Chapter IV: Part I: A View of England (2)

Man is an autobiographical animal, he speaks only from his thimbleful of human experience, and the I, I, I, of his talk drops out like an insistent drip of water. Even the knowledge we gain from books has to be grafted on to the knowledge we have of life before it bears fruit in our minds. Like patient clerks we are always adding up the columns of facts, fancies, and ideas, and arriving at the very tiny total at the end of the day.

In order to give themselves scope when they wish to soliloquise, many authors address their conversation to a cat, a grandfather clock, a dog, a picture on the wall, or what-not. Cats, I think, have the preference. I have often wondered what Crome, the painter, said to his cat when he pulled hairs out of her to make paint-brushes; or what Doctor Johnson said to his cat Hodge, about Boswell. Having explained this much, I may easily be forgiven for repeating the conversation I had with a Stone Dog who sat on his haunches outside the door of a woodman’s cottage.

The cottage stood on the edge of a wood, and was, as I shall point out, a remnant of departed glory, of which the dog was the most pertinent reminder.

A cottage on the borders of a wood is in itself one of the most valuable pictures for a romance. A woodcutter may be in league with goodness knows how many fairies, elves, and witches. It is a place where heroes meet heroines; where kings in disguise eat humble pie; where dukes, lost in hunting a white stag, meet enchanted princesses.

The wood, of which I speak, was once, years ago—about three hundred years—part of the park of Tanglewood Court, an extensive property, an old house, a great family possession.

Gone, like last winter’s snow, were the family of Bois; gone the pack; gone the glories of the great family; gone the portraits, the armour, the very windows of Tanglewood Court, of which but a fine ruin remained. And the lane, a mere cart track, was all that was left of the fine sweep of drive to the house; and a tangled undergrowth under ancient trees all that stood for the grand avenue down which my Lord Bois had once ridden so madly. They call the lane Purgatory Lane, and they tell a story of wild doings and of a beautiful avenue, that cannot have its place here.

The great gates that once swung open to admit the carriage of Perpetua Bois (of the red hair, the full voluptuous figure, the smile Sir Peter Lely painted) were now two stone stumps at the feet of which two slots, green and worn, showed where the hinges had been. These fine gates once boasted, on the top of stone pillars, the greyhounds of Bois in stone. One of these dogs had been rescued from the undergrowth by the woodcutter, the other lies broken and bramble-covered in the wood. I wonder if they miss each other.

So you see I was addressing myself to a high-born Jacobean dog.

This dog, very calm and dignified, with a stone tail and a back worn smooth by wind and weather, sat with his back to the cottage which had been built out of the remains of the old stone lodge by a gentleman of the name of Bellington, who was afterwards found drowned in the lake. That lake held many secrets, indeed, some said (the woodcutter’s wife told me this) it held Lady Perpetua’s jewels. That did not concern me, for it held for me the finer jewels of Water Lilies that grew there in profusion, though I will not deny that the idea of Lady Perpetua gave an added touch of romance. How often had the clear water of the lake reflected her satin-clad figure and the forms of her little toy spaniels?

It so happening, I sat by the Stone Dog, on a wooden seat, to eat my lunch one day, and dropped into conversation with him, after a bite or two, in the most natural way in the world.

There was the wood in front of us, blue-purple with wild Hyacinths. There was the old cottage behind clothed with rambling Creepers; a carpet of smooth rabbit-worn grass at our feet; a profusion of Primroses, Wind Flowers, and budding trees before our eyes. There was also the enchanting hum of wild bees (like those wild bees Horace knew, that sought the mountain of Matinus in Calabria, and there “laboriously gathered the grateful thyme”) to soothe us in our solitude.

I addressed him then, “Stone Dog,” I said, “this is a very beautiful wood. Nature, laughing at the ghosts of the Bois family, steel-clad, periwigged, or patched, has reclaimed her own.”

The dog answered me never a word but kept his gaze fixed in front of him as if he saw visions in the wood.

“This was a Park once,” said I, “the pleasure-ground of great folk, where they might sport in playful dalliance”—I thought that sounded rather Jacobean.

But, as I looked at him, it seemed, as though he listened for the sound of wheels, and turned his sightless eyes to look for the figure of Lady Perpetua.

“She was very fair,” I said, understanding him, knowing that he had seen many generations drive through the gates he sat to guard. “She would come down to the lodge-keeper’s house to take her breakfast draught of small ale. Poor Lady Perpetua, she was a good house wife, and saw to the pickling of Nasturtium buds, and Lime Tree buds, and Elder roots; and ordered the salting of the winter beef; and looked to it that plenty of Parsnips were stored to eat with it. What sights you must have seen!”

Even as I talked there emanated from the Stone Dog some atmosphere of the past, and we were once more in a fair English park, with its orangeries, and houses of exotic plants, and its maze, and leaden statues, and cut yew trees, and lordly peacocks. The great trees had been cut down, and the timber sold; acres of land, once grazing ground for herds of deer, were ploughed; here, in front of us, was the tangled wood, a corner of what was, once, a wild garden—a fancy of Lady Perpetua’s, no doubt, who loved solitudes, and sentimental poetry:

“I could not love thee, dear, so much;
Loved I not honour more.”

