A Reaping

by E. F. Benson

Then one evening came the memorable postcard:

‘A reddy.’

We flew to the ‘A.’ In the middle of the largest field was a small haycock like a penwiper. One not quite so large and round at the top, more like a pincushion, was visible in the next field.

It was clear after this that the Powers that Are willed that our fields should not be used for utilitarian purposes. Hence the inception of the rose-garden.

A brick wall (the one against which the insane cow had blooded her nose) bounded the garden. From there the ground declined steeply away into the middle of the larger field, which was cup-shaped, the ground rising on all sides of it. (It was at the centre of the cup, where the sugar is, that the penwiper had been raked together.) To-day a flight of steps made of broken paving-stones—an entrancing material—led down the side of the cup from the garden-gate, and up the opposite slope. Standing where the sugar is, therefore, you saw on every side of you rising ground, which had been terraced, and walks of broken paving-stone, communicating with the two staircases, lay concentrically round. And the Herculean labour which had already occupied us so many rapturous afternoons was to plant the whole cup with rose-trees, so that, standing in the centre, there was nothing visible except sky and roses. That was practically done; and to-day what occupied us was the consideration of the level remainder of the field, of which there was some half acre. It was rough, coarse grass, starred with dandelion, which gave the first hint. We wanted to get rid of the dandelion, and——

At last I got Helen to agree, and I mixed together in a wheelbarrow an infinity of bulbs, and other delectable roots. There were big onion-like daffodils, neat crocuses with an impatient little yellow horn sticking up, fritillary roots, bottle-shaped tulips, the corms of anemones, and the orris of the iris. Then, trowel in hand, each with a bag of bulbs taken haphazard out of the wheelbarrow and with a bag of sand to make a delectable sprouting-place for the roots, we started. Every dandelion encountered was to be dug up with honesty and thoroughness, and where the dandelion had been there was to be planted a bulb taken at random out of the bag. Helen said it would take ten years. Personally, when I looked, I thought longer, but I did not say so, for I practice reticence on discouraging occasions.

I wonder how many people know the extraordinary delight of doing a thing for oneself, starting from the beginning. I do not say that it gives me the smallest pleasure to black my boots or brush my clothes, since somebody has already made those boots and woven the cloth. But there is nothing more entrancing than to deal first-hand with Nature, to make holes in the earth, and put in them roots, the farthest back that we can go with regard to vegetable life. Rightly or wrongly, it seems to me a pleasure as clean and as elemental as the joy of creation itself. Whether we write a book, or paint a picture, or carve a statue, we, though we do not really create, but only arrange what is in existence already, are going back as far as we can, taking just the root-thoughts and translating them to song or shape. And though we do not really create at all, but only use and arrange, as I have said, the already existing facts of the world, passing them, it may be, through the crucible of the mind, we get quite as near to Nature, if not nearer, when we go a-bulb-planting. The bulbs are our thoughts, our pigments, what you will, and when in spring-time we shall see them making a meadow of Fra Angelico, it will be because we have actually planted these things ourselves that the joy of creation will be ours. Not to do that would be as if an artist laid no brush on the canvas himself, but merely dictated to a dependent where such a colour should be spread. But given that he had a slave so intelligent and so obedient that he could follow to a hair’s-breadth the directions given him, can you imagine the artist feeling the possessive joy of creation in the result, even though it realized the conception to the uttermost? Not I; nor, in the garden, do I care, like that, to see what others have done. It is not sufficient to direct; one has to do it oneself.

I love, too, and cannot conceive not loving, getting hot and dirty over the wrestling with the clean, black earth. A great deal of nonsense is talked about the dignity of labour, but it is chiefly talked by those whose labour lies indoors, who, excellent craftsmen as they may be, go spudding about in the intangible realms of the mind. I doubt, indeed, whether any market-gardener has ever spoken of the dignity of labour. We leave that to those who only know it by repute. But I long to put down the manner of the transaction. I do not in the least think it dignified, but it is such fun.

The green had mostly faded from the grass, leaving the meadow, as is always the case in October, far more grey than green. Certain plants, however, were still of varnished brightness, and the dandelion leaf was one. There was no need to pick and choose, and without moving a step, I dug the trowel down into the earth, loosened it all round the vegetable enemy, and lifted it. An ominous muffled snap came from inches down in the earth, which I tried to pretend I had not heard. But one could not cheat the eye also. There, at the bottom of my excavation, was a milky root, showing a danger-signal of white against the brown loam. I had to go deeper yet: the whole of the tap-root must be exhumed. Another dig, another snap, a raw-looking worm recoiled from the trowel, only just in time, and eventually up came the remotest fibre. How good the earth smelt! How reeking with the life of the world! Cold, clammy, rich earth, ever drawn upon by the needs of the Bank of Life, ever renewed by that which life paid back to it. A thousand years had gone to the formation of my trowelful, and a few inches below was the chalk, where a million lives a million years ago had spent themselves on the square inch of it. Slowly, by work of the myriad sea-beasts, this shoulder of chalk was heaved from the sea, the myriad lives became a myriad myriad, and here I had the little lump of chalk borne up on the end of the trowel which told of the labourers of the unnumbered years. Then, in a spoonful of sand, I put the sign, the evidence of another decade of millions on the top of them, and stuck thereon an onion-like daffodil root that was born last year. In a fortnight’s time that child of to-day will have reached downwards, feeling with delicate, pleased touch the sand of a thousand years ago, will delve through the time of the pyramids of Egypt, will draw moisture from the chalk that was old when our computation of time was not yet born, and will blossom next April, feeding its sap on the primeval years. And for what? To make Helen and Legs and me say, ‘Oh, what a beautiful Horsfeldii!’ Then we shall look at the fritillary that prospers a yard away.

The eternal romance of it all! To the right-minded there is nothing that is not a fairy-story. Like children, we crowd round the knees of the wonderful teller of it, and say, ‘Is it true? Is it all true?’ And He can’t tell lies. Sometimes, when we have a sort of moral toothache, we sit apart, and sniff. We say that scientifically we have proved there is no God. So said the fool in his heart. But nowadays the fools write it down in their damned books, and correct the proofs of it, and choose the bindings of it, and read, with gusto, the thoughtful reviews of it. And, God forgive them, they think they are very clever people, if I may be excused for mentioning them at all.