IV.
JANUARY.
Of Field-Mice, and the Thorn of Joseph of Arimathea—Of “Poor Johnnys”—A Lilac Gem—and Greenhouse Flowers.
January 5, 1883.—A large body of the army of the small ones of the earth has attacked us, and it is no fault of theirs if we are not despoiled of the best of our spring delights. The field-mice have at length found out the Crocuses; we, on our side, have set traps in their way, and large numbers have fallen—quite flat, poor little things!—under the heavy bricks. We believe we should have slain many more, had not some clever creature made a practice of examining the traps during the night, devouring the cheese, and in some way withdrawing the bit of stick, so as to let the brick fall harmless. Suspicion points towards one person especially—the old white fox-terrier, who lives in the stables, and is master (in his own opinion) of all that department, and whom neither gates nor bars can prevent going anywhere he chooses to go. “Impossible!” says he, with Mirabeau; “don’t mention that stupid word!” Up to this time field-mice have not troubled us much. In the days when there was always a hawk or two hovering over the ploughed land, or keeping watch over the green meadows, and when we used to hear the owls in the summer nights, and saw the white owl who lived somewhere near by sail silently in the grey of evening across the lawn—in those days we knew little of the plague of field-mice. But now we have changed all that; cheap gun licences have put a gun into every one’s hand, the vermin is ruthlessly shot, and the balance of Nature is destroyed.
It is rather a fearful pleasure that we take just now to mark the unwonted earliness of green things of all kinds. One cannot help dreading that some great check will happen later on in the year; and yet it may be an omen for good that the birds’ full concert has only just begun, in these dark mornings, amongst the trees of the garden. The saying goes in Scotland, “If the birds pipe afore Christmas they’ll greet after;” and so far as I know, not a note was sung till December 30. The birds served our Hollies a good turn at Christmas. In November the Hollies were scarlet with berries, and one thought with a shudder of how they would have to suffer, when the time came for Christmas decorations; then occurred two short severe frosts, and, to my joy, the Holly trees were swept clear of every tempting spot of scarlet before Christmas, and thus were saved the customary reckless breaking and tearing of branches. Dear birds! Does any one ever think, I wonder, sitting in the summer shade near “some moist, bird-haunted English lawn,” how dull it would be without them—how much they enhance for us the grace and charm of the garden and the country? It is their gay light-heartedness that is so delightful, and that we should miss so much if they were not there. Who ever saw a grave bird?—at least I mean a grave little one—the bigger the sadder it is, with them. Their very labours of nest-building, and of feeding their young ones, are done like a merry bit of child’s play! The birds’ never-failing interest in life is like a sort of tonic to those who love them. Michelet felt this when he called them “des êtres innocents, dont le mouvement, les voix, et les jeux, sont comme le sourire de la Création.”
I do not remember having seen before in mid-winter a Hawthorn hedge bursting out into leaf! At the end of last month, however, there were strong young shoots and fully formed leaves on some of the Quicks in a hedge planted last spring in our lane. I have known nothing like this, except the Glastonbury Thorn. There is one of these strange Thorns, a large tree, growing just within the park gates of Marston Bigot, in Somersetshire. It used to bloom with great regularity in mild winters about this time. Tufts of flowers came all over the branches, smelling as sweet as Hawthorn in May. I have often cut a long spray all wreathed with pearly bloom, on New Year’s Eve, in former years. The flowers come with scarce a sign of leaf about them, and they are rather smaller than those of the common May. The emerald green of turf, thickly sprinkled with Daisies, seems also an unusual sight for January. The first green glow on the grass and the first Daisy we are surely used to hail as signs of approaching spring. On the lawn, too, a yellow Buttercup, careless of the heavy roller, has dared to hold up its head!
