Mirror of the Months

by P. G. Patmore

Then again, when the fragrant crop is nearly fit to be gathered in, and lies piled up in dusky-coloured hillocks upon the yellow sward, while here and there, beneath the shade of a “hedgerow elm,” or braving the open sunshine in the centre of the scene, sunburnt Groups are seated in circles at their noonday meal, enjoying that ease which nothing but labour can generate.

And lastly, when Man and Nature, mutually assisting each other, have completed the work of preparation, and the cart stands still to receive its last forkfull; while the horse, almost hidden beneath his apparently overwhelming load, lifts up his patient head sideways to pick a mouthful; and all about stand the labourers, leaning listlessly on their implements, and eyeing the completion of their work.

What sweet pastoral pictures are here! The last, in particular, is prettier to look upon than any thing else, not excepting one of Wouvermann’s imitations of it.

Sheep-shearing, the other great rural labour of this delightful month, if not so full of variety as the Hay-harvest, and so creative of matter for those “in search of the picturesque” (though it is scarcely less so), is still more lively, animated, and spirit-stirring; and it besides retains something of the character of a Rural Holiday,—which rural matters need, in this age and in this country, more than ever they did since it became a civilized and happy one. The Sheep-shearings are the only stated periods of the year at which we hear of festivities, and gatherings together of the lovers and practisers of English husbandry; for even the Harvest-home itself is fast sinking into disuse, as a scene of mirth and revelry, from the want of being duly encouraged and partaken in by the great ones of the Earth; without whose countenance and example it is questionable whether eating, drinking, and sleeping, would not soon become vulgar practices, and be discontinued accordingly! In a state of things like this, the Holkham and Woburn Sheep-shearings do more honour to their promoters than all their wealth can purchase and all their titles convey. But we are getting beyond our soundings: honours, titles, and “states of things,” are what we do not pretend to meddle with, especially when the pretty sights and sounds preparatory to and attendant on Sheep-shearing, as a mere rural employment, are waiting to be noticed.

Now, then, on the first really summer’s day, the whole Flock being collected on the higher bank of the pool formed at the abrupt winding of the nameless mill-stream, at the point perhaps where the little wooden bridge runs slantwise across it, and the attendants being stationed waist-deep in the midwater, the Sheep are, after a silent but obstinate struggle or two, plunged headlong, one by one, from the precipitous bank; when, after a moment of confused splashing, their heavy fleeces float them along, and their feet, moving by an instinctive art which every creature but man possesses, guide them towards the opposite shallows, that steam and glitter in the sunshine. Midway, however, they are fain to submit to the rude grasp of the relentless washer; which they undergo with as ill a grace as preparatory-schoolboys do the same operation. Then, gaining the opposite shore heavily, they stand for a moment till the weight of water leaves them, and, shaking their streaming sides, go bleating away towards their fellows on the adjacent green, wondering within themselves what has happened.

The Shearing is no less lively and picturesque, and no less attended by all the idlers of the Village as spectators. The Shearers, seated in rows beside the crowded pens, with the seemingly inanimate load of fleece in their laps, and bending intently over their work; the occasional whetting and clapping of the shears; the neatly attired housewives, waiting to receive the fleeces; the smoke from the tar-kettle, ascending through the clear air; the shorn Sheep escaping, one by one, from their temporary bondage, and trotting away towards their distant brethren, bleating all the while for their Lambs, that do not know them;—all this, with its ground of universal green, and finished every where by its leafy distances, except where the village spire intervenes, forms together a living picture, pleasanter to look upon than words can speak, but still pleasanter to think of when that is the nearest approach you can make to it.