Perhaps it was here she met young Hervey; perhaps it was here Lord Bois found them, cutting initials on one of those very trees, G. H. and P. B. and two hearts with an arrow through them. Ah! then the smile Sir Peter Lely painted faded to a quiver of the lips. Lord Bois looked at the trembling mouth and his glance flew to the initials on the tree. “So this is why, madam,” I could hear him say, “you took to sylvan glades like a timid deer; so this is why you coaxed me up to London, leaving you alone—but, not unprotected.” I could see his sneering bow to young Hervey—a bow that was a blow.

And all the while I was only seeing with the Stone Dog’s eyes. There was just the rippling sea of wild Hyacinths, the pale gold of the Primroses, the innocent white of the wood Anemones—like fairies’ washing—and the purple haze of bursting buds.

Once the Stone Dog had looked along an avenue and had seen a vista of Tanglewood Court, and smooth terraces, and bright beds of flowers, with Lords and Ladies walking up and down, taking the air, discussing fruit trees, and Dutch gardening, and glass hives for bees. Now, he saw nothing but the woods all brimming with Spring flowers: a garden made by Nature.

And then I thought I saw one Bluebell detach itself from its fellows and come wafting to us with a fairy’s message, but it was a bright blue butterfly who sailed, rejoicing in the sun. Somehow the butterfly reminded me of the Lady Perpetua, soft and smiling, and fluttering in the sun: as if she had returned to her woods in that guise to hover near the tree, the trysting-place, on which the initials were cut.

I said as much to the Stone Dog, but received no answer.

“Stone Dog,” I said, “England is a very wonderful place: every park, every field, every little wood is full of stories. I cannot pass a park gate without thinking of the men and women who have been through it. What a Garden of History the whole place is! I’ll warrant a Roman has kissed a Saxon girl in this very place, for there’s a camp not far off—perhaps you have seen twinkling ghostly watch-fires gleaming in the night. Young Hervey’s dead, but you never saw him die; they fought in the garden on the smooth grass, and the story goes that he slipped, and Bois ran him through as he lay on the grass. What flowers grow over his head now? And Perpetua is dead. They say she ran out and saw her lover dead, and bared her breast to her husband’s sword. The grass was wet with her blood when you saw Lord Bois ride madly down the drive, through the gates, and out into the open country. The smile Sir Peter Lely painted is carved by the hand of Death. She was only a girl, after all. Who places flowers on her grave?”

Meanwhile the sun shone on the Bluebells, and struck odd leaves of the trees, picking them out with a fanciful finger till they shone like green fires.

Then the idea came to me that this wood held the spirit of Lady Perpetua fast for ever. The Bluebells were the satin sheen of her dress (blue like the Lely portrait), the red-brown autumn leaves and the dead Bracken were her hair; the Wind Flowers, like her body linen; the Violets, her eyes; the Primroses, her breath; the Cowslips, her golden ornaments; the Daisy petals like her pure white skin. A gentle breeze stirred all the flowers together, and—behold! there she was, alive. The wood was yielding up her secret, as woods and flowers will do to those who love them.

So the Stone Dog and I had a bond of sympathy between us, the bond of old memories, and the wood united us with its store of romance and beauty: and he who loves wild flowers and woods, as well as walled gardens and trees clipped in images, may gather store of pictures for his mind.

So the afternoon passed in this pleasant manner, and I took opportunity to speak once more to the Stone Dog before the woodcutter’s children came home from school to spoil our peace.

I said, “There is no man so poor but he can afford to take pleasure in Bluebells, and, even if he live in a town, there are wild flowers for sale in the streets, and a bunch of Spring to be bought for a penny. And there is no man so rich that he can wall up the treasures of heaven, or build his walls so high but a Rose will peep over the edge. Poor and rich are free of their thoughts, and there are thoughts and enough to spare, in a hedgerow or a wood. Uncaged birds sing best, and wild flowers yield the purest scents. You and I are fellow dreamers, and this wood is our garden, and these birds our orchestra, and this grass our carpet; and even when I am underneath the brown earth I love so well, you will sit here and listen for the sound of carriage wheels, and wonder if you will catch a glimpse of red hair and a satin dress through the long-silent avenue. There are mountains, Stone Dog, that still feel the pressure of the foot of Moses; and hills under which Roman soldiers lie; and there are woods growing where orchard gardens were; and gardens planted where the wild boar once ravaged.”

After I had said this came wild shouts, and the laughter of children, and a great clatter as the four children of the woodcutter came running from the village school.

As I left that place, and turned, before a bend of the road shut out the sight of the wood, I saw the sea of Bluebells, and the sky above, the Primroses and the Wind Flowers and last year’s leaves all melt into one. The figure they made was the figure of Lady Perpetua standing there smiling. Then I heard the wheels of a carriage on the road, and I could have sworn I saw the Stone Dog turn his head.

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VII

THE TAILOR’S SISTER’S TOMBSTONE

I was on the hill over against the village where my friend the tailor lived, and was preparing to descend into the valley to inquire the whereabouts of his cottage, when one of those sharp summer storms came on, the sky being darkened as if a hand had drawn a curtain across it, and the entire village lit by a vivid, unnatural light, like limelight in its intensity.

