[V.]
The Herbaceous Beds—Pulmonaria—Wallflowers—Polyanthus—Starch Hyacinths—Sweet Brier—Primula Japonica—Early Annuals and Bulbs—The Old Yellow China Rose.
April 4.—Is any moment of the year more delightful than the present? What there is wanting in glow of colour is more than made up for in fulness of interest. Each day some well-known, long-remembered plant bursts into blossom on the herbaceous borders, and brings with it pleasant associations of days that are no more, or of books that cannot die. It is, I think, Alphonse Karr who says we should watch closely and rejoice greatly over the slow procession of the flowers, as one by one they appear, bloom, and fade; if we are past middle life, it is a sight which, at best, we can only see some twenty or thirty times again.
The common double Daffodils are already past, but we have still the variety which, from its blended hues of dark orange and pale citron, the children call—as they call the wild Linaria—"the butter-and-egg flower." Here is the Saxifraga crassifolia, with its huge broad leaves and its thick spikes of pink bell-blossom. It is almost too coarse growing, however, for the border, and does better on a rude rockery, or rather "loggery," which I have elsewhere.
Here is the Pulmonaria or Lungwort, with its varied bloom of red and blue, and with the white markings on its leaves, which were supposed to look like lungs, and from which it takes its name. This Pulmonaria is one of the large class of plants, which, it was believed, had a healing power, and indicated that healing power by the form of leaf, or root, or blossom. These herbs of grace—and it is doubtful whether any plant would be entirely excepted—bore about with them, plain for all to see, outward and visible signs of their secret and subtle virtue. Thus the Liverwort (Hepatica) had the shape of a liver in its leaves, the Eyebright (Euphrasia) looked up to you with an eye like your own—and each had potency of healing for that part of the human body, of which the image was expressed in its own frail form.
Farther on are close green tufts of the Corydalis, with its delicate lilac flowers. Then come bushes of Wallflower of the richest red-brown colour—a colour like nothing else, and indeed without a name, that would convey the depth and beauty of the dark tawny hue. What a contrast to the little wild yellow flower, which draws its scanty life from the wall of some grey old castle like that of Conway! Few scents are more delicious than that of Wallflowers. Bacon says of them that they "are very delightful, to be set under a parlour or lower chamber window." It is an old controversy whether the Wallflower and the Gillyflower are the same; but it seems tolerably clear that the latter name was rather loosely used, and meant sometimes the Wallflower, but sometimes also the Stock or the Clove Carnation. The Polyanthus on the borders has done better than those on the separate bed; the pretty tortoise-shell blossoms (to use a good expression of Forbes Watson) are just now in full perfection, and I have also a perfectly white Hose-in-hose Polyanthus, which is really charming. There is a droll passage in one of Sterne's love-letters to his future wife, in which he says—and he means to be sentimental and pathetic—
"The kindest affections will have room to shoot and expand in our retirement.—Let the human tempest and hurricane rage at a distance, the desolation is beyond the horizon of peace. My L. [the lady's name was Lydia] has seen a Polyanthus blow in December! Some friendly wall has sheltered it from the biting wind.—No planetary influence shall reach us but that which presides over and cherishes the sweetest flowers."
There is still one other flower of which I must speak. It grows so abundantly, it flowers so luxuriantly with me;—it comes up like a weed on almost every border, and I have given it one entire bed to itself. It is the Starch or Grape Hyacinth, known also, I believe, as the Plum or Cluster Hyacinth. Its lower bells are of the darkest indigo, but towards the top it melts into the softest sky-blue tints, and when in masses it is beautiful. Ruskin says it is "as if a cluster of Grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled and compressed together into one small boss of celled and beaded blue."
Upon the wall by the vinery a Corchorus (Kerria) japonica is laden with wreaths of golden blossom. An Almond-tree near the front door is just shedding its pink petals. The double Gorse will be in flower in a week. But after all there is no flowering shrub, which we care for more just now than the still unflowering Sweet Brier. Towards the end of the walled garden I have laid out a miniature herb garden, with its separate little beds for Thyme and Marjoram, and Sage and Borage, and the rest, and inclosed it within a hedge of Sweet Brier. This Sweet Brier is now in leaf, and, after rain especially, it fills all that corner of the garden with whiffs and snatches of sweetest perfume. The Sweet Brier is the true Eglantine of the poets, for though Milton seems to confound "twisted Eglantine" with the Honeysuckle, Shakspeare has it right, and Titania's bower is, as we all know,
"Quite over-canopied with luscious Woodbine,
With sweet Musk Roses, and with Eglantine."