Part 4

“Runie and runie the Eildon tree, And seven times runie the Eildon tree.”

According to custom, I was rather on the look-out for treasures when the old hedge was dug up, but nothing appeared excepting a huge yellow bone and a gigantic root of White Briony. The uncouth thing bore a strange resemblance to some organized being with arms and legs--something like an octopus in full swim, only twenty times as big, and yet also with a sort of human aspect! I was told it was a Mandrake (though it did not shriek on being pulled up), and so I desired it should be carefully buried, in order that the household might not be disturbed by its groans at night. In India the sounds emitted by a Mandrake in the dark night are said to be sometimes heartrending. And so the witch, in the Masque of Queens--

“I last night lay all alone O’ the ground to heare the mandrake grone.”

I wonder if White Briony is really the true Mandrake, about which there must seriously be something mysterious. I find in the dictionary, “Mandragora (Mandrake), a powerful soporific. Mandrage, a plant said to be so called because it points out that a cave is near.” I know no more, besides the wild traditions, and this vision the other day, in the twilight, of a white misshapen figure lying on the earth. There are, however, few things more exquisitely graceful than the Black and White Brionies. Black Briony is rare in our part of Buckinghamshire. In this garden three White Brionies have leave to dwell. All winter, the mystic root lies hidden, awaiting the appointed time. On a day in spring or early summer, suddenly up-springs a group of delicate pale green stalks, and they, as soon as they have seen the sun in heaven, delay not to put forth all the strength stored under the earth in the big ugly root; and before many days the green stalks have grown into a beautiful leafy plant, mantling over whatever is nearest of tree or bush, with leaves of most fanciful cut, and a thousand ringlets of circling, sensitive tendrils. By-and-by there will be a whole firmament of little star-like flowers, greenish-white in colour--all either male or female, according to the plant. In October an unhappy collapse sets in. Life ebbs fast from the flaccid stalks and tendrils, dying away, sinking down, down into the buried root, till nothing remains but a dry colourless shroud, clinging close over the supporting shrub, which scarce can breathe, till a friendly hand in due course clears the whole thing off.

I think I never saw a finer show of white Arums than we have just now. There is the grandest luxuriance of foliage, with thick tall stems, crowned by spathes in spiral lines of perfect grace. The rich texture of these flowers is marvellous; white as the drifted snow, with a lemon scent. Our success is perhaps due, not only to good management, but to what one may call imported bulbs. Four years ago they were thrown out of a garden at Cannes, as worthless rubbish, on to the road-side. I passed that way one day, while a little peasant girl was collecting some of these bulbs in her pinafore. I asked her what they were. “Des lis!” she said. So I immediately gathered up some for myself, and they were done up in newspapers and packed in our trunks and brought home. In grim contrast to these joyous flowers of light is the Serpent Flower, a tropical member of the Arum family. I saw it, once only, eleven years ago, in the beautiful garden of Palazzo Orenga, at Mortola, near Ventimiglia. It grew on the edge of a ravine, under the deep shade of a low stone wall. Right up from a cluster of black-spotted leaves the centre spiral rose to about ten or twelve inches, bending over at the top into a sort of hood, like the hooded head of a cobra. The creature--flower I cannot say--took the attitude exactly of a snake preparing to spring, the body marked and spotted the same as a snake, with the hood greyish-brown. The whole thing seemed something more than a good imitation only of the reptile whose name it bears. The first glance gave a sort of shock, as if on a sudden one had become aware of the actual presence at one’s feet of a deadly serpent; and yet the terrifying object is, I believe, used by the Indians as an antidote to snake-bite.

All over the Olive grounds of the same country where the Serpent Arum is acclimatized, about this time or early in March, appear the little brown “Sporacci”--tiny hooded Arums of quaint form, little odd monks with yellow tongues hanging out (Arum Arisarum). My window is full of Paper Narcissus--Narcissus is Remembrance; and for the sake of past days, I love it--they succeed a set of blue Roman Hyacinths, dear also from association, and beautiful in their full tones of blue and green. The perfume of both flowers brings back vividly the sweet South, where I knew them wild. I must end with a little bit out of a letter sent me from that southern land which has the power to create lovers of Nature:--

“I am longing for sunshine, to bring to life all the flowers I am watching for near the torrent beds. My ignorance of flowers has this advantage, that each leaf is a mystery to me, and I know not what flower it frames, so each will be a surprise as it appears.”

MARCH.

“Out of the Snow, the Snowdrop-- Out of Death comes Life.”...

DAVID GRAY.

VI.

MARCH.

Of Rooks, and the Close of Day--Of Fairy Garlands, Snowdrops, and Wild Ivy.