Turning about, as the first great drops fell, to look for shelter, I spied a rough shed by the wayside, shut in on three sides with gorse, wattle and mud, and roofed over with heather thatch. Into this I scuttled and found a comfortable seat on a sack placed on a pile of hurdles.

It was evidently a place used by a shepherd for a store-house of the implements of his craft. At the back of a shed was one of those houses on wheels shepherds use in the lambing season; besides this were hurdles, sacks, several rusty tins, and a very rusty oil-stove. All very primitive, and possessed of a nice earthy smell. It gave me a sudden desire to be a shepherd.

Looking down into the valley I saw men running for shelter, hastily pulling their coats over their shoulders as they ran. In a field on the far side of the valley they were carting Wheat, and I saw two men quickly unhitch the cart horses, and lead them away to some place hidden from me by trees.

The village was buried in orchards, and lay along the bank of a quickly running river that caught a glint of the weird light here and there between the trees like a path of shining silver. A squat church tower stuck up among the red roofs.

For a moment the scene shone in the fierce light, then the low growling thunder broke into a tremendous crash, and the light was gone in an instant. Then the rain blotted out everything.

The hiss of the rain on the dry heather thatch over my head was good enough company, and it was added to, soon, by the entrance of seven swallows that flew into my shelter and sat twittering on a beam just inside the opening. Then came an inky darkness, broken violently by a blare of lightning as if some hand had rent the dark curtain across in a rage. A great torn jagged edge of blue-white light streamed across the valley, showing everything in wet, glistening detail.

Only that morning I had been reading by the wayside an account of a storm in the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini. It came very pat for the day. It was at the time when Cellini rode from Paris carrying two precious vases on a mule of burden, lent him to go as far as Lyons, by the Bishop of Pavia. When they were a day’s journey from Lyons, it being almost ten o’clock at night, such a terrific storm burst upon them that Cellini thought it was the day of judgment. The hailstones were the size of Lemons; and the event caused him to sing psalms and wrap his clothes about his head. All the trees were broken down, all the cattle deprived of life, and a great many shepherds were killed.

I was still engaged in picturing this when the sky above me grew lighter, the rain fell less heavily, and, in a very short time, all that was left of the storm was a distant sound as of a giant murmuring, a dark blot of rain cloud on the distant hills, and the ceaseless patter of dripping trees. The sun shone out and showed the village and landscape all fresh and shining. Then, as I looked, against the dark bank of distant clouds, a rainbow arched in glorious colours, one step of the arch on the hills tailing into mist, and one in the corn field below. The sight of the rainbow with its wonderful beauty, and its great message of hope thrilled me, as it always does. I do not care what the scientist tells me of its formation: he has not added one atom to my feeling, with all his knowledge. It remains for me the sign of God’s compact with man.

“And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make
between me and you, and every living creature that is with you,
for perpetual generations.

“I set my bow in a cloud, and it shall be for a token of a
covenant between me and the earth.

“And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth,
that the bow shall be seen in the cloud.

“And I will remember my covenant which is between me and you,
and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no
more become a flood to destroy all flesh.

“And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it,
that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and
every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth.”

I learnt to love that when I was a child, and being still, in many ways, the same child, I look upon a rainbow and think of God remembering his covenant: and it makes me very happy.

Now as the storm was over, and I had no further excuse for stopping in my shelter, I took my knapsack again on to my shoulder and walked down, across two fields of grass, round the high hedges of two orchards, and came out into the road in the valley, about two hundred yards distant from the village church. It was about four of the afternoon.

I was about to turn towards the village to ask my best way to the tailor’s cottage, when who should turn the bend of the road but the tailor himself with all the air of looking for some one.

I grasped him warmly by the hand, and he held mine in a good grip like the good fellow he was, saying, “I was looking about for you, sir, thinking you might have forgotten my direction” (as indeed, I had), “and knowing you would most likely go to the village to inquire, I was on my way there.”

As we turned to walk down the road away from the church, the tailor informed me his sister was all agog to see me, but very nervous that I might think theirs too poor a place to put up with, and she had, at the last moment, implored him to take me to the inn instead.

The affection I had gained for the little man in my few hours’ talk with him made me certain I should be happy in his company, and I laughed at his fears.

“Why, man,” said I, “I have walked a good hundred miles to see you, do you think it likely I shall turn away at the last minute?”

“There,” cried the tailor, “I told her so. She’s a small body, you’ll understand, sir, and gets worried at times.”

We turned a corner and I saw before me one of the prettiest cottages I have ever seen. A low, sloping roof of thatch, golden brown where it had been mended, rich brown and green in the older part. The body of the cottage was white, with a fine tree of Cluster Roses, the Seven Sisters, I think it is called, growing over the porch and on the walls. The garden was one mass of bloom, a wonderful garden—as artists say, “juicy” with colour. Standard Roses, Sweet Williams, Hollyhocks, patches of Violas, Red Hot Pokers, Japanese Anemones, a hedge of Sweet Peas “all tip-toe for a flight” as Keats has it, clumps of Dahlias just coming out, with red pots on sticks to catch the earwigs; an old Lavender hedge, grey-green. A rain butt painted green; round a corner, three blue-coloured beehives; and all about, such flowers—I could not mention half of them. Bushes of Phlox, for instance; and great brown-eyed Sunflowers cracked across with wealth of seed; and tall spikes of Larkspur like the summer skies: and Carnations couched in their grey grass or tied to sticks. A worn brick pathway leading through it all.

The tailor watched the effect on me anxiously.

I stood with one hand on the gate and drank in the beauty of it. Set, as the place was, in a bower of orchards, it looked like a jewelled nest, a place out of a fairy tale, everything complete. The diamond panes of the windows with neat muslin curtains behind them, with fine Geraniums in very red pots on the window-sill, were like friendly eyes beaming pleasantly at the passing world. To a tired traveller making his way upon that road, such a sight would bring delight to his eyes, and cause him, most certainly, to pause before the glad garden. If he were a romantic man he would take off his hat, as men do abroad to a wayside Calvary, in honour of the peace that dwelt over all.

Like a rich illuminated page the garden glowed among the trees—like a jewel of many colours it shone in its velvet nest.

The tailor could restrain himself no longer. He said, “As neat as anything you’ve seen, sir?”

“Perfect,” said I. “As much as a man could want.”

He walked before me down the garden path and called, “Rose,” through the open door.

In another minute I was shaking hands with the tailor’s sister.

In appearance she was as spotlessly clean as her muslin curtains. She was a tiny woman of about forty-five, very quick in her movements, with a little round red face and very bright blue eyes. She wore, in my honour, a black silk dress, and a black silk apron and a large cornelian brooch at her neck.

“Pray step inside, sir,” she said throwing open the door of the parlour.

When I was seated at tea with these people I kept wondering where they had learnt the refinement and taste everywhere exhibited. For one thing the few family possessions were good, and there was no tawdry rubbish. A grandfather clock, its case shining with polishing, ticked comfortably in one corner of the room. An old-fashioned sofa filled the window space. We sat upon Windsor chairs with our feet on a rag carpet. Most of the household gods were over or upon the mantelpiece, most prominent among which was a really fine landscape, hung in the centre. I inquired whose work this might be.

One had only to look in the direction of any object to get its history from the tailor.

“I bought that, sir,” he said, when I was looking at the picture, “of a man near Norwich. It cost me half a crown.”

“Three shillings,” said the sister. Then to me, “He takes a sixpence off, now and again, sir, because he’s jealous of my bargains; aren’t you, Tom?”

Tom smiled at her and winked at me. “She will have her bit of fun,” he said.

“But it’s a fine picture,” said I.

“Proud to have you say so,” he answered; “I like it, and the man didn’t seem to care about it. He was going to the Colonies and parting with a lot of odds and ends. I bought the brass candlesticks off him at the same time—a shilling.”

I could see why the little man liked the picture, for the same reason I liked it myself. It was of the Norwich School, a broad open landscape painted with care and finish of detail, and with much of the charming falsity of light common among certain pictures of that time. On the left was a cottage whose garden gave on to the road, a cottage almost buried under two great trees. The road wound past, out of the shadows of the trees, and vanished over a hill. The middle distance showed a great expanse of country dotted with trees with the continuation of the road running through the vale until it was lost in a wood. A sky of banked up clouds hung over all. Right across the middle of the picture was a wonderfully painted gleam of sunlight, flicking trees, meadows, and the road into bright colours; the rest of the picture being subdued to give this effect. Up the road, coming towards the cottage, was a small man in a three-cornered hat, knee breeches, and long skirted coat. This figure dated the picture a little earlier than I had at first thought it.

“That’s me,” said the tailor, pointing to the figure. “That’s what Rose said as soon as I brought it home, ‘Why that’s you, Tom.’”

“I did, sir, that’s just what I said. ‘Why Tom, that’s you,’ I said.”

“And so it is,” said the tailor.

Half a crown! Few of us are rich enough in taste to have bought it.

After tea I begged leave to see the garden. “And, Miss Rose,” I said, “to hear about the tombstone, please.”

She put her small fat hands to her face and laughed and laughed. “He’s been and told you that, sir? Well, I never did!”

We went out of the back door and into a second flower garden rivalling the one in front for a display of colour. There, sure enough, stood the tombstone, grey and upright, planted in a bed of flowers. They seemed to hurl themselves at the grim object, wave upon wave of coloured joy washing the feet of the emblem of Death.

“There she is,” said the tailor’s sister proudly.

“Please tell me about it,” said I, wondering at her cheerfulness.

“You see, sir,” she began, “before Tom and I came into our fortune, and got rich——”

Multi-millionaires, I thought, could you but hear that! But they were rich—as rich as any one could be. The flowers in the garden were worth a kingdom.

“—We used to wonder what we’d do if we ever had a bit of money. Of course, we never dreamed of anything like this.” Her eyes wandered proudly over her possessions.

“Yes,” said the tailor, joining in. “Our best dreams never came near this. I’d seen such places, but never thought to live in one, much less own one.”

