37. THE HAWTHORN VALLEY, BROCKET
From the Water-colour in the possession of Lord Mount-Stephen.
Painted 1898.
It is somewhat remarkable that the most impressive flower-show that Nature presents to our notice, namely, when, as May passes into June, the whole countryside is decked with a bridal array of pure white, should have taken hold of but few of our poets.
Shakespeare, of course, recognised it in lines which make one smile at the idea that they could ever have been composed by a town-bred poet:—
O what a life were this! How sweet, how lovely!
Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects’ treachery.
Another, in the person of Mrs. Allingham’s husband, penned a sonnet upon it containing the following happy description:—
Cluster’d pearls upon a robe of green,
And broideries of white bloom.
The scene of this drawing is laid in the park at Brocket Hall, to which reference is made in connection with a subsequent illustration ([Plate 65]). The park is full of ancient timber, one great oak on the border of the two counties (Herts and Beds) being mentioned in Doomsday Book, and another going by the name of Queen Elizabeth’s oak, from the tradition that the Princess was sitting under it when the news reached her that she was Queen of England.[10] The Hawthorn Valley runs for nearly a mile from one of the park entrances towards the more woodland part of the estate, and was formerly used as a private race-course.
The artist has treated a very difficult subject with success, as any one, especially an amateur, who has tried to portray masses of hawthorn blossom will readily admit. Any attempt to draw the flowers and fill in the foliage is hopeless, and it can only be done, as in this case, by erasure. Hardly less difficult to accomplish are the delicate fronds of the young bracken, unfolding upwards by inches a day, which can only be treated suggestively. In the original, which is on a somewhat large scale, the middle distance is enlivened with browsing rabbits, but the very considerable reduction of the drawing has reduced these to a size which renders them hardly distinguishable.
