59. STUDY OF A ROSE BUSH
From the Water-colour in the possession of the Artist.
Painted about 1887.
A very interesting series of studies of various kinds might have been included in this volume, which would have shown the thoroughness with which our artist works, and it was with much reluctance that we discarded all but two, in the interests of the larger number of our readers, who might have thought them better fitted for a manual of instruction. The Gloire de Dijon rose, however, is such a prime old favourite, begotten before the days of scentless specimens to which are appended the ill-sounding names of fashionable patrons of the rose-grower, that we could not keep our hands off it when we came across it in the artist’s portfolio.
This rose tree, or one of its fellows, will be seen in the background of two of the drawings of Mrs. Allingham’s garden at Sandhills, namely, [Plates 61] and [64].
60. WALLFLOWERS
From the Water-colour in the possession of Mr. F. G. Debenham.
Painted about 1893.
Of the denizens of the garden there is perhaps none which appeals to a countryman who has drifted into the city so much as the wallflower. His senses both of sight and smell have probably grown up under its influence, and it carries him back to the home of his childhood, for it is of never-to-be-forgotten sweetness both in colour and in scent, and it conjures up old days when the rare warmth of an April sun extracted its perfume until all the air in its neighbourhood was redolent of it.
If my reader be a west countryman, like the author, he may best know it as the gilliflower, but he will do so erroneously, for the name rightly applies to the carnation, and was so used even in Chaucer’s time—
Many a clove gilofre
To put in ale;
and again in Culpepper—
The great clove carnation Gillo-Floure.