“Well, you see, sir,” said his sister taking up the thread of her story, “there was one thing I’d always set my mind on—a nice place to lie in when I was dead. I had a horror of cemeteries, great ugly places, as you might say, with the tombstones sticking up like almonds in a tipsy cake pudding, and a lot of dirty children playing about. I lived for ten years in London, in a room that overlooked one, a most dingy place I called it. I couldn’t bear to think I’d be popped in with a crowd, anyhow. Now, a churchyard in the country—that’s quite different.”

“I’d a great fancy for a spot I knew in Kent,” said the tailor. “Dark Yew trees all round one side, and Daisies over everything, and a seat near by for people to rest on, coming early to church.”

“Go on, Tom,” said his sister lovingly. “Ar’n’t you satisfied with what you’ve got?”

He turned to me after putting his arm through his sister’s. “We’ve got our piece of ground,” he said cheerfully. “I’m going to be planted next to her, on the left of the church door—well, it’s as good a place as you’d find anywhere, and people coming out of church will notice us easily. I’d like to be thought of, after I’m gone.”

Death held no terrors for these people, it seemed, they talked so happily of it, made such delightful plans to welcome it; robbed it of all its gloom and horror, its false trappings, its dingy grandeur.

There was a flaunting Red Admiral sunning its wings on the tombstone.

“I never thought,” said the sister, “I should find just what I wanted by accident. Isn’t it lovely?”

It certainly had a beauty of its own. It was a copy of an early eighteenth century tombstone, the top in three arches, the centre arch large, and round, ending in carved scroll work. In the centre of the arch a cherub was carved, very fat and smiling, with wings on either side of his head. Then, in good deep-cut lettering, were the words:

SACRED TO THE MEMORY
OF
ROSE BRANDLE

Both these curious people looked at me as I read the lettering. Arm in arm they looked nice, cheerful, loving friends, a good deal like one another in the face, very gay and homely, and with a certain sparkling brightness, like the flowers they loved. To see them standing there proudly, smiling at the grey tombstone, smiling at me, under the sun, in the garden so full of life and of growing healthy things, gave me a sensation that Death was present in friendly guise, a constant welcome companion to my new friends, and a pleasant image even to myself.

“Second-hand,” said the tailor’s sister, “all except the name, and he put that in for me at a penny the letter: that came to elevenpence, so I gave him a shilling to make an even sum.”

“A guinea, as it stands,” said the tailor.

“You like it, sir?” asked his sister anxiously.

“On the contrary,” said I, “I admire it enormously.”

“As soon as I saw it,” she said, “I fell in love with it. It was standing at the back of the yard among a heap of stones. The sun was shining on it, and I said to myself, ‘If that’s cheap, it’s as good as mine.’ The man had cut it out years ago as an advertisement to put in the front of the yard, and it had a bit of paper pasted on it with his terms and what not—Funerals in the best style. Distance no object—and that sort of thing. I asked the price of it and he told me ‘One pound.’ ‘Cheap,’ I said, and he told me how ’twas so, since people nowadays like broken urns and pillars or something plainer, and had given up cherubs, and death-heads and suchlike. So I put down the money, and he popped it on a waggon that was coming back this way with a small load of Hay, and Tom put it up for me in the garden. Now I can die happy, sir.”

I asked her if she had no feelings about Death, and if the idea of leaving her garden and her cottage was not strange to her.

She replied, in the simplest way possible, being a cheerful religious woman without a particle of sham in her nature, that when God called her she was ready and glad to go, and as for the garden she would only go to another one—far more beautiful.

Her faith, I found afterwards, was of a sweet simple kind, and had been with her as a child, and remained with her as a woman, untouched by the least doubt. She heard Mass every morning of her life in the little church half a mile away, and spoke in loving and familiar tones of her favourite saints as being friends of hers, though in a higher station of life. Included in her ideas of heaven was a very distinct belief that there would be many beautiful flowers and birds, and the pleasure with which she looked forward to seeing them—in a humble way, as if she might be one of a crowd in a Public Garden—gave her a quiet dignity and charm, the equal of which I have seldom met. Her brother, who was always marvelling at her, had, also, some of her dignity, but a wider, freer view of things, and the natural gaiety of a bird.

The next morning, as soon as I woke in the fresh clean bedroom they had made ready for me, I sprang from my bed and went to look out of the window. The dew was sparkling on the flowers, and their scent came up sweet and strong; a tubful of Mignonette, at which the bees were busy, was especially fragrant. As I looked, the tailor’s sister came into the garden, in a neat lavender-coloured print dress; she carried a missal in one hand, and a rosary swung in the other. She stood opposite to her tombstone for a minute, her lips moving softly, and then, after turning her pleasant face towards the wealth of flowers about her, she bowed deeply, as if saluting the morning. A little time later I heard the gate of the front garden swing and shut, and I knew she had gone to hear Mass.

The garden was left alone, busy in its quiet way; growing, dying, perpetuating its kind. The bees were industriously singing as they worked; lordly butterflies danced rigadoons and ravanes over the flowers; a thrush, after a long hearty tug at a fat worm, swallowed it, and then, perching on the tombstone, poured out its joy in full clear notes. And Death was cheated of his sting.

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VIII

THE COTTAGE GARDEN

For the same reason that your town man keeps a pot of Geraniums on his window-sill, and a caged bird in his house, your countryman plants bright-coloured flowers by his door, and regales his children with news of the first cuckoo. They pull as much of Heaven down as will accommodate itself to their plot of earth.

Any man standing in the centre of however small a space of his personal ownership—a piece of drugget in a garret, a patch of garden—makes it the hub of the universe round which the stars spin, on which his world revolves. Within a hand-stretch of him lie all he is, his intimate possessions, his scraps of comfort scratched out of the hard earth: books, pictures, photographs showing the faces of his small world of friends and his tiny travels—how little difference there is between a walk through Piccadilly and a journey across Asia: your great traveller has little more to say than the man who has found Heaven in a penny bunch of Violets, or heard the stars whisper over St. James’s Park—within his reach are the things he has paid the price of life for, and they are the cloak with which he covers his nakedness of soul against the all-seeing eye he calls his Destiny.

With all this, commenced perhaps in cowardice—for the earth’s brown crust is too like a grave, the garret floor too like a shell of wood—your man, town or country, grown to know love of little things, nurses a seedling as if it were his conscience, patches his drugget as if it were a verse he’d like to polish. Out of the vast dreary waste of faces who pass by unheeding, and the unseeing world that does not care whether he lives or dies, he makes his small hoard of treasures, as a child hides marbles, thinking them precious stones—as, indeed, they are to those who have eyes to see—and, be they books, or pictures, pots of plants, or curious conceits in china, they all answer for flowers, for the bright-coloured spots of comfort in a life of doubt.

No man thinks this out carefully, and sets about to plan his garden in this spirit: he feels a need, and meets it as he can. In this manner we are all cottage gardeners.

In days gone by—days of serfdom, oppression, battle, slavery, poverty—the countryman passed his day waiting for the next blow, living between pestilences, and praying in the dark for small sparks of comfort. The monks kept the land sweet by growing herbs in sheltered places; the countryman looked dully at Periwinkles and Roses and Columbines, thought them pretty, and passed by. Even the meanest flower, Shepherd’s-eye or Celandine, was too high for him to reach. (The poet who keeps Jove’s Thunder on his mantelpiece would understand that.) Roses were common enough even in the dark ages; the English hedgerow threw out its fingers of Wild Rose and scented the air—but where was the man with a nose for fragrance when a mailed hand was on his shoulder. Those Roses on the Field of Tewkesbury—think of them stained with blood and flowering over rotting corpses.

“I sometimes think that never blows so red
The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;
That every Hyacinth the Garden wears
Dropt in its lap from some once lovely Head.

And this delightful Herb whose tender Green
Fledges the River’s Lip on which we lean.
Ah, lean upon it lightly! for who knows
From what once lovely Lip it springs unseen.”

Little did the dull ploughman think of Roses in the hedge, or Violets in the bank, he’d little care except for a dish of Pulse. Yet, all the time, curious men were studying botany, dredging the earth for secrets, as the astronomer swept the sky. The Arviells, Gilbert and Hernicus, were, one in Europe, the other in Asia, collecting good plants and herbs to replenish the Jardins de Santé the monks kept—that in the thirteenth century, too, with war clouds everywhere, and steel-clad knights wooing maidens in castles by the secondhand means of luting troubadours.

The Arts of Rome were dead, buried, and cut up by the plough. (How many ploughmen, such as Chaucer knew, turned long brown furrows over Roman vineyards, and black crows, following, pecked at bright coins, brought by the plough to light.)

All at once, it must have seemed, the culture of flowers, was in the air: Carnations became the rage; then men spent heaven knows what on a Tulip bulb; built orangeries; sent Emissaries abroad to cull flowers in the East. The great men’s gardeners, great men themselves, kept flowers in the plot of ground about their cottages; gave out a seed or so here and there; talked garden gossip at the village ale-house. (Tradescant steals Apricots from Morocco into England. A Carew imports Oranges. The Cherry orchards at Sittingbourne are planted by one of Henry the Eighth’s gardeners. Peiresc brings all manner of flowers to bloom under our grey skies: great numbers of Jessamines, the clay-coloured Jessamine from China; the crimson American kind; the Violet-coloured Persian.)

The grass piece by the cottage door begins to find itself cut into beds; uncared for flowers, wild Gilly-flowers, Thyme, Violets and the like, give colour to the cottage garden that has only just become a garden. With that comes competition: one man outdoes another, begs plants and seeds of all his friends; buds a Rose on to a Briar standard, and boasts the scent of his new Clove Pinks, And so it grew that times were not so strenuous: Queen Victoria comes to the throne, and with prosperity come the pretty frillings of life, and cottage gardens ape their masters’ Rose walks, and collections of this and that. To-day Africa and Asia nod together in a sunny cottage border, and Lettuces from the Island of Cos show their green faces next to Sir Walter Raleigh’s great gift to the poor man, the Potato. Poplars from Lombardy grow beside the garden gate; the Currant bush from Zante drips its jewel-like fruit tassels under a Cherry tree given to us, indirectly, by Lucullus, lost by us in our slumbering Saxon times, and here again, with Henry the Eighth’s gardener, from Flanders. In some quite humble gardens the Cretan Quince and Persian Peach grow; so that history, poetry, and romance peer over Giles’s rustic hedge; and the wind blows scents of all the world through the small latticed window.