We must now betake ourselves to the Garden, which I have perhaps kept aloof from longer than I ought, from something like a fear that the flush of beauty we shall meet there will go near to infringe upon that perfect sobriety of style on which these papers so much pique themselves, and which, I hope, has not hitherto been departed from! What may happen now, however, is more than I shall venture to anticipate. If, therefore, in passing across yonder smooth elastic Turf, now in its fullest perfection, and making our way towards the Flower-plots that are imbedded in it, my imagination should imbibe some of the occasionally undue warmth of the season, and my fancy find itself “half in a blush of clustering roses lost,” and these should together engender a style as flowery as the subject about which it is to concern itself, the reader will be good enough to bear in mind, that even the Berecinian blood of an Irish Barrister can scarcely be made to keep within due bounds, when he has a beauty for his client! nay, that even the Irish Barrister par excellence is sometimes misled into a metaphor, and inveigled into an allitteration, when his theme happens to be more than ordinarily inspiring!

As the Wild Rose is the reigning belle of the Forest during this Month, so the Rose occupies a similar rank in the more courtly realm of the Garden; and the latter is to her sweet relative of the Woods what the centre of the court circle in town (whoever she may be) is to the Cynosure of a country village. Here, in these oval clumps, which she has usurped entirely to herself, we find her greeting us under a host of different forms at the same time, all of which are her own, all unlike each other, and yet each and all more lovely than all the rest! I must be content merely to call by name upon a few of the principal of these “fair varieties,” and allow their prototypes in the reader’s imagination to answer for themselves; for the Poets, those purloiners of all public property that is worth possessing, have long precluded us plain prosers from being epithetical in regard to Roses, without incurring the imputation of borrowing that from them, which they first borrowed from their betters, the Roses themselves.

What, then, can be more enchanting to look upon than this newly-opened Rose of Provence, looking upward half shamefacedly from its fragile stem, as if just awakened from a happy dream to a happier reality? It is the loveliest Rose we have, and the sweetest—except this by its side, the Rose-unique, which looks like the image of the other cut in marble—the statue of the Venus de’ Medici beside the living beauty that stood as its model. This, surely, is the loveliest of all Roses—except the White Blush-Rose, that rises here in the centre of the group, and looks like the marble image of the two former, just as the enamoured gaze of its Pygmalion has warmed it into life. You see, its delicate lips are just becoming tinged with the hues of vitality; and it breathes already, as all the air about it bears witness. Undoubtedly this is the loveliest of Roses—except the Moss Rose that hangs flauntingly beside it, seemingly the most careless, but in reality the most coquettish of court beauties; apparently the sport of every coxcomb Zephyr that passes, but in truth indifferent to all but her own sweet self; and if more modest in her attire than all other of her fair sisterhood, only adopting this particular mode because it makes her look more pretty and piquant. Her “close-fit cap of green,” the fashion of which she never changes, has exactly that becoming effect on her face which a French blonde trimming has on the face of an English londe beauty. But I must refrain from further details, touching the attractions of the Rose family, or I shall inevitably lose my credit with all of them, by discovering some reason why each, as it comes before me, is without exception preferable to all the rest. And, in fact, without wishing to be personal in regard to any, I must insist that, philosophically speaking, that Rose which is nearest at hand is, without exception, the best of Roses, in relation to the person affected by it; and that even the gaudy Damask, and the intense velvet-leaved Tuscan (each of which, in its own particular ear be it said, is handsomer than any of the beforenamed), must yield in beauty to the pretty little innocent blossoms of the Sweet-briar Rose itself, when none but that is by.

I am afraid the other Garden Flowers, that first appear in June, must go without their fair proportion of praise, since they will risk a rivalry with the unrivalled. They must be content with a passing “now” of recognition. Now, then, the flaring Peony throws up its splendid globes of crimson and blush-colour from out its rich domelike pavilion of dark leaves.—Now, the elegant yet exotic-looking family of the Amaranths begin to put on their fantastical attire of fans, feathers, and fringes. Those, however, which give name to the tribe, the truly Amaranthine, or Everlasting ones, are not yet come; nor that other, most elegant and pathetic of them all, which is known by the name of Love-lies-bleeding.