The Charm of Gardens

by Dion Clayton Calthrop

It is a beautiful custom that we put flowers on the graves of our dead, and is more fraught with meaning than many know, for it is as a symbol resurrection that they are so placed, inasmuch as the flower that seems to perish perishes only for a while but comes up again as beautiful, and though it die into the soil it reappears all fresh and lovely with no sign of the soil to mar its beauty. But it is more beautiful to plant the graves of those we love with flowers, as then we symbolise that they are alive in our hearts and for ever flowering in our thoughts. And the shadow of the church over them is but the shadow of the wing of sleep. All our lives, said a French King, we are learning how to die; and when the time comes we cannot help but think of that Garden of Sleep where we must be placed along with other sleepers, there to wait.

In England it has long been a habit to plant the more melancholy trees and shrubs in churchyards, as Yew trees, Myrtle, Bay, and the evergreen Oak. In this way a sense of gloom was intended, much at variance with the Christian doctrine that proclaims a victory over death. But instead of this effect of sombreness the presence of these evergreens gives an extraordinary air of quiet peace, of something perpetually alive though at rest. Often and often I have taken my bread and cheese into a country churchyard, and have sat down on the grass and leaned my back against some venerable monument, and there lunched. I take it that this is no disrespect to the dead, that the living should join company with them even to the extent of spreading crumbs of bread over their resting places. I take it that the smoke of a pipe is no sacriligeous sight in the neighbourhood of tombs; for it is but a friendly spirit prompts it, and no violation of the repose of these dead people. No; no more than does the distant roar of the ship’s guns at practice disturb these quiet souls.

In more than one churchyard there are the stocks remaining where malefactors were placed, and so seated were they that all the good folks passing in and out of church were forced to pass, almost to touch the feet of the wrongdoers as they trod the path to the porch. One place I know in particular where the stocks remain, and a goodly Yew tree having grown thick and strong behind the seat forms a fine back to lean against. From here I have surveyed the landscape over the tops of grey old tombs, now all aslant over the heads of the sleepers. Here the squire of 1640 rests facing the Cornfields once he cut and sowed and stacked. There a lady, Christabel by name, faces the flagged walk to the stone porch. There is grass over them now, and the merriest Daisies grow, and Moss covers the laughing cherubims, and Lichen has crept into the words that set forth their marvellous number of virtues. Spring comes here just as it comes to other gardens, and the trees bud just as daintily, and the young grass is every bit as green, and the first Crocus lights his lamp, and the Dandelion flares as bravely with his crown of gold.

A CHURCHYARD IN THE COTSWOLDS.

There are these quaint quiet churchyards over the length and breadth of England, where the dead lie so comfortably under the fresh English grass. Some are full of flowers planted by loving hands; Roses grow beside the church and shower their petals over the grey stones of the tombs, and Spring flowers have been set in the grass to nod beside the headstones sleepily. Others are bare and bleak, standing exposed to wind and weather on a hillside, with stone walls about them, and a church buffeted by every storm; yet these are sometimes most peaceful gardens, and Ling and Gorse scent the air, and twisted Fir trees, and gnarled old Pines, all leaning over, wind-bent, stand guard over the sleepers; bees busy in the heather, lizards green as emeralds, and the bright butterflies give the feeling of incessant life; they give that glorious feeling that the great pulse still beats; that Nature all alive is yet at one with the dead.

The gardener of these our dead, what a queer man is he! What a peculiar profession he follows! To bury is but to plant the dead that they may flower into that new life. And he is usually a humorous character, a man of well-chosen words who surveys his garden of headstones and has a word for each. He is no respecter of persons, since in the tomb all are equal, and to see him at work preparing a fresh place for burial is to think that the gravedigger’s work is no melancholy task. In the heat of summer, half buried in the grave himself, he sings some old catch as he shovels up the earth. “Poor little lamb,” he may say of a dead child; “well, thee’ll bide here against our Lord wants ’e.”

I have seen such a man, his clothes brown with grave earth, a Daisy between his lips (something to mumble, as he does not smoke on duty), and watched his face as the lytchet gate clicks. His daughter, a flower herself, is bringing his dinner, which he eats cheerfully leaning against one side of the grave for support. This, with a thrush singing somewhere, and the wheeze of the church clock, and the frivolous screams of swifts make death a comfortable picture.

Here we have Nature triumphant, the Earth with her children asleep in her lap. But a monstrosity has crept into our graveyards—God’s Gardens—and in place of flowers with their joy, their symbolical message of resurrection, one sees ghastly things of bead work and of wax, enclosed in hideous glass cases with a mourning card in the centre of them. This is not seemly nor decent in a place where the Earth reclaims her children, where nothing ugly should be. It is within the reach of everyone to buy fresh flowers and to renew those flowers from time to time, and they should be left, if they are placed there, to die. Away then with glass jam-jars filled with water, with bead wreaths, and all ill-taste and hideous distortion of grief, and let us have our offerings made as if to the living, for our dead live in our hearts, nor torture them with horrid and distressing objects on their graves. I would have every churchyard a garden kept by the pence of those who have laid their dead there to rest; and I would have flowers and shrubs planted and paths made, and seats placed, so that all should be kept fair and bright.

In Switzerland, where I was once, I saw the most delightful graveyard I have ever seen. The church stood on a bluff overlooking a river, a swift running noisy river that sang songs of the mountains and of the big fields and of the bustling towns, a dashing river alive with music, loving the sound of its own voice. Above was this church and its yard, and a little below, the village. The church was low-built and old, with a wooden tower on which a cock stood guard; and it was whitewashed, and toned by sun and rain, and a clock in the tower marked the passage of time, solemnly, “tick-tock; tick-tock.” Along the south wall outside the church was a bench, and a Wisteria over the bench, and a little jutting roof over the Wisteria. This bench, time-worn as all else was time-worn (as the wall was polished by several generations of backs), faced the graveyard. If you sat on this bench you might take a glance at a man’s life there in one long look, for there was a mill near by, and an Inn, and a shoemaker’s, and a forge—the blacksmith was the undertaker, too, any one could see from the fact that he was making a coffin. Besides these you could see mountains covered with snow and wreathed in clouds; great stretches of country, a wood, and the river. What more can there be, saving only a sight of the sea?