Ploughman Giles, sitting by his cottage door, smoking an American weed in his pipe while his wife shells the Peas of ancient Rome into a basin, does not realise that his little garden, gay with Indian Pinks and African Geraniums, and all its small crowd of joyous-coloured flowers, is an open book of the history of his native land spread at his feet. Here’s the conquest of America, and the discovery of the Cape, and all the gold of Greece for his bees to play with. Here’s his child making a chain of Chaucer’s Daisies; and there’s a Chinese mandarin nodding at him from the Chrysanthemums; and there’s a ghost in his cabbage patch of Sir Anthony Ashley of Wimbourne St. Giles in Dorsetshire.

Ploughman Giles is a fortunate man, and we, too, bless his enterprise and his love of striking colours and good perfumes when we lean over the gate of his cottage garden to give him good-day.

I showed him once a photograph of a picture by Holbein—the Merchant of the Steel Yard—and pointed out the vase of flowers on the table and the very same flowers growing side by side in his garden, Carnations, the old single kind, and single Gilly-flower. He looked at the picture with his glasses cocked at the proper angle on his nose—he’s an oldish man and short-sighted—and said in his husky voice, “Well, zur, I be surprised to zee un.” And he called out his wife to look—which didn’t please her much as she was cooking—but, when she saw the flowers, “In that there queer gentleman’s room, and as true as life, so they do be,” she became enthusiastic, wiped her hands many times on her apron, and looked from the picture to the actual flowers growing in her garden with a kind of awe and wonder. It was of far more interest to them to know that they were hand in glove with the history of their own country than it would have been to learn that chemists made a wonderful drug called digitalis out of the Foxgloves by the fence. I gave them the photograph and it hangs in a proud position next to a stuffed and bloated perch in a glass-case; and, what is more, they have an added sense of dignity from the dim, far away time the picture represents to them.

“He might a plucked they flowers in this very garden,” she says; and indeed, he might if he had happened that way. But the older flowers, though they don’t realise it, are the people themselves. Ploughman Giles and his wife, have been on the very spot far, far longer than the Pinks and Gilly-flowers, blooming into ripe age, rearing countless families back and back and back, until one can almost see a Giles sacrificing to Thor and Odin at the stone on the hill behind the cottage. The Norman Church throws its shadow over the graves of countless Gileses, and over the graves, pleasant-eyed English Daisies shine on the grass.

After all, when we see a cottage standing in its glowing garden, with a neat hedge cutting it off from its fellows; with children playing eternal games with dolls (Mr. Mould’s children following the ledger to its long home in the safe—shall I ever forget that?), we see the whole world, cares, joys, birth, death and marriage; the wealth of nations scattered carelessly in flowers, spoils from every continent, surrounded by a hedge, its own birds to sing, its hundred forms of life, feeding, breeding, dying round the cottage door; and, at night, its little patch of stars overhead.

It was a fanciful child, perhaps, but children are full of quaint ideas, who caught the moon in a bright tin spoon, and put it in a bottle, and drew the cork at night to let the moon out to sail in the sky. The child found the tin spoon, dropped by a passing tinware pedlar, in the road, waited till night came, with his head full of a fairy story he had heard, and when it was dark, except for the moon, he stepped into the garden, held the bowl of the spoon to catch the moon’s reflection, and when she showed her yellow face distorted in the bright spoon, he poured the reflection, very solemnly, into a bottle and corked it fast and tight. Then, with a whispered fairy spell, some nurse’s gibberish, he took the precious bottle and hid it in a cupboard along with other mysterious tokens. That’s a symbol of all our lives, bottling up moons and letting them out at nights. Isn’t a garden just such a dream-treat to some of us? There are golden Marigolds for the sun we live by, and silver Daisies for the stars, and blue Forget-me-nots for summer skies. Heaven at our feet, and angels singing from birds’ throats among the trees.

Sometimes we see one cottage garden, next to a Paradise of colour, flaunting Geraniums, and all the summer garland, and in it a poor tree or so, a few ill-kept weedy flowers, overgrown Stocks, a patch of drunken-looking Poppies, a grass-grown waste of choked Pinks: the whole place with a sullen air. What is the matter with the people living there? A decent word will beg a plant or two, seeds and cuttings can be had for the asking. Is it a poor or a proud spirit who refuses to join the other displays of colour? Knock at the door, and your answer comes quick-footed; it is the poor spirit answers you. Of course, there are men who can coax blood out of a stone, and find big strawberries in the bottom of the basket; and others who cannot grow anything, try as they may. It is common enough to hear this or that will not grow for so-and-so, or that man makes such a plant flourish where mine all die. There’s something between man and his flowers, some sympathy, that makes a Rose bloom its best for one, and Carnations wither under his touch, or Asters show their magic purples for one, and give a weak display for another. No one knows what speaks in the man to the Roses that bloom for him, or what distaste Carnations feel for all his ministrations, but the fact remains—any gardener will tell you that. So with your man of greenhouses, so with your humble cottage gardener, and, looking along a village street, the first glance will show you not who loves the flowers but whom flowers love.

