VIII
The ways of our musings are as devious, as unexpected, as those of a general conversation: there is no presiding spirit to keep us to a standing topic! This topic, with us, should be “Our Sentimental Garden.” And our tattle should, really, be connected, even if but distantly; with plants or scenery; with country life and friends ‹or foes›; with emotions or reminiscences plausibly evoked by the flower side of life. Happily it is pleasant enough to be brought back to the right theme; as I am just now by a thought of the head-line.
REDISCOVERED DELIGHTS
To one who has taken somewhat late in the day to a life in the country, most of its interests seem to be a rediscovery of early, simple, and intimate delights; to be connected with impressions long forgotten.
There is an episode in the biography of Jean-Jacques Rousseau which, if I remember aright, bears upon this point. I have not got the Confessions by me—it is, no doubt, in that cynical autobiography that the anecdote is recorded—nor, indeed, any other work of that exceedingly antipathetic writer. ‹This is the usual course: the books I require for reference when in the country happen oftener than not to be on my London bookshelves; and mutatis mutandis, vice versa!› The precise wording cannot in consequence be given here. But it is a small matter; the story is to this effect:
In his young and singularly impressionable days, Jean-Jacques was taking a country walk with one very near to his heart. At a certain spot of the garden, or the wood, in which he was tasting the subtle joys of solitude à deux, the lady suddenly exclaimed:
“See, yonder is a pervenche!”
“Indeed,” returned the youth, little intent then, upon the beauties of the outer world, and gazed absently upon the tender blue peeping out of the tender green. “So, that is a periwinkle?” And he resumed the thread of his interrupted discourse.
But, later—much later on, in twilight days of his life—some one happened again to say in his hearing: