Over Fen and Wold

by James John Hissey

A PLEASANT LAND

adapt themselves to such easy and gradual transition from spot to spot than to the harsher insistence of a straight line. Nature herself hardly ever indulges in the latter; man may make it, but she, in time, on every opportunity, mars it gloriously.

On either hand, as we drove on, stretched a level land of tilled fields and verdant meadows, the many colours of the crops and the varied greens of the pastures forming a gigantic mosaic. To the right of us rose some rounded fir-crowned hills, if hills be the right term, for only perhaps in a flat country would such modest elevations be dignified with the title of hills. These, to employ a familiar painter’s expression, “told” deeply blue—with all the beauty of ultramarine and all the depth of indigo.

It was an open breezy prospect, delightful to gaze upon, though there was nothing exciting or grand about it save the great distances and the wide over-arching sky; but it had the charm of wonderful colouring, and was full of lightness and brightness that was most inspiriting; full of cheery movement too, where the wild wind made rhythmic waves of the long grasses and unreaped fields of corn, and rustled the leaves and bent the topmost branches of the saplings before its gentle blasts, or where it rippled the gliding waters of the winding river and silvery streams, causing them to glance and sparkle in the flooding sunshine. All Nature seemed buoyant with an exuberant vitality upon that almost perfect afternoon, and the gladness of the hour entered into our very souls and made us exultant accordingly! It was a day to call fondly back to mind when pent up in London during the darksome and dreary November days, half asphyxiated with the smoke and sulphur laden atmosphere; then the very remembrance of such a time of golden sunshine and fresh and fragrant breezes is of untold refreshment.

Some people might have deemed that prospect, composed chiefly of flat fields, sluggish waters, and scattered trees, uninteresting and unbeautiful, with nothing to commend it, still less to rave about; but there is such a thing as the art of seeing, which art reveals, to those who cultivate it, beauty in the most unexpected places. The charm of form and colour is often a noteworthy factor that makes for beauty in a prospect that is devoid of the picturesque and the “sweetly pretty.” The best training in the art of seeing and discovering beauty that I know is to make a series of sketches from Nature, in colour—water-colour for preference, as being clearer of tint and easier applied. Take, for instance, a bit of an old stone wall, or, better still, a weather-stained boulder on some moor, outline it as well as you can—never mind the drawing at first, it is the colour you must look for—copy these tint for tint, hue for hue, as faithfully as you can. Before starting you may imagine that the rugged boulder is simply gray all over, lighter on the side where the sun shines, and darker in the shadows, and that is all; but as you try to represent its surface you will soon discover, if you only look hard and carefully enough, that what you at first deemed to be merely a mass of gray is composed of a myriad changeful colours:

A NEW SENSE

there are sure to be the silver, and the gold, and perchance the red, of clinging lichen (glorious colours these); then there are the greens of mosses, and countless weather-stains here and there, all to be given; then the rock itself, you will perceive as the eye gets more accustomed to its novel task, is composed of countless tints, changing with almost every change of surface, and where the boulder lies half in shadow you will perceive a sort of blue-gray bloom—look very hard for this; then the blackest shadows, you will note, are rich and deep, and look quite colourful beside any single tint you may mix in the hope of representing them. The more you study that boulder, the more colour you will see in it; and if all this unexpected colour exists in one simple rock, to leave the charms of varying form unconsidered, what must there not exist on the whole wide moor? Look for yourself and see. After your eye has had its first lesson in the art of seeing and searching out the beautiful, it will naturally, unconsciously almost, begin to look for it everywhere—and expect it! I fear I have perhaps written this in too didactical a manner, but I find it difficult to express myself clearly otherwise, and must plead this as my excuse for a failing I find it so hard to endure in others.

It was sketching from Nature that first taught me to look for and find beauties in my everyday surroundings that before I had never even imagined to exist. This art of seeing came to me like a new sense—it was a revelation, and it has ever since afforded me so much positive and lasting pleasure, that I can truly say it has materially increased the happiness of my life. Surely if “a man who can make two blades of grass grow where one grew before is a benefactor to his race,” to add, however slightly, to the happiness of life is to be a benefactor too, humble though the addition may be.

Now, after this over-long digression, let us once more resume the even tenor of our tour. I had nearly written the even tenor of our way, and placed the words between inverted commas, so familiar does the saying sound; but I find on reference that Gray really wrote “the noiseless tenor of their way,” which is not exactly the same thing, and it is as well to be correct in small details as in great. It is astonishing to me how often familiar quotations go wrong in the quoting; indeed, it is rather the exception to find them rightly given. I have only just to-day come across two instances of this whilst glancing over a magazine article. First I note that Milton’s “fresh woods and pastures new” is rendered, as it mostly is, “fresh fields and pastures new”; then Nathaniel Lee’s “when Greeks joined Greeks, then was the tug of war” is misquoted, as usual, “when Greek meets Greek,” etc., quite losing the point that when the ancient—not the modern!—Greeks were joined together they were a doughty foe. But now I am wandering again right off the road!

Driving on, we presently crossed the little river Ivel by a gray stone bridge, beneath which the stream ran clear and brightly blue. Across the bridge we found ourselves in the straggling village