This, of course, is not the reason of the weedy garden of the poor spirit, the reason for that is obvious: the poor spirit never rejoices, and to grow and care for flowers is a great way of rejoicing. There’s many a man sows poems in the spring who never wrote a line of verse: his flowers are his contribution to the world’s voice; united in expressions of joy, the writer, the painter, the singer, the flower-grower are all part of one great poem.

The average person who passes a cottage garden is more moved by the senses than the imagination; he or she drinks deep draughts of perfume, takes long comfort to the eyes from the fragrant and coloured rood of land. They do not cast this way and that for curious imaginings; it might add to their pleasure if they did so. There are men who find the whole of Heaven in a grain of mustard seed; and there are those who, in all the pomp and circumstance of a hedge of Roses, find but a passing pleasure to the eye.

We, who take our pleasure in the Garden of England, who feast our eyes on such rich schemes of colours she affords, have reason to be more than grateful to those who encourage the cottage gardener in his work. It is from the vicarage, rectory, or parsonage gardens that most encouragement springs; it is the country clergyman and his wife who, in a large measure, are responsible for the good cottage gardening we see nearly everywhere. These, and the numberless societies, combine to keep up the interest in gardening and bee-keeping, to which we owe one of our chiefest English pleasures. The good garden is the purple and fine linen of the poor man’s life; poets, philosophers, and kings have praised and sung the simple flowers that he grows. Wordsworth for instance, sings of a flower one finds in nearly every cottage garden:

LOVE-LIES-BLEEDING.

You call it “Love-lies-Bleeding”—so you may,
Though the red Flower, not prostrate, only droops
As we have seen it here from day to day,
From month to month, life passing not away:
A flower how rich in sadness! Even thus stoops,
(Sentient by Grecian sculpture’s marvellous power)
Thus leans, with hanging brow and body bent
Earthward in uncomplaining languishment,
The dying Gladiator. So, sad Flower!
(’Tis Fancy guides me, willing to be led,
Though by a slender thread,)
So drooped Adonis bathed in sanguine dew
Of his death-wound, when he from innocent air
The gentlest breath of resignation drew;
While Venus in a passion of despair
Rent, weeping over him, her golden hair
Spangled with drops of that celestial shower.
She suffered, as Immortals sometimes do;
But pangs more lasting far that Lover knew
Who first, weighed down by scorn, in some lone bower
Did press this semblance of unpitied smart
Into the service of his constant heart,
His own dejection, downcast Flower! could share
With thine, and gave the mournful name
Which thou wilt ever bear.

Then again, Mrs. Browning, who loved Nature and England, and spoke her love in such delicate fancies, writes of flowers in “Our Gardened England,” in a poem called,

A FLOWER IN A LETTER.

Red Roses, used to praises long,
Contented with the poet’s song,
The nightingale’s being over;
And Lilies white, prepared to touch
The whitest thought, nor soil it much,
Of dreamer turned to lover.

Deep Violets you liken to
The kindest eyes that look on you,
Without a thought disloyal!
And Cactuses a queen might don
If weary of her golden crown,
And still appear as royal!

Pansies for ladies all! I wis
That none who wear such brooches miss
A jewel in the mirror:
And Tulips, children love to stretch
Their fingers down, to feel in each
Its beauty’s secret nearer.

Love’s language may be talked with these!
To work out choicest sentences,
No blossoms can be neater—
And, such being used in Eastern bowers,
Young maids may wonder if the flowers
Or meanings be the sweeter.

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IX

A FEAST OF WILD STRAWBERRIES

There’s many a child has crowned her head with Buttercups—no bad substitute for gold—mirrored her face in a pool, and dreamed she was a Queen. There’s many a boy has lain for hours in the Wild Thyme on a cliff top and sent dream-fleets to Spain. The touch of imagination is all that is required to make the world seem real, and not until that wand is used is the world real. Only those moments when we hear the stars, peer in through Heaven’s gates, or rub shoulders with a poet’s vision, are real and substantial; the rest is only dreamland, vague, unsatisfactory. Huddled rows of dingy houses, smoke, grime, roar of traffic, scramble for the pence that make the difference, these things are not abiding thoughts—“Here there is no abiding city”—but those great moments when we grow as the flowers grow, sing as the birds sing, and feel at ease with the furthest stars, those are the moments we live in and remember. Our great garden may hold our thoughts if we wish. When we own England with our eyes, when all the fields and woods, the mountain streams, the pools and rills, rivers and ponds, are ours; when we are on our own ground with Ling and Broom, Heather, Heath and Furze for our carpet; when Harebells ring our matin’s bell and Speedwell close the day for us; when the Water-lily is our cup, broad leaves of Dock our platter, and King-cups our array—how vast!—of gold plate, then are we kings indeed.

I’ll give you joy of all your hot-house fruit, if you’ll leave me to my Wild Strawberries. I’ll wish you pleasure of Signor What’s-his-name, the violin player, if you’ll but listen to my choir of thrushes. What do you care to eat? Here’s nothing over substantial, I’ll admit; but there’s good wine in the brook, and food for a day in the fields and hedges. Nuts, Blackberries, Wortleberries, Wild Raspberries, Mushrooms, Crabs and Sloes, and Samphire for preserving; Elderberries to make into a cordial; and Wild Strawberries, that’s my chiefest dish at this season—food for princesses.