All this while, meantime, I have a suspicion that my pet Savoy Lily is not, in existing classification, an Anthericum, nor a Hemerocallis, but a Lilium. It is, in fact, simply a Turk's cap which doesn't curl up. But on trying 'Lilium' in Loudon, I find no mention whatever of any wild branched white lily.
I then try the next word in my specimen page of Curtis; but there is no 'Phalangium' at all in Loudon's index. And now I have neither time nor mind for more search, but will give, in due place, such account as I can
of my own dwarf branched lily, which I shall call St. Bruno's, as well as this Liliastrum—no offence to the saint, I hope. For it grows very gloriously on the limestones of Savoy, presumably, therefore, at the Grande Chartreuse; though I did not notice it there, and made a very unmonkish use of it when I gathered it last:—There was a pretty young English lady at the table-d'hôte, in the Hotel du Mont Blanc at St. Martin's,[[3]] and I wanted to get speech of her, and didn't know how. So all I could think of was to go half-way up the Aiguille de Varens, to gather St. Bruno's lilies; and I made a great cluster of them, and put wild roses all around them as I came down. I never saw anything so lovely; and I thought to present this to her before dinner,—but when I got down, she had gone away to Chamouni. My Fors always treated me like that, in affairs of the heart.
I had begun my studies of Alpine botany just eighteen years before, in 1842, by making a careful drawing of wood-sorrel at Chamouni; and bitterly sorry I am, now, that the work was interrupted. For I drew, then, very delicately; and should have made a pretty book if I could have got peace. Even yet, I can manage my point a little, and would far rather be making outlines of flowers, than writing; and I meant to have drawn every English and Scottish wild flower, like this cluster of bog heather opposite,[[4]]—back, and profile, and front. But 'Blackwood's
Magazine,' with its insults to Turner, dragged me into controversy; and I have not had, properly speaking, a day's peace since; so that in 1868 my botanical studies were advanced only as far as the reader will see in next chapter; and now, in 1874, must end altogether, I suppose, heavier thoughts and work coming fast on me. So that, finding among my notebooks, two or three, full of broken materials for the proposed work on flowers; and, thinking they may be useful even as fragments, I am going to publish them in their present state,—only let the reader note that while my other books endeavour, and claim, so far as they reach, to give trustworthy knowledge of their subjects, this one only shows how such knowledge may be obtained; and it is little more than a history of efforts and plans,—but of both, I believe, made in right methods.
One part of the book, however, will, I think, be found of permanent value. Mr. Burgess has engraved on wood, in reduced size, with consummate skill, some of the excellent old drawings in the Flora Danica, and has interpreted, and facsimile'd, some of his own and my drawings from nature, with a vigour and precision unsurpassed in woodcut illustration, which render these outlines the best exercises in black and white I have yet been able to
prepare for my drawing pupils. The larger engravings by Mr. Allen may also be used with advantage as copies for drawings with pen or sepia.
Rome, 10th May (my father's birthday).
I found the loveliest blue asphodel I ever saw in my life, yesterday, in the fields beyond Monte Mario,—a spire two feet high, of more than two hundred stars, the stalks of them all deep blue, as well as the flowers. Heaven send all honest people the gathering of the like, in Elysian fields, some day!