It was not until the epoch of the pre-Raphaelite brethren that the daisies which pie the meadows seemed worthy of perpetuation, and it was reserved to Frederick Walker, in his “Harbour of Refuge,” to limn them on a lawn falling beneath the scythe.
The flower that Mrs. Allingham has painted with so much skill—for it is a very difficult undertaking to suggest a mass of daisies without too much individualising—is not, of course, the field daisy (bellis perennis) but the ox-eye, or moon daisy, which is really a chrysanthemum (chrysanthemum leucanthemum), a plant which seems to have increased very much of late years, especially on railway embankments, maybe because it has come into vogue, and actually been advanced to a flower worthy of gathering and using as a table decoration, an honour that would never have been bestowed on it a quarter of a century ago.
The drawing was made from the window of the farmhouse in Kent, to which, as we have said, Mrs. Allingham runs down at all seasons. It was evidently made on a glorious summer day, when every flower had expanded to its utmost under the delicious heat of a ripening sun. The bulbous cloudlet which floats in front of the whiter strata, and the blueness of the distant woods may augur rain in the near future, but for the moment everything appears to be in a serenely happy condition, except perhaps the farmer, who would fain see a crop in which there was less flower and more grass.
39. FOXGLOVES
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mrs. C. A. Barton.
Painted 1898.
Foxgloves have appealed to Mrs. Allingham for portrayal in more than one locality in England, but never in greater luxuriance than on this Kentish woodside, where their spikes overtop the sweet little sixteen-year-old faggot-carrier. It happens to be another instance of a magnificent crop springing up the first year after a growth of saplings have been cleared away, and not to be repeated even in this year of grace (1903) when the newspapers have been full of descriptions of the unwonted displays of foxgloves everywhere, and have been taunting the gardeners upon their poor results in comparison with Nature’s.
40. HEATHER ON CROCKHAM HILL, KENT
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted 1902.
It is perhaps a fallacy, or at least heresy, to assert that English heather bears away the palm for beauty over that of the country with which it is more popularly associated. But many, I am sure, will agree with me that nowhere in Scotland is any stretch of heather to be found which can eclipse in its magnificence of colour that which extends for mile after mile over Surrey and Kentish commonland in mid August. In the summer in which this drawing was painted it was especially noticeable as being in more perfect bloom than it had been known to be for many seasons.
