Chapter IX

The Lilac and Acacia, for instance, were the flower-bearers of the tree-planted playground of that jocund old school where I received the first rudiments of education: the _Institution Delescluze_, then situate in a kind of backwater of the faubourg St. Honoré at the angle facing the _Palais de l’Elysée_. It has, alas long since been swept away to make room for modern mansions. This ancient _Institution_, or preparatory school, would seem to have dated from the distant days, early Louis XV probably, when the north side of the then lengthening noble _faubourg_ must still have been occupied by meadows and orchards.

* * * * *

By the way, it has never occurred to me before to look up that little topographical matter authoritatively. I do so now. I have here a copy of a wonderful work, the “perspective” map of Paris as it stood in the ’thirties, of the eighteenth century. It is called the _Plan de Turgot_, having been surveyed, and engraved, in lavishly decorative style, by order of _Louis-le-Bien-Aimé_, under the care of the celebrated _Prévost des Marchands_. The book is quite the most fascinating of its kind I know—and I think I have handled as goodly a number of such works as any man alive. ‹The nearest approach to it, in point of what one may call picturesque perspicuity, is the wonderful bird’s-eye view of Edinburgh set down by James Gordon of Rothiemay, and engraved at Amsterdam by F. de Wit, about a century earlier.› This plan of Turgot is an elaborate affair indeed—an atlas of twenty large sheets, showing practically every individual house of any importance. Would we had such a work in existence dealing with Georgian London!

Well, to investigate.... Aye, here are the orchards and market gardens, beginning at the very back of a narrow line of houses, covering all the ground of what nowadays is a close network of stone-fronted streets! Here stands the Hôtel d’Evreux, the last, moving westward, of that array of lordly mansions: the Hôtels de Montbazon, de Guébrian, de Charost, de Duras.... A few of these patrician dwellings, each with their own formal gardens stretching southwards to the Champs Elysées, have retained to our own times their dignity unimpaired. But where are now scattered most of these grand French family names, since the tornado of the great Revolution? But, to our map.... Yes, this Hôtel d’Evreux—whilom appanage of Madame de Pompadour, now the aforesaid Palais de l’Elysée; residence, in due rotation, of the swift-changing presidents of the Republic—is here under my finger. And its position unquestionably fixes, some two hundred yards westward, that of the now vanished _Institution Delescluze_, so interesting to me. And here spread themselves the orchards, of which the existence a moment ago was, after all, only a matter of surmise!

[Sidenote: PLUM-TREE GUM]

My discovery adds particularity now to the remembrance of that mellow place.... A goodly number of antiquated fruit trees were scattered about the _cour de récréation_. I can now carve it, in fancy, out of the cultivated land shown by the engraver in the most engaging conventional manner, at the back of the northern street front—an acre or so. Perhaps a little more; likelier still, a little less: recollections of this kind have a knack of magnifying affairs. It is bounded by grey walls, tall and thick, but distinctly decrepit. The trees were, of course, long past bearing, through age and neglect; but they were pleasant company, whether snow-laden, or in summer affording their scanty shade. Plum trees they were, I should say. At any rate the rough bark of their boles distilled a kind of brown gum which was in great demand among us small boys for immediate consumption; and sedulously scooped out, as soon as discovered, with the help of the stump end of a steel-pen nib.

Interspersed among these remnants of the forgotten orchard were the odd groups of Lilacs and Acacias previously mentioned. The latter, the Acacias, were tall and above interference. But strict were the standing orders touching the bloom of the Lilac, and dire the prospect of _pensum_ or _piquet_ to the youthful scholar who should dare to pluck the fragrant bunches!

Thus came the Lilac to assume a character at once sacred—or, at least, “taboo”—and at the same time perennially tantalizing. It was long before the realization dawned that _Lilas_ were not the rare and precious blossoms that so uncompromising a prohibition appeared to proclaim. As a matter of fact, the _Lilas_, _Blanc ou Rose_, is one of the commonest of spring objects in France. Almost might it in its popularity be regarded as the national emblem of the _renouveau_, much as with us the pallid, delicate Primrose is held to herald the last of wintry days.

The old French name for the latter is _Primerole_, suggestive by its etymological connection with “prime,” of the youth of the year. We have made of it Prim_rose_, through the usual process of popular phonetic adaptation, which ever tends to make a word sound like something already familiar. So that the old _Primerole_—meaning simply an early floweret, _primula_—has become with us “the early rose”! The French dubbed it _Primevère_ a learned equivalent for the _Coucou_ of the rustic tongue, to symbolize the advent of vernal days.

The name brings at once to mind the well-known yearning lines:

“_O Primavera, gioventù dell’ anno!_

* * * * *

_O gioventù, primavera della vita!_”

In France, however, the accepted harbinger of _les beaux jours_, is not the

“Pale cowslip, fit for maiden’s early bier,”

not the faint Primula but emphatically the Lilac—the Syringa Vulgaris; the joyous _fleur des humbles_, as contrasted to the noble Rose.

“_Oh, gai! vive la rose,
La rose ... et les lilas!_”

runs the refrain of olden days.

During the last century or two it has grown as common, almost, around villages as the hawthorn, the _Aubépine_ itself. But it is perhaps best appreciated in the towns. While the tender purple bloom lasts, there is scarce too modest a working home’s window-sill or mantelpiece for the display of a _branche de Lilas_ stuck in the gullet of a water-bottle. And your gay-hearted _grisette_ or _midinette_, early afoot in the streets, will always spend her first _sou_ of the day on a sprig of the sweet-breathing rosy cluster.

[Sidenote: LAYLOCKS—LILAS BLANC]

One may learn, whilst intent upon other matters, many unsuspected things about objects even as familiar as the common “Laylock.” ‹A collection of old letters of Georgian and very early Victorian days, with which we have had much to do at one time, show a preference for this phonetic rendering of the name.› Thus it appears that a valuable febrifuge “principle” is obtainable from its fruit; that its wood, veined in pleasing colours and very fine-grained, is in high request for delicate articles of turnery and in particular for inlaying; that a perfumed essence is sometimes distilled from it that is almost indistinguishable from Rhodes Balsam—and so forth.

Those, however, are not the points of interest which have made it imperative to have a plant or two of “Laylocks” in our Sentimental Garden. ‹They do fairly well, be it said, in their own specially sheltered, suntrap corner of the ground.› No, there is in life an ever-growing motive—old sake’s sake. Syringa Persica may mean much to the operative gardener, but it can never mean _Lilas blanc_ ... _Lilas rose_!

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