VIII.
MAY.
Of Cherry Blossoms—the Nightingale’s “Melodious Noise”—Of Broken Stones, etc., etc., etc.
May 6.—The month of May would be Heaven upon earth if only it came in August or September, when summer mostly begins! but such cold, hard weather as we have had spoils sadly our enjoyment of the blossom trees and all the pleasures of spring. There have been just one or two sweet days, when the white Cherry orchards shone softly against a sky of serenest blue; days when we did but revel in the joyous present, forgetting quite that ever it could be that “rough winds do shake the darling buds of May.” Alas! all too soon our dream is dispelled; dark clouds arise, and we see “Heaven’s gold complexion dimmed,” and the orchard grass strewn with pearly wreck. The Cherry tree’s magic season is at an end; it seemed to last scarcely longer than a day. With the first hot shafts of April’s sun it startles into bloom, shaken out in snow-wreaths all over the tree, a waste of most lavish loveliness. It is something gained, once in the twelvemonth’s round of commonplace, if only for a moment to stand beside a Cherry tree in blossom. The blue sky looks infinitely far off, seen through such a maze of flowery myriads. And now Apple blossoms are coming on in rosy swift succession. How beautiful they are! and is it not time that water-colour artists should cease to weary, by attempting so vainly to pourtray them? (This only by the way.) They have the merit of lasting just long enough for us to enjoy them well; yet beautiful as they are, I do not know if they can ever quite compare with the frail short-lived cherry. If the Espaliers in the kitchen garden alongside the middle walk would but flower together all at once, that walk in May would be better than any picture-gallery. But our gallery walls perversely decorate themselves only a little bit at a time. One bit, at a corner of the cross-walks, is now in full perfection. A faint delicious perfume steals out through the iron gate to the flower-garden, inviting as one passes by, to turn and peep within. There are the trained leafless branches covered thick with knots of flower. They open very deliberately, and there abide for a little happy while, self-conscious, round, and pink, and firm; then there comes a setting of delicate green around the flowers; and then the Apple tree in bloom is one of earth’s loveliest sights. Apple blossom must be added to my pharmacopœia of sweet smells. To inhale a cluster of Blenheim Orange gives back youth for just half a minute after. It is not merely that with the perfume the heart goes back to remembered times—it is a real, absolute elixir! Our young Siberian Crab trees are like great white bouquets; and behind the pigeon-house there is a wonder of Japanese Apple (Pyrus malus floribunda). It is like a fountain of flowers, tossing its pink flower-laden branches in every direction. Blue Periwinkles creep over the ground underneath it. In the autumn I shall hope to plant several more of these lovely trees somewhere on the lawn, where we may see and enjoy them from the windows. And now the Primrose—
“Lady of the springe,
The lovely flower that first doth show her face;
Whose worthy prayse the pretty byrds do syng,
Whose presence sweet the wynter’s colde doth chase,”
has ceased to glad us “with worldes of new delightes.” She is on the wane, “with her bells dim”—as old Ben Jonson said; but I should not call them bells. She dies upon a bed of vivid green amidst tall grasses and her own thick-coming leaves, as stars grow pale before the dawn. And we are faithless to her beauty in the presence of other, fresher loveliness; and we care not though the Primrose is dead.
The Tulips in the parterr—it is the older and prettier way to spell it without an “e” at the end—are now the chief ornament of the garden and the delight of my eyes. Timely rains strengthened the stalks to rise to their full height, and there are the beds now, a blaze of scarlet and yellow splendour. There are tall Tulips and short Tulips, rose and crimson, scarlet and orange Tulips, striped and dashed, and brown and white, and every shade of Tulip colour. A few grow between little box and golden Arbor Vitæ bushes, and all the beds are deeply fringed with Crocus leaves. I am aware that as a matter of the highest principle, Tulips are seldom mixed; the colours are usually arranged separately. Long experience has taught me, however, to have nothing to do with principles—in the garden. Little else than a feeling of entire sympathy with the diverse characters of your plants and flowers is needed for “art in the garden.” If sympathy be there, all the rest comes naturally enough. No brighter, gayer garden scene can be imagined than on a sunny morning, turning the corner of a clipped Yew—buttressed out from the house—to come upon the parterr, decked in all its gay brilliancy of Tulips. The sculptured stone pillar rises from a little mound of Stonecrop in the centre, often with a pigeon or a thrush pluming itself on the top. Suddenly the little flock of fantail pigeons with whistling wings descend among the many-coloured brilliants, and there, in the emerald, dewy