March 9.--We are rejoicing in the fulfilment of a long-felt wish, and at last we possess a rookery! There are the nests, seven of them, in the Elms, in full view of our east windows. The grand old trees have always seemed to us a most tempting position for the rooks, who themselves have half thought so too. But it has taken them long to come to a decision. On many a spring morning for these eleven years past have we observed them settling upon the trees in hundreds. But after a short interval of noise and clamour, they would rise and depart. They were only coquetting a little with us, or bent on kindling delusive hopes. “Ill blows the wind that profits nobody,” however; so the storm of April 29 last year, which uprooted some of our best trees, laid low also part of a neighbouring rookery. The shock seems to have decided the rooks, and to have won their confidence in our noble 300-year-old Elms. The seven nests were begun and nearly built in about as many days. How busy the old rooks are! And how, with no hands and only one beak, they can make up those neat bundles of moss and dry grass, just like potatoes, that we see them carrying to line the nests with, is difficult to understand. During the rough snowy weather no work was done; but a rook or two sat all day just above the nests on the very topmost twigs, swaying in the wind, as if to watch and test their security. One evening at dusk, after the rooks had gone off for the night, an inquisitive starling came peeping about. He flew up from his own lower range, visiting every nest; made a minute inspection inside and out, and then decamped in a great hurry, afraid of being found out.

Near the great Elms, but far below the new black colony, is the dovecote. Beautiful white fantail pigeons, varied by two or three purple-necked greys, here live joyous lives. On the steep, heather-thatched roof they preen, and coo, and make love together, or rise with sudden dash into the air, and wheel in circling flight over the lawns and flower-beds. On sunny days, when they pass and repass the house, swift gleams flash along the rooms within; brown oak panellings reflecting back the sunshine from their silver plumes. Often, through long summer afternoons, will these bright shadows come and go upon the walls, like visions of happy ghosts upon the wing. It is not all poetry, however, with our fantails, I am afraid; for the handsomest of them all choked himself with too greedily swallowing a slug one day, and was found stretched dead upon the lawn. Sometimes a poor tailless fugitive, escaped from the nearest public-house shooting-match, will take refuge with our pigeons and feed shyly with them for a day or so; but only one ever remained, and she went to live with the bantam cock, whose pert little wife had deserted him.

The day has been cold, with scattered flakes of snow falling; and now, in the grey still evening, the air is suffused with a certain splendid sobriety of colouring, if it may be so described. The turf has lost that living green it showed a month ago, for since then bitter winds have swept the garden; the Yews look dark and sombre, dark pyramids and lines; the older Yews, of large and natural growth, are powdered over with dim gold-dust. Such profuse bloom on the Yews seems to soften their blackness. Beyond the Yew hedges’ dusky outline glows a richer green of Laurel, Cedar, and Firs, with the russet sheen of Beech, half seen between the budding fulness of Thorn and Laburnum. Beyond all stand the Elms; they form a background of infinite delicacy, purpling under that nameless change, more felt than seen, which the turn of the year has brought. Nearer home, in this pale evening light, the hoary old garden walls, with here and there a ruddier tint of redder brick, or faintest blush upon them of Pyrus Japonica, join their mellow tones to the intense but quiet colour of the hour. A mass of common sweet-scented white Clematis, whose summer glory has long since melted into a softly shaded cloud of thin withered stalks, hides one pillar of the central iron gate, and half enwreathes a sculptured vase above; sere leaves of grassy wild things break the straight line of mossy, lichened coping. Timid thrushes with spotted breast, and little hedge-sparrows in sober brown, appear upon the lawn, since labour for the day is done and the garden is deserted. A tomtit, quaintly liveried, has made the square-topped Yewen hedge his hunting-ground. (Yewen was the pretty old word in Spenser’s time: may we not revive it?) But now a bold gay blackbird leaps up upon the stone ball that surmounts the ivied corner of the wall. His jet-black plumage and “the golden dagger of his bill” give just that touch of strength wanted to complete the consonance of lovely colour. By-and-by he will be down again upon the grass to flirt his tail and flout the thrushes till he remains alone, master of the field. This is a dull time for the cock birds all over the place. Awhile ago they had such games of an evening on the lawn! chasing each other in and out between the Yews and Box tree, and every blackbird had two hens to play hide and seek with. But now the lawful wives are sitting, and there’s an end of the fun.

The garden has been cold and joyless ever since March 4. It is true that morning after morning, about sunrise, a treat for the eye has been prepared by the Crocus beds with a succession of white frosts, but it is one could well be spared. Meanwhile, it certainly is the prettiest sight imaginable, these Crocuses thrown lightly, as it were, upon the frosted turf in garlands of amethyst and amber. The rime, covering up all varied greens and browns of earth and grass with a veil of pearly grey, gives a most pure and charming result. If you look quite near--at the purple wreath especially--the flowers seem all dipped in pounded sugar, crystallized for a fairy’s feast. Except this pretty morning show, there is as yet but little joy. Fewer flowers than in January even, and such as are willing to bloom cast down on the ground. Primroses and the earliest Daffodils are thus laid low, conquered by overmastering cold. Violets, too, which before the frost began were almost more perfumed and of finer bloom than ever I remember, are pinched and shrunken. Snowdrops also failed, before the severe frost, destroyed untimely by excessive rain. The Snowflake (Leucojum vernum) appeared earlier than usual, and I look forward to the summer Snowflake later on. These lovely flowers came from an eyot on the Thames, where they grow wild. A fine double Snowdrop played an amusing little freak. The southern face of a Yew hedge under which it grew had, I suppose, gradually overgrown the plant, so its stalks had to preternaturally lengthen themselves, growing up within the hedge till forth peeped the flowers from various little interspaces, as if the Yew itself were breaking out into Snowdrops! One of these long stems measured sixteen inches, and the blossoms, larger than common, looked as if they enjoyed the joke.