The Boccage and Part of the Fantaisie
1. Glorietta. 2 Large Elm and line of same
3 Border of Blue Gentian. 4. Pigeon House
Grass Paths & & &.... (click image to enlarge)
Jan. 8.—The weather has been for many weeks so dark and gloomy, that the rare sunshine which shone upon the land to-day was as welcome and nearly as unlooked for as May flowers in January. The house stood blocked out in sun and shadow. Magnolia Grandiflora, which covers the south-east gable, looked grand in this flood of radiance. Standing before it, the refrain of a wild canzonetta I once heard, chanted forth lazily in the little sun-steeped piazza of an old Italian town, came back to the mind’s ear—“Oh, splendid bella!” The eye, soon tired, however, of so much dazzling brilliance in the polished foliage, each leaf reflecting back the sun, follows the ascending lines of beauty up above the pointed roofs, where the soft golden rust of the topmost leaves’ inner lining meets the deep blue, cloudless sky. Next the Magnolia, just under the painting-room window, is a Flexuosa Honeysuckle which has not lost a leaf this winter. New shoots and twists of brightest green, set with young leaves two and two, are springing all over it. One tender shoot, indeed, has had the heart to curl twice round a branch, sending out a length of spray beyond.
Hard by the Flexuosa flourished once a fine Gum Cistus. To my sorrow, it perished in the frost of two winters back. The aroma of its gummy foliage, under the noontide sun, would penetrate deliciously through the open windows. We lost that winter all but one of our Gum Cistus, and their destruction was so universal that there was a difficulty in replacing them. I like the Gum Cistus best when growing upon the lawn. The snow of fallen petals on the grass seems right, and gives no sense of untidiness, there. The loss of the Cistus, however, made room for better growth to the old Maiden’s-blush Rose in the corner, by another window. She has hard work, anyhow, to hold her own against the flowery smothering of an Everlasting Pea, which persists in spreading beyond all bounds, notwithstanding the hints it yearly receives from knife and spade. Further on, still under the south front, a white Hepatica (Poor Johnny) is already shyly blooming. The root is sheltered by its own undecayed leaves; other plants of the same kind being quite bare. Hepaticas in England almost always look discontented, and this is no marvel to any who have seen them wild in their own place. I remember as clear as yesterday the joy of finding the blue Hepatica for the first time. It was in a narrow lovely valley at Mentone, on a mossy bank beside the little stony river. We were gathering Violets, which abound in that place; but on the edge of the bank, and over its steep side, intermingled with deep Moss and Ferns, there was another blue, which was not the blue of Violets. It was like the surprise and wonder of a new world thus unawares to come upon such a flower—the beloved of childhood—in such rich profusion—a flower we had never seen before that happy day, save in rare scanty patches, in some damp garden border! About the same time I saw also both the pink and white Hepaticas, from the Pine woods on the slopes of the Alpes Maritimes. In a corner near the Hepaticas is a little patch of Violets with Bella Donna Lilies. The Lilies are sending up strong, healthy leaves, and that is about all they will ever do to please me. Fine, good roots were put in six years ago in this choice south corner, where I believed they could not but do well. But no; it is in vain I watch and hope!—not one of those exquisite “harmonies in ink” I so long to enjoy do they vouchsafe to give me. Possibly they may object to the society of the Violets!