interspaces, they strut and play in their pride and purity of whiteness. My favourite Parrot Tulips do not as yet make much way; the lack of sunshine keeps their buds green. It was in Venice, years ago, that first I fell in love with Tulips such as these. On the marble altars of one of the great Jesuit churches were vases filled with Parrot Tulips, all cut-edged and gold and scarlet-splashed. The cloister garden behind the church was full of them. It is a strange disorderly beauty, and sometimes draggles and hangs its untidy head like a Bell-flower, and sometimes flaunts it up full in the sun’s face. There are Forget-me-nots in many parts of the garden; their long smoke-like lines of turquoise are specially pleasing. Two square beds in the entrance court, set between the black Yews, are also a success—Forget-me-not, flecked with pink Saponaria—they give the idea of blue mist touched by the sunset. In the Fantaisie, bushes of orange-coloured Berberis Darwinii are in great perfection of bloom. There is something peculiarly delightful in the way they have of spreading the earth with orange, while yet the laden boughs above own no apparent loss. The orange colour contrasts well also with a chance lot of purple Honesty, which has grouped itself round a smooth-stemmed young Mulberry at the end of the turf walk. The walk itself is very bright, with an irregular bordering of white and pink Phlox Nelsoni—a Cheiranthus, or a deep blue Gentian, here and there. The little low-growing Phlox comes in exquisite patches of colour all over the garden. When in flower, the plant itself—which is straggling and rather ugly—is completely hid by a flat mass of close-set bloom. In these “gardens on a level” I am always wishing for rockeries and little low terraces, which should be all draped with Convolvulus Mauristiana, Phlox Nelsoni, Aubretia, and wild Ivy and Alyssum, or something yellow. I should not much care for many rare Alpine plants, I think; though a surprise of the kind here and there would be charming. Colour I must have, and plenty of it, to rejoice the eye and make glad the heart.
A tract of wild, savage scenery, six square yards in extent, is in contemplation at the afforested end of the Fantaisie. Already one or two large pieces of a sort of conglomerate have been conveyed here, and are frowning in an open space amongst the wild Bluebells. There is a background of dark Arbor Vitæ, and beyond, the pleasant fields are seen, with the cows and Elms and an Oak tree. There exists a certain necessity for feature in this flattest of all places! The Yew hedges and pyramids have done much to give character to the flower garden, and now there must be rocks for variety.
A heap of fragments of an old headless statue lies near the rocky waste; part of a sitting figure—a hand and a foot—and lumps of heavy drapery, overlaid in beautiful green velvet of moss. Very forlorn the broken stones look, and I cannot decide to make them into rockwork. None now know whom the statue in its day was meant to represent—probably a garden goddess, Flora or Pomona—but its history is rather quaint, if not touching. It was beloved by a lady who lived here once, and hated by her sister, and according as each for the time reigned in the other’s absence, it was set up in a niche of the garden wall, or cast down with ignominy. At last the sister who loved the statue died, and then it was broken to pieces, and flung down a well. It was fished up again long after, before our time. Tradition tells of another statue, an image of Old Time, that stood or sat at one end of the pond in “the park,” but of this there remains no trace.
I am happy in the possession of two long-desired flowers, which seem now to be settling down in their new abode. One is the pale-blue Star Anemone Apennina, common in the Ilex woods of Frascati; the other, the lovely purplish-brown Fritillary (Meleagris), found wild in river meadows near us. Fritillary is no easy word for poetry, yet it is named by at least one poet. Matthew Arnold, in his “Thyrsis,” says—
“I know what white, what purple fritillaries
The grassy harvest of the river-fields,
Above by Ensham, down by Sandford, yields.”
I think no other flower of any kind can compare with it in finish and exquisite grace of form. The purplish, dove-like colour I believe to be the same described in old French as “colombette.”
May 15.—To-day, amid the brilliant green of new leaves and the singing and twittering of a thousand birds in the sun’s warm glow, one keeps saying to oneself—
“Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year’s pleasant king,”
or some such old snatch of songs that seem to wander upon the soft sweet air. Ah, yes, “the year’s pleasant king”! and yet our spring is a beautiful spirit, and she has been hovering about us; but now, to-day, she has set her feet upon the earth, and there is a great triumph of verdure on the trees and on the grass; and Apple trees meet her in fulness of bloom, and May-buds are swelling on the Thorns to make up for lost time; and all the edges of meadow-grass are jewelled with little gems of purple, and blue, and red, and the broad fields shine in silver and gold.