Few indeed are the flowers to be recorded in bloom. There is a pink tuft or two of Dog’s-tooth Violet (long lines of these, if there were space sufficient, would make great show). Grape Hyacinths (looking very unripe) are an inch or so above-ground. The sweet little dwarf Daffodil, with bent head, smiles to itself in the accustomed place. A few Polyanthuses, small blue Periwinkles, mixed with yellow Primroses; Pulmonaria, seared and pinched; blue Scilla, in niggard clumps, quite unlike its usual bounteous, radiant beauty. These, with bushes of rosy Ribes, checked but ready to break into bloom, are about all we can boast. There are, indeed, the Crocuses, whose best days, however, will soon be ended. The mixed border of these, in three colours--yellow, white, and lilac--would have been perfect had our friends the field-mice, instead of choosing the lilac alone for their own private consumption, shown more impartiality. Their taste is certainly remarkable, for the yellow were the fattest bulbs.

* * * * *

Mar. 19.--After a day of rain it is wonderful how quickly Daffodils and Primroses have picked themselves up. The Grape Hyacinths have grown two inches since morning, and begun to colour in proportion, or so at least it seems; and tiny golden buds, unperceived before, burgeon all over the Kerria. Although Daffodils as yet are few, there is already a Polyanthus Narcissus unfolded, and a few Narcissus of deep orange-yellow have arisen behind the lilac winter Irises. The Apricot bloom is chiefly brown, but all will not be lost. On the Peach trees there are buds, and some expanded blooms of heavenly pink. I find a curious small deception has been practised upon me by a plant in the east border. I had often observed two patches of greenish worn-out-looking moss there, and at last inquired of the Gardener the reason of their being permitted. He pointed out that it was not moss, but the green bare roots of a Violet, which I am well acquainted with when its disguise is thrown off. It is a pied Dog Violet, from Villa Clara, Baveno. We have had it now for some years. The flower is scentless, striped white and purple, of large size, on a long stalk. But flower and leaf are yet a long way off.

The pruning and trimming of all the Ivy walls and festoons have been done. The result for the time is as ugly as it is desirable. Ivy grows so lavishly here that it has to be kept well in hand, and many whom it favours less have said they envied us our Ivy. More than once we have had to choose between some tree or a canopy of Ivy. It is like a beautiful carpet underneath a long row of Elms, where nothing else would grow; indeed, wherever there happen to be bits too overshadowed for grass or otherwise unsatisfactory, we put in Ivy; it is sure to understand, and to do what is required. My favourite sort is the wild English Ivy, and no other has a right to grow on the house. Its growth is slow and sure; it always grows to beauty, and never to over-richness. The loveliness of its younger shoots and of the deeply cut leaves might inspire either poet or painter! To either I would say, Wherever on your tree, or fence, or house-wall you find it beginning to spring, cherish it; for years it will do no harm, and if you are true to your art, and therefore know that small things are not too small for you, it will repay your love a hundredfold. Wild Ivy is best where it comes up of itself; it clings then so close and flat. A thrush sat on her nest, built on quite the outside of a Holly, two feet from the ground, while the men were at work pruning an Ivy wall--large swathes of Ivy falling close to her. She had faith in us, and never feared.

Our grove of white Arums in the greenhouse is still a fine sight--plants from four to five feet high, with enormous leaves. The spathes, however, though fine, are less so than at first, when many of them measured over eight inches across. The Maréchal Niel Rose will not give us this season anything like the six hundred great yellow roses we have had from him these last three years. He seems to be failing a little, somehow. But every morning I have a foretaste of summer in the glowing heap of beautiful roses of several kinds, brought in to me before breakfast. And with them there are Gloxinias, marvellous in their size and splendour of deep colouring. They are succeeding a lot of most curious-looking Tydæas--orange and dusky pink, profusely spotted. Both these flowers surprise one by the length of time they remain fresh when cut.

APRIL.

“To the Wise a Fact is True Poetry, and the most Beautiful of Fables.”--EMERSON.

VII.

APRIL.

Of Daffodils--Coltsfoot--An Archangel--Gold Wrens and the little Vedova.

April 9.--The garden is full of Daffodils. Yellow flowers and green leaves form a most beautiful combination of colours when laid on by Nature’s hand. Every part of the garden now has its show of single or double Daffodils, and yet there is not one too many. Lovely always, they are loveliest, perhaps, when growing in the grass. There, “the green world they live in” shows them off better than when surrounded by garden mould. Excepting one large single flowering plant under the east wall, our finest Daffodils grow in the cool north border. One thinks of “Enid” in her faded silk, like a blossom “that lightly breaks a faded flower-sheath” when the Daffodils appear. Indeed, one can scarcely look on them, in their beauty, without recalling the lines of some familiar quotation; mine shall only be from the children’s nursery song-book--