Primroses have been with us more or less since September last, and now they are more abundant than ever—all colours—red, brown, yellow, white, sulphur: the garden is quite full of Primroses. Roses, also, we have scarcely been without all winter. Within the walled garden there are real red Rosebuds, rather tightly closed up, but capable of opening any day. Many Rose-bushes have never lost their old leaves, and some are already putting forth new. On the top of the wall I perceived to-day a white spot—it was a Gloire de Dijon—looking very pale, but fully opened; and below it the Marcartney and an Apricot Tea Rose are in bud. A space of kitchen garden wall by the north iron gate is resplendent with Jasminum Nudiflorum, and close by, the bare branches of a Fig tree are already pointed with green, recalling in a dim way the Fig trees of the South, which in March glow like great branched candlesticks lighted up with flames of golden-green, in honour of the coming festa of spring. The Pyrus Japonica—a very old plant—has opened two coral cups. But the gem of the whole garden just now is a small, most delicately yet brilliantly tinted lilac Iris.[1] The contrast between it and the rich dark green of its reed-like leaves, amidst which the flower shines, is charming. It is only in the mildest of winters that it ventures to appear. Last year the date of its blooming first was February 10. There are several tufts of foliage, but as yet only this one perfect flower, and we find rarely more than half-a-dozen in the season. In “the land of flowers,” however, which I believe to be its own, the paths of many a Cypress and Ilex-shaded garden must be lined with lilac and green, at this very time. I often think how little use is made of that most poetical of colours, lilac—“lalock,” as our grandmothers used to pronounce it. It was Schiller’s favourite colour; but I hardly know of any one else particularly caring for it. Perhaps one reason may be, because it is so hard to mix the most lovely shades of lilac in painting, or in manufactured stuffs; and then it is so evanescent. Even Nature herself does not make use of lilac so freely as of other colours—yellow being, I almost think, her favourite. She has, however, hit the mark indeed in the colouring of my lilac gem; there is a sharpness in the flavour—so to speak—which makes it perfect. The dear little winter Aconite—each bud of pure clean yellow surrounded with its green frill of leaves—appears here and there among the damp dead leaves. Snowdrops are showing daily whiter and larger above the ground, and all sorts of green peaceful spears are piercing in their strength, up through the black mould everywhere.
[1] Iris Ensata.
We have got through some rather important work within the past three weeks. A new Beech hedge has been planted on the open side of a green walk or close, already hedged in on one side. I once read somewhere of how it is reckoned good for the health to walk between Beech hedges, the air being purified and freshened by passing through the leaves. An old border, full of bulbs and Damask Roses, has been dug and rearranged. The Roses, which are old plants, will be refreshed and improved by the moving, and we shall add some day one or two York and Lancaster Roses. In this border the Grape Hyacinths have increased so rapidly that it is literally full of them, and we are planting them about in different places, some under the Deodara (Morgan-le-faye) on the lawn, with Snowdrops and Daffodils. The Deodara is in the wrong place, and was spreading so much as to injure the effect of the Yew hedges. So, instead of cutting it down, it is trimmed up to eight feet or so from the grass; and for this act I have had to brave a perfect storm of adverse criticism! In a few months I hope the stem will be clothed with Virginia Creeper, which, when touched by Autumn’s fiery finger, will become a pillar of flame, while wreaths of white Clematis (Virgin’s Bower) are to light up the green in summer. Then we have been planting out four fine tree Pæonies on the turf by the entrance drive. In their season they will be as beautiful as great cabbage roses.
There have been two days of frost and bitter cold, and yet the impatient flowers are not discouraged. At the further end of the broad walk, down among the broken Fern and withered leaves, a sense of colour is felt in the border as one passes by. Omphalodes Verna (would that dear English names were possible!)[2] is wide awake, and little eyes of cœrulean blue are looking upwards. The Rock Roses are full of bud, and small variegated-leaved Periwinkles, on a low wall, already begin to tip their hanging sprays with stars of misty grey. But the strangest effort of all is a Foxglove spire of buds, rising well up from its leaf-crowned root on an ancient stump of Wistaria.
[2] Since writing this, I learn that the English name is French Forget-me-not, and that it is a flower once beloved of Queen Marie Antoinette.
The mention of all these flowers would make it seem, I fear, as if our garden were even now a sort of flowery Paradise. The truth is a sad contrast to every such idea; for though the beautiful things are all in truth here, it would be difficult to describe the heavy gloom and damp of the whole place. And so one turns more often than usual to the greenhouse for consolation. Small as ours is—only about fifteen paces long—it is large enough for as much pleasure as I desire, under glass. To me the open garden is daily bread, the greenhouse “the honey that crowns the repast.” There happens at this time to be a chord of colour there, worth noting—ivory whiteness of Roman Hyacinths, green of all exquisite gradations, pale yellow of Meg Merrilies Chrysanthemums; others of a warmer yellow, and pure white; fairest pink of Primulas, and a deep purple note, struck once or twice, of Pleroma. What a flower that is! how charming in its way of blooming sideways on its stalk, to let the sun shine through its violet translucence!
FEBRUARY.
With the Trees of the Garden.