The short reign of Narcissus Poeticus has begun; our large old clumps down one side of the Broad Walk are not so fine as usual; frosts and cold heavy rains laid the leaves of some of them, and sometimes turned them yellow; but within the walled garden the clumps are as beautiful as ever—throngs of long-stalked silvery flowers, stiff and firm, with the stiffness and strength of perfect health. Narcissus Poeticus is lovely; and we need not trouble to know if it be the very flower named by Theocritus, Virgil, and Ovid. The east border, though not much varied as yet, is gay and full of promise. There are double pale yellow Ranunculus (the Swiss meadow kind), and bunches of Heartsease, violet and brown Auriculas, sheets of double white Anemones, and the Riviera double scarlet—which, however, never with us comes scarlet, but only dull red; Tulips, Stonecrops, Kingspear, Phlox Nelsoni, double King’s-cups, and Bachelors’ Buttons, a patch of Gentians at the south angle of the wall, with yellow Corydalis Lutea peering out of chinks in the old bricks above. Crowds of Lilies are springing up in the background, with purple Iris and Pæonies in bud. Solomon’s Seal (Lady’s Signet) in many nooks and corners unfolds its curious club-shaped leaf-buds, and all its bells will soon be hung. Pansies, under the south wall, make a bright display; there are three large oblong beds—lilac, yellow, and deep royal purple; also a round bed of semi-double Anemones, whose scarlet colour, about mid-day, is actually dazzling; and one of Ranunculus not yet opened. Behind these beds, against the wall, are white Irises, almost ready to bloom, and several clusters of the garden Star of Bethlehem—valuable in its way, but not nearly so pretty as the wild sort, and most precise in its daily system of early closing and late opening.
Between the tennis-court and the little lawn belonging to the Firs and Cedar, the walk winds along beside a close of chosen trees—Plane, Silver Birch, pink Thorns, variegated Maple, etc., all in their pleasant time of youth, having been planted only a little over eleven years. Portugal Laurel and Box mingle with them in deeper shades. Next the walk are Sweet Briar and well-berried Aucubas; one Aucuba is still covered with scarlet fruit and golden leaves. There is yellow Spanish Broom, and tall trees of white Broom wave long white plumes, leaning over the path. White Broom, they say, is “the Juniper tree” that Elijah sat down under. If so, the shade must have been but scanty! Soon the path turns past a Yew-tree, and becomes the Primrose Walk, along under the line of Elms.
On the left are the Allée Verte, and the dovecote, and small orchard, bounded by Beech and Yew, and crossed by flower-bordered smooth-shaven grassy ways, all leading to the Broad Walk; on the right a little hidden path passes on to the oft-named Fantaisie. Just before coming to the Yew tree, on warm days ever since the beginning of the month, one is met and surrounded by a wonderful cloud of fragrance! One looks round in vain for some bed of flowers whence should proceed so powerful a scent. It is like the finest Jasmine and Citron, and I know not what of sweetest unknown incense. It is the greeting sent out from a dense mass of Spurge Laurel (Daphne pontifia), with unobtrusive green flowers in full bloom. It grows over a bit of the Iris bank, and its great luxuriance proves how it loves a southern aspect.
In our garden the birds have divided the kingdom amongst them, and in this half is the portion that fell to the reed sparrow. He keeps the Silver Birch alive with his busy note. Landmarks, known only to themselves, divide the territory of the reed sparrow from the realm of the nightingale. The fiery-hearted nightingale! He sings all day, and his song makes the night glorious. The north-east region of the garden he keeps for himself alone. There, on still evenings, long after sunset, is heard the faint barking of distant watch-dogs, or the sound of horses’ hoofs on the road. There is his favourite tree—the grand old Thorn—where, as he sings, he may press a thousand thorns into his breast! There, across the hedge, he sees the meadow with a shimmering yellow of Cowslips all over it—if Cowslips be his desire, as is said. There, not too far off, is the straight long railroad—and he loves the thunder of the train, and the red, fire-spitting engine; but late in the night, when there is dark and death-like silence among the trees, then the nightingale claims possession of the whole, and all the garden is his own. I know not if the nightingale’s song be melancholy or joyous. His voice has all the pathos of the finest things, and in the broken notes we feel that not all nor half his soul is uttered, and in each splendid fragment there is the sense of endless possibilities; this, I think, is the secret of the nightingale’s incomparable charm.
I have omitted to mention amongst our Pansies, a very choice kind. It is a curious burnt-brown colour, like the once fashionable “Paris brûlé.” We name it Highcliff, after the place from whence we had it first. Two large pink Oleanders in the greenhouse will soon be blossoming all over. We tried them last year in the open air, but they did not do, and had to return to their glass. A lovely face gazes at me all the time I write, and will not suffer itself to be neglected! It is a choice white Cactus of great size, with warm lemon colouring in the outer leaves. The stamens are so delicately set, they tremble at the slightest touch, and the starry pointal is itself a flower!
JUNE.
A Mosaic of Nectared Sweets.
