We may paint as much as we like “from imagination” or “inner consciousness,” but if Nature were not all the time posing at our elbow, and if we did not from time to time cast covert glances at her as our model, our picture would never be “inspired”; it would either harp tediously upon ancient themes and methods, or else “advance” into sheer chaotic incoherence.
And so it is that we have now come, I think, to a time in the history and use of Alpine rockworks when we must turn again to Nature for fresh inspiration, for improved ideals. The time is passing when Alpine conditions were held to be sufficiently represented by the rock-fortresses of the Alps,
“And all the garrisons were flowers.”
Of course, these garrisons are, and must always remain, the most prominent and unique of vegetation’s Alpine marvels, but they cannot properly be thought to speak for all; they are, as it were, the militant éclaireurs set upon the craggy heights and watching over the peaceful hosts of their fellows upon the fields. As is the way in all our activities, we hug a truth a long time before becoming aware that it is not the whole truth. Perception has small beginnings, advance is slow, and exaggeration, meantime, is the very breath of progress. We ill-use a truth by over-kindness; our ecstasy forces it to lie. We dwell extravagantly upon it until it becomes partially false; then we move on. And this, I find, is what has happened, and is happening, in the case of Alpine rockworks. We have for long dwelt alone with them as with the last word upon the housing of Alpine plants; we have been so absorbed in them as the whole truth, that we have seen no need, even no possibility, for further helpful inquiry of Nature. But the time has now arrived when our truth is revealing itself as only a half-truth, and, turning to glance again at our model for a fresh advance in inspiration, we notice in her a feature which had previously escaped us—the fields.
“Many people enter God’s Temple through the doorway of Beauty”; and upon this count, also, the fields of the Alps are of obvious import. I venture to think that an Alpine field, with all its concomitant “accident” and consequent variety, will have more to say to a larger number of men and women than will a rockwork alone; I venture to think that a person who would not stop longer than to patronise a rockwork, would stand arrested and absorbed before the grass-lands and their varied features. To the mass of mortals who are not bespoken specialists in higher Alpines, the meadows have no superiors in breadth, directness, and simplicity of appeal. They are places where the “man-in-the-street” is at once at home. They require no special enthusiasm to make them acceptable. Their beauty is as apparent to the “vulgar” as it is to the elect; their charm is interesting to all.
And this interest means more than mere pleasure, more than a superficial tickling of the senses. It entails a mint of meaning for the soul. Yes, the soul. No gardener, no Nature-lover, need be shy of admitting he has a soul; for it is precisely this which makes Nature-lovers of us all, precisely this which plays so big a part in our admiration of the fields. “Breathes there a man with soul so dead” who will not linger lovingly over mountain meadows tossed or rolling like a multi-coloured sea, with sunlight playing amid the blues, mauves, reds, and yellows, breaking these into endless intermediary tints; and with butterflies seemingly in such light-hearted flight, skipping and flitting blithely, airily, for all the world like flowers come suddenly to sentient life? Breathes there a man who will not find in these meadows and their teeming gaiety “a vitalising passion, calling to life the shrouded thoughts and unsuspected forces of the heart”?
From Crocus to “Crocus”; from the first pale, dainty flush of spring to the last full flush of autumn; from the shy and hesitating youth of the year to the time when all at length “is rounded with a sleep,” these meadows are an intimate joy and refreshment. Nature herself sets so much store by them that when they become, as they must become, recognised components of our Alpine gardens, it shall be said she
“Now was almost won
To think her part was done,