Lures of Life

by Joseph Lucas

I have two brothers gardeners, Enrico and Emilio. Enrico has sight only of one eye, Emilio is blind both eyes. The two brothers work together in brotherly love, and have only one working eye between them, yet it is wonderful how much good work the one eye accomplishes per day. Emilio sees with his hands. It is weeding that puzzles him most. He never pulls a flower instead of a weed--he feels the difference between them. It is the weeds that elude his fingers as he works along the border that grieve him. Weeding is a fascinating occupation to me. Nice people won't profane their hands grubbing in common garden soil, but, being a groundling myself, I enjoy the fun of coming into contact with my native element. Clean, sweet, caressing earth, it is the last flowery coverlet all of us will sleep under; why shun thy friendly touch to-day? There is always an abundant crop of weeds to practise on in an Italian garden, and your fingers itch to uproot them to the very last offender. I suppose it is the ruthlessness and slaughter of the deed, the close handgrip on the enemy, that compels you on; and when the skirmish is over, surveying the ground cleared of the foe and the heaps of the slain withering at your feet gives a pleasurable thrill of excitement in the hour of victory. You exult, for there is something done, and well done, to show for your backache.

The gardener's lure is irresistible. The devotee walks in flowerland of his own creation. In dreary winter hours he dreams splendid dreams of himself surrounded by summer harmonies, summer fragrance, and summer flowers, for which he has planned and planted and patiently tended along the covering months of winter and spring. The hour of full realization approaches when the roses mass their rival glories and spread their coloured raptures in the garden that he loves. This puts the crown on the brow of summer. This is the gardener's festival of the year. He invites his horticultural cronies to tea on the lawn, and they all talk rose jargon together. He takes them on a tour of inspection round the garden, and they congratulate the founder of the feast of flowers. They are happy as a band of Sunday-school children spending the afternoon out. They sit on the lawn under the spreading ilex-tree, which casts ample shadow for their comfort, and the summer sunshine lays ardent on the green-sward around them. It is a genial gathering, but the man who understands not roses would be speechless in their midst and not a little bored. Conversation cools off, the evening shadows lengthen, and in an interlude of silence there is a sort of whispering stillness in the warm evening air, as if the flowers and grass and trees are all saying kind words to one another, for having done their best to please. The lure of the garden is never so poignant as at this great moment, for your heart is brimming of sweet content, and you say to yourself: "Can it be true? Can anything in the world be more beautiful?"

There is another lure that lays hands on a man like grappling-irons tackling a Spanish galleon laden with treasure, with a grip which cannot be shaken off: I mean the writer's lure. I am fond of reading. The enticements of a good book are hard to resist, especially if you have no inclination to resist, but tumble a ready victim to the writer's charm.

What is the writer's lure? How does it cast its spell? You can talk round the subject by metaphor and symbol and figure of speech, but cannot solve it like a problem in Euclid and add Q.E.D. at the end. The writer's lure is the vividest way of saying things. It is a bolt shot from the mind that hits the penman's mark. The writer's lure fixes you even as a beautiful sympathetic picture holds you up by its witchery of art. In the picture warmth of colour, grace of line, melting tints, dreamy distance, and an added mystic charm brooding over all, voice lovingly your taste in art, and, like a haunted man, you carry the landscape about with you all day long. It intrudes on your mind midst pressing business affairs; the sunlight sleeping on the hills creates a pleasant interlude of thought when engrossed in life's little worries. Turner's "Crossing the Brook" in the Tate Gallery is a picture that bewitches me when I see it. It stimulates my imagination and sets my thoughts sailing over the country carried on the breezes which blow across the Turner landscape.

A book haunts you in the selfsame way as a picture. You read a book, and it stirs your emotions and captivates your fancy, and for a time it possesses you like a living spirit. The writer's lure holds you in its grip. The book soaks into you. A sentence here and there leaps to memory during odd moments of the day; the rhythm of the language ripples musically as a chime of bells, and you repeat the sentence to yourself again and again. The aptness of an image is lifelike, and a vision floats across your mind; the happy turn of a sentence sticks. The fresh, clear-cut thought shot out boldly from the writer's brain conveys a new idea; you recall the touch of humour resembling a patch of warm sunshine twinkling on the landscape, and your lips curve into a smile. There are passages of tenderness also that you treasure, because they find your heart like shafts of love feathered with joy. All these things in the book come back to you vividly, and whisper their fond message over again.

One cannot explain the writer's lure. You may name it, but you cannot catch it in the reviewer's trap of criticism. It is illusive as the angel who visited Manoah and his wife, wrought wondrously, and vanished leaving no trace. It is a secret of pencraft which defies definitions and eludes analysis, yet it is the vital element in composition. It is not a question of conforming to correct standards of good writing by which literary excellence is judged, the writer being blessed or cursed by the censors according to the measure of his allegiance to their literary creed. Some writers violate every literary canon set up to guide their pen in the way of righteousness, but they are alive with literary fire; the vital element is fecund within them, and they riot in the power of it. There are no rules in art that great writers have not shown us how to break with advantage. You cannot resolve the writer's lure into its component parts as you can a potato. Like electricity, it defies analysis, but, like the electric current, you feel it in your bones.

Blind Emilio does not work by rules taught in popular garden manuals; he gathers inspiration for his craft direct from the heavens. He is an oracle of occult information and prevision almost uncanny, concerning things in the garden and out of it. However, he is a cheerful soul and a born optimist, so we consult him often and rely on his wisdom, because, like honey, its flavour is pleasant to the taste.

The moon is the guiding providence regulating some of Emilio's important duties. He observes the phases of the moon with the reverence of an astrologer of legendary days. He awaits the waning moon in February to prune the rose-trees. A potent mystic virtue dwells in a waning moon according to his garden lore, which is old as his pagan ancestors. If you prune rose-trees in a waxing moon the new growths will be long, weak shoots, and the crop of roses in the summer poor, puny things. Prune in the waning moon and the new growths will be short, sturdy rods bearing large flowers, and an abundance of them. Garden seed must be sown under the auspices of the waning moon if you want your flower-beds in the summer-time to be renowned for beauty, to make your friends envious of your success and yourself just swaggeringly happy.

What applies to roses and seed applies equally to pruning vines and grafting fruit-trees. Bulbs and potatoes may be planted any time. They move in the spring when Nature signals whether they are in the ground or out of it. They are outside the ritual of the moon.

We had a heavy crop of diospyros last autumn, drawn from four trees in the kitchen-garden. These fruits are fat, round, rosy fellows, plump as overgrown tomatoes. The flesh of the ripe diospyros is Nature's jam, soft and mushy, delicious in flavour, and eaten politely with a spoon. Our neighbour who hails from Cincinnati grew a crop of small, sickly-looking fruit. "Ah!" said Emilio, "now that you see the difference in the two crops, you must believe me. Their diospyros were gathered in the growing moon, and they shrivel and lose colour and flavour; ours were gathered in the waning moon, and keep beautiful and sound to the end of the season." There is good luck under the waning moon. Another explanation of the difference in the crops has merit, which Emilio considers treason to the honourable tradition of his fathers. Our fruit was grown in the kitchen-garden on manured soil; our American neighbour's trees stand on a rocky bank in the wild garden which is never dressed with manure. The blessing of the moon falls on the crop that is best nourished in the days of its youth.