days too, one is thankful to
anything that gives a stir to existence, apart from the weary
newspapers. It is, I think, one of the few merits of winter that spots,
at other times tame to flatness, seem in fierce, or exceptionally cold
weather to revert to an older, and a wilder condition. Snow admittedly
recreates everything; our most familiar paths and shrubberies, nay our
very stable runnels, growing quite arctic and hyperborean-looking under
its disguise. Apart from snow, the same impression is produced by any
really strong atmospheric variation. Crackling grass, and glittering
ice-bound trees, awaken one set of suggestions. Roaring winds, a
drenched earth, and inky clouds tumbling wildly over the sky, arouse
quite others. Even objects inside the garden, plants that have been
perhaps put there by one’s own hands; clumps say, of bamboos and reedy
grasses--Arundo donax or the like--assume suddenly new, and slightly
savage aspects when one sees them sweeping to and fro, or buckling like
so many fishing rods under the lash of a sudden tempest. The commonplace
is not really unescapable, though it often seems as though it were.
There are wider, freer notes, which only need awakening to stir, and
thrill us with their presence. The imagination leaps to meet them, and
feels them to be its right. For we are all heirs to a large inheritance,
though we are apt, as a rule, to be forgetful